The University of Washington Head and Neck Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire
The University of Washington Head and Neck Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire (UW-QOL) is free to use and is one of the most frequently reported health related quality of life questionnaires in the literature (http://www.handle-on-qol.com/Index.aspx). The UW-QOL v4 was published in 2002 and consists of 12 single item domains, these having between 3 and 5 response options scaled evenly from 0 (worst) to 100 (best) according to response hierarchy. UW-QOL domains can be presented within two composite subscales, physical function and social-emotional function scores, and there are also measures that denote clinically meaningful and significant problems or dysfunction. This website contains various useful resource materials with guidance documents, scorings and also SPSS syntax to aid data management and the computation of composite scores and indicators of dysfunction.
The guidance document refers also to a 'UW-QOL version 4.1', which in effect is version 4 but with a few extras. In particular, there are two new domains added, one about intimacy (with 4 response options) and another about fears of recurrence (with 5 response options). These use the same logical hierarchical response format seen throughout version 4. The existing saliva domain also has an extra response option of 'too much saliva'. The SPSS syntax works for UW-QOL version 4 and for version 4.1.