Assessing the properties of the World Health Organization’s Quality of Life Index

This methodological study demonstrates how to strengthen the commonly used world health organizationpsilas quality of life index (WHOQOL) by using the consistency-driven pairwise comparisons (CDPC) method. From a conceptual view, there is little doubt that all 26 items have exactly equal importance or contribution to assessing quality of life. Computing new weights for all individual items, however, would be a step forward since it seems reasonable to assume that all individual questions have equal contribution to the measure of quality of life. The findings indicate that incorporating differences of importance of individual questions into the model is essential enhancement of the instrument.