{"id":4058,"date":"2024-03-27T21:29:42","date_gmt":"2024-03-27T20:29:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/?post_type=docs&#038;p=4058"},"modified":"2024-03-30T22:11:05","modified_gmt":"2024-03-30T21:11:05","password":"","slug":"eq-5d-5l","status":"publish","type":"docs","link":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/glossary2\/eq-5d-5l\/","title":{"rendered":"EQ-5D-5L"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Probably the dominant quality of life measure, distributed by <a href=\"https:\/\/euroqol.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Euroqol<\/a> and free for non-commercial use if you register with them.  The EQ-5D-5L has five questions each with a five level score of severity of problems and then it has a visual analogue scale (VAS) arranged vertically on the second page (in the paper version).  The VAS is marked off from 0 to 100 in 5 point increments but little marks show the integer levels.  The VAS is scored by putting a cross on the scale and translated into an integer between 0 and 100.  The five initial questions cover:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Mobility<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Self-care<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Usual activities<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Pain\/discomfort <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Anxiety\/Depression<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Each of the initial questions has five options, those for anxiety\/depression are:<br>I am not anxious or depressed<br>I am slightly anxious or depressed<br>I am moderately anxious or depressed<br>I am severely anxious or depressed<br>I am extremely anxious or depressed<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This six item set of data can actually be used in three different ways:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The scores on the five individual questions can be used as they are as when the names are often shortened slightly to: measures of mobility, self-care, activity, pain and anxiety<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The VAS scores can also be used as they stand.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Finally the item scores can be converted to a &#8220;utility value&#8221;.  In this process, each level is coded 1 to 5 (in the order they appear) and those codes are converted to a &#8220;health state&#8221;, also, sensibly to my mind, called &#8220;profiles&#8221; e.g. 12345.  Each number in the profile is the response to the corresponding question in the same order in which they occur.  Those health states are then converted to a utility value or &#8220;index value&#8221; by looking them up against national mappings created by one of a Euroqol set of procedures including direct subjective ratings (using a VAS but not the one in the measure I think) or discrete choice or time trade off methods.  These utility or  index values can be fed into health economic QALY (Quality Adjusted Life Year) evaluations.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Details<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>There are very comprehensive and readable details on the Euroqol <a href=\"https:\/\/euroqol.org\/information-and-support\/euroqol-instruments\/eq-5d-5l\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">pages for the EQ-5D-5L<\/a> so if you are thinking of using the EQ-5D-5L you should definitely go there or if you don&#8217;t understand something in a report using the measure that&#8217;s the next place to go from here.  (My own experience is that work using the EQ-5D-5L often seems to me to be poorly explained and not to live up to the clear guidelines about reporting scores from the measure in the Euroqol pages.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, it may be worth me unpacking the health profile\/index mapping a bit more.  I was helped in this by using the excellent <a href=\"https:\/\/cran.r-project.org\/web\/packages\/eq5d\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">eq5d package for R<\/a>.  Suppose I answer &#8220;1&#8221; to all five items then I have a profile 11111 and that maps to a utility\/index value of 1 (so in QALY terms if I maintain that state for a year I have had a full &#8220;Quality Adjusted Life Year&#8221; of 1 year.  However, if I have a profile of 12345 using the UK (actually England in the lookup tables) mapping then that has a utility\/index value of .3 and a year in that state in QALY terms was only .3 of a full quality year.  If I had the worst profile of 5555 the UK mapping is to -.3 which illustrates the important idea behind QALYs: that some states are considered so bad as negative years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Interestingly, if I put my country of semigration France in instead of England I get values of 1, .4 and -.5 instead 1, .3 and -.3.  There are mappings for many different countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Try also<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/glossary2\/core-6d\/\" title=\"\">CORE-6D<\/a><br>CORE-14-DD<br>Discrete choice experiments<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/glossary2\/health-economics\/\" title=\"\">Health economics<\/a><br>Quality of life<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/glossary2\/visual-analogue-scale-vas\/\" title=\"\">Visual Analogue Scales (VAS)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Chapters<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Mentioned in Chapters 2, 4 and 6.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Online resources<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>The excellent <a href=\"https:\/\/cran.r-project.org\/web\/packages\/eq5d\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">eq5d package for R<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Dates<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>First created 27.iii.24, tweaked links 30.iii.24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Probably the dominant quality of life measure, distributed by Euroqol and free for non-commercial use if you register with them. The EQ-5D-5L has five questions each with a five level score of severity of problems and then it has a visual analogue scale (VAS) arranged vertically on the second page (in the paper version). The &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/glossary2\/eq-5d-5l\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">EQ-5D-5L<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"doc_category":[18],"glossaries":[],"doc_tag":[],"knowledge_base":[],"class_list":["post-4058","docs","type-docs","status-publish","hentry","doc_category-om-book"],"year_month":"2026-04","word_count":627,"total_views":"1214","reactions":{"happy":"0","normal":"0","sad":"0"},"author_info":{"name":"chris","author_nicename":"chris","author_url":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/author\/chris\/"},"doc_category_info":[{"term_name":"All OM book glossary entries","term_url":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/glossary\/non-knowledgebase\/om-book\/"}],"doc_tag_info":[],"knowledge_base_info":[],"knowledge_base_slug":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs\/4058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/docs"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4058"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs\/4058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4068,"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs\/4058\/revisions\/4068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"doc_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/doc_category?post=4058"},{"taxonomy":"glossaries","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/glossaries?post=4058"},{"taxonomy":"doc_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/doc_tag?post=4058"},{"taxonomy":"knowledge_base","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/knowledge_base?post=4058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}