US norms for six generic health-related quality-of-life indexes from the National Health Measurement study.

Background: A number of indexes measuring self-reported generic health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL) using preference-weighted scoring are used widely in population surveys and clinical studies in the United States.

Objective: To obtain age-by-gender norms for older adults on 6 generic HRQoL indexes in a cross-sectional US population survey and compare age-related trends in HRQoL.

Methods: The EuroQol EQ-5D, Health Utilities Index Mark 2, Health Utilities Index Mark 3, SF-36v2 (used to compute SF-6D), Quality of Well-being Scale self-administered form, and Health and Activities Limitations index were administered via telephone interview to each respondent in a national survey sample of 3844 noninstitutionalized adults age 35-89.