Measuring population health from a broader perspective: Assessing the My Quality of Life Questionnaire

Introduction: Population health perspectives increasingly focus on people’s perception of resilience, ability to adapt and self-manage. The goal of this study is to determine whether the MijnKwaliteitVanLeven.nl (“MyQualityOfLife.nl”) survey is a valid and reliable instrument for assessing the broader health perspectives at population level. Methods: 19,809 entries of the MyQualityOfLife.nl survey were used. To assess face validity, Huber’s six dimensions of positive health were used as a framework for expert feedback. A confirmative factor analyses was done using the expert’s item clustering, followed by data-driven explorative factor analyses and reliability tests. Results: Experts distributed 74 of the 118 items over all six dimensions of positive health. The confirmatory factor analysis model based on expert classification was not confirmed. The subsequent exploratory factor analysis excluded most items based on factor loading and suggested two factors; ‘quality of life’ and ‘daily functioning’, both showing excellent reliability. Conclusion: The MyQualityOfLife.nl survey can assess the broader concept of health in a population as well as ‘quality of life’ and ‘daily functioning’. However, the survey can currently not evaluate several of the positive health dimensions separately. Further research is needed to determine whether this is due to the instrument or the positive health dimensions