Exeter Quality of Life Measure (ExQol, or EHQOL or Exeter health related quality of life)

Generic measure

Measure domains: Symptoms (sleep, aches, food allergies, sickness), social well-being, school achievements, physical activity, worry, and family relationships

Summary of development:  Eiser and colleagues (1999) conducted a study with the goal of developing a generic, self-reported HRQoL instrument for children ages 6-12. Eiser hypothesized that poor QoL is because of differences between a person’s ideal self (“how I would like to be”) versus their actual self (“this is like me”). Eiser et al. note that development of this measure is conceptually based on the Discrepancy Theory, which attempts to explain the individual’s ability to achieve daily goals, to capture the gap between expectations and experience in domains that may be compromised by illness.

Originally 16 questions, the final version was narrowed down to 12 questions (Eiser 2000). An interviewer presents children with 12 pictures of possible scenarios on a tablet; for example, a child doing PE or a child attending a birthday party, along with a statement like “Joe is good at PE,” or “Tom can’t eat the same foods as other kids at a birthday party because he will get ill.” The children are asked to rate each scenario twice – the first time as how much the child in the picture is “like me” or how often the picture depicts a child who is “how I would like to be.”

This measure is not mentioned in any other articles other than the two Eiser articles, except for systematic reviews that reference Eiser 2000.