Disability Quality of Life Assessment

Quality of life assessment in disability populations is the general methodology for measuring how well people with disabilities are living, encompassing both overall quality of life and health-related quality of life. Unlike a single instrument or model, it is a set of methodological commitments and decisions that researchers and practitioners must navigate whenever they attempt such measurement. Drawing on the quality-of-life science consolidated by Schalock and Verdugo and on the biopsychosocial framing of disability in the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, the methodology distinguishes objective life conditions from subjective evaluation, weighs generic against condition-specific instruments, and confronts phenomena that are especially acute in disability populations. Chief among these are response shift, the tendency for a person's internal standards to change over time, and the disability paradox, in which people with serious impairments often report a good quality of life that observers would not predict. The methodology also insists on accessible administration and valid proxy reporting so that people who communicate differently are measured fairly rather than excluded.