Re-weighting the Quality of Well-Being Scale and assessment of self-reported health status in Chinese Americans.

Abstract

Asian-Americans are the fastest growing ethnic minority group in the United States, followed by Hispanics. Little is known about their health state preferences or their health status. The purpose of this research was to determine whether a Chinese-American population has different preference values on four dimensions of health status than a general community sample in the United States. Also of interest was the self-reported health status of this sample of Chinese-Americans, using weights derived from Americans or Chinese-Americans to see whether the resulting index scores were significantly different. The question is whether Quality of Well-Being (QWB) weights derived from preferences of the American sample were appropriate for scoring QWBs for the Chinese-Americans. This research was conducted on 383 Chinese-Americans living in the San Gabriel Valley area, east of Los Angeles, California. A model of deliberate sampling for heterogeneity and a snowball sampling strategy were used for subjects' selection into the study. Three instruments (a weighting booklet, the Quality of Well-Being Scale, and a demographic battery), each having an English and a Chinese version, were used. Results indicate that the reliability and validity of the booklet rating and QWB Scale were high in the Chinese-American sample. The preference weights derived from the sample of Chinese-Americans were different from those derived from the community sample of Americans. Although the weights cannot be compared individually due to the lack of variance associated with them, of those 48 levels on the symptom/problems scale, 28 of the Chinese-American weights were lower than the American weights. For the 11 levels of the three functional scales, eight were higher than the American sample. The mean QWB scores calculated using Chinese-American weights were lower than those calculated using American weights. Therefore, QWB weights derived from preferences of the American sample were not appropriate for scoring QWBs for the Chinese-Americans.