Conclusion Our findings suggest that people with low literacy skills or learning disabilities are left out of the development of PROMs .
Background  Patient-reported outcome measures ( PROMs ) are intended to reflect outcomes relevant to patients .
They are increasingly used for healthcare quality improvement .
To produce valid measures , patients should be involved in the development process but it is unclear whether this usually includes people with low literacy skills or learning disabilities .
Validity of the SF-12 Compared with the SF-36 Health Survey in Pilot Studies of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health
This study assessed the relative validity of the Medical Outcomes Study Short-Form General Health Survey  ( SF-36 and SF-12 ) for Australian women and compared norms for the independently administered and embedded SF- 12 .  Two sample s of women in New South Wales were r and omly selected from the Medicare data base ( N = 3600 ) . The sample was stratified into young ( 18 to 22 years ) , middle-aged ( 45 to 49 years ) and older ( 70 to 74 years ) women , and into women living in urban ( 40 percent ) , rural ( 30 percent ) and remote ( 30 percent ) areas . In study 3500 households were selected by r and om digit dial . The method was a mailout survey .  SF-36 scale scores were similar to US norms . For the older group , health profiles of the independent and embedded SF- 12 differed . For the SF-36 and independently administered SF- 12 , means differed in all three age groups . The SF-12 physical health scores discriminated between women with poor versus good physical health , and mental health scores discriminated between groups who were or were not psychologically distressed on GHQ-12 . The SF- 36 , relative to the SF-12 , appears to be a more reliable measure for examining changes in health status over time and between groups
Conclusion Our findings suggest that people with low literacy skills or learning disabilities are left out of the development of PROMs .
Background  Patient-reported outcome measures ( PROMs ) are intended to reflect outcomes relevant to patients .
They are increasingly used for healthcare quality improvement .
To produce valid measures , patients should be involved in the development process but it is unclear whether this usually includes people with low literacy skills or learning disabilities .