Background: The evaluative and critical analysis of articles on the quality of life which appear in growing number in the medical literature, and the adaptation of the measures to clinical practice can be realised only through knowledge of the professional standards of the measuring methods.
Objective: To outline the most widely accepted definitions of life- and health-related quality of life, to define the application possibilities as well as the parameters of the measuring methods. To demonstrate the most common problems as well as the possibilities of implementing pediatric measures. To give concrete guidance on evaluating previous measures and designing new ones.
Method: Through a review of literature on methodology, cultural equivalence and paediatric measures, the authors outline the most frequent problems and give examples of some methods corresponding to the current professional standards.
Conclusion: The quality of health care can be improved by using patient-reported outcome measures such as health-related quality of life measures. To assess different patient groups, modular approaches with general and disease-specific modules are advisable. The linguistic and cultural equivalence and the international comparability of the results can be achieved by adhering to professional guidelines and by performing psychometric tests to control the parameters of the methodology. In paediatric measures efforts should be made to conduct the simultaneous questioning of children and their parents as early as possible.