RAND 36 - Item Health Survey 1.0

Technical Manual

Script Author: Katja Borchert, Ph.D. (katjab@millisecond.com), Millisecond

Created: October 10, 2002

Last Modified: October 03, 2023 by K. Borchert (katjab@millisecond.com), Millisecond

Script Copyright © Millisecond Software, LLC

Background

This script implements the RAND 36 - Item Health Survey 1.0 version of the Medical Outcomes Study (MOS) Short Form Health Survey (SF-36). It was developed at RAND as part of MOS. It differs from the commercially available MOS SF-36 in the scoring algorithm. The following articles/webpages were used to develop this script:

Ware, J., Jr., & Sherbourne, C.D. (1992). The MOS 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36): I. Conceptual Framework and Item Selection. Medical Care, 30, 473-483.

Ware, J.E. Jr. & Gandek, B, (1998). Overview of the SF-36 Health Survey and the International Quality of Life Assessment (IQOLA) Project. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 51, 903-912.

More information (including scoring guidelines) about the RAND 36 - Item Health Survey 1.0 on: https://www.rand.org/health/surveys_tools/mos/mos_core_36item.html

All RAND surveys are in the public domain.

Duration

5 minutes

Overview

The RAND36-Item Health Survey contains 36 questions that assess the following 8 scales (+ 1 extra):

Factor 1: Physical Health (PCS) (summary measure)
Physical Functioning (PF): questions 3-12 (10 items)
Role-Physical (RP): questions 13-16 (4 items)
Bodily Pain (BP): question 21-22 (2 items)
General Health (GH): questions 1,33,34,35,36 (5 items)

Factor 2: Mental Health (MCS) (summary measure)
Mental Health (MH): questions 24,25,26,28,30 (5 items)
Role-Emotional (RE): questions 17,18,19 (3 items)
Social Functioning (SF): questions 20,32 (2 items)
Vitality (VT): questions 23, 27, 29, 31 (4 items)

Self-reported Health Transition: question 2

By default, participants are required to answer all the questions in this script.

Summary Data

File Name: rand36_summary*.iqdat

Data Fields

NameDescription
inquisit.version Inquisit version number
computer.platform Device platform: win | mac |ios | android
startDate Date the session was run
startTime Time the session was run
subjectId Participant ID
groupId Group number
sessionId Session number
elapsedTime Session duration in ms
completed 0 = Test was not completed
1 = Test was completed
selfreportedHT Self-reported health transition
=> Physical Health (PCS) (summary measure: mean percentage of the individual responses to target questions)
pf Physical Functioning (PF): questions 3-12
rp Role-Physical (RP): questions 13-16 (4 items)
bp Bodily Pain (BP): question 21-22 (2 items)
gh General Health (GH): questions 1,33,34,35,36 (5 items)
=> Mental Health (MCS) (summary measure: mean percentage of the individual responses to target questions)
mh Mental Health (MH): questions 24,25,26,28,30 (5 items)
re Role-Emotional (RE): questions 17,18,19 (3 items)
sf Social Functioning (SF): questions 20,32 (2 items)
vt Vitality (VT): question 23, 27, 29, 31 (4 items)

Raw Data

File Name: rand36_ItemHealthSurvey.iqdat

Data Fields

NameDescription
date Date the session was run
time Time the session was run
subject, group, session With the current subject/groupnumber/session id
build Inquisit version number
q*_response Response to a particular question (here in percentages); the anchors vary per question
For a more detailed check, check assigned 'optionvalues' under each question
under section QUESTIONS
q*_latency Latency of clicking "next" the last time the page was visited

Parameters

The procedure can be adjusted by setting the following parameters.

NameDescriptionDefault
instructions Contain the surveyPage instructions. The default instructions ("Please answer the following questions")
are not original to the survey and were addede by Millisecond.