[R] SF-8 (not 36) questionnaire scoring for R?

[Marc Schwartz]

On Sep 13, 2010, at 8:59 AM, Joshua Wiley wrote:

> If it's not possible to use their particular algorithms, does anyone
> think it would be helpful/practical to try to write a general scoring
> system?  I imagine a function with arguments for column names, a list
> where each element is a vector that indicates the numbers that
> correspond to various subscales, an argument that could handle any
> reverse scoring, etc.
> 
> I am willing to have a go at this if people think it would be
> worthwhile (read: if someone wiser than me thinks it is not a waste of
> time).
> 
> Josh

It's not clear to me what you are proposing. 

The SF-* instruments are validated scoring systems, that have been demonstrated to correlate to quality of life and in turn, to healthcare resource utilization and cost.

Are you proposing to develop an algorithm that performs the same set of functions? If so, note that you would have to go through the same scoring system validation that originally RAND and now QualityMetric have gone through. 

Of course, you could use RAND's original implementation of the SF-36 (RAND-36):

  http://www.rand.org/health/surveys_tools/mos/mos_core_36item.html

which is in the public domain. However, there are material differences in the scoring systems now used by QM and the original RAND scoring mechanism, as I understand it, is almost never used these days.

Regards,

Marc Schwartz