Introduction

The concept of ‘Quality of Life’ is crucial to patients and important for health technology assessment (HTA). It is also a difficult concept to measure. Although most people would say both length of life and quality of life are important, the meaning of ‘good quality of life’ may be different to different people and thus, several different methods are being used.

The dilemma is well expressed in the following quote by statistician John Tukey: ‘It is often much worse to have good measurement of the wrong thing especially when, as is so often the case, the wrong thing will in fact be used as an indicator of the right ­thing than­ to have poor measurement of the right thing.’