iMTA has developed several questionnaires over the past 25 years. These questionnaires are available for use by others to improve standardization in measurement in health economic evaluation. Below, we introduce:
iMTA Productivity Cost Questionnaire (iPCQ)
iMTA Medical Consumption Questionnaire (iMCQ)
Treatment Inventory of Costs in Patients with psychiatric disorders (TIC-P) for measurement of medical costs and productivity losses in adults with mental disorder
iMTA Valuation of Informal Care Questionnaire (iVICQ)
Mental Health Quality of Life questionnaire (MHQoL)
Productivity losses
The impact of disease on the ability of a person to perform work should be part of an economic evaluation when a societal perspective is applied. iMTA is highly experienced in methods for measuring and valuing productivity losses. During the past years a number of questionnaires were developed for measuring productivity losses (respectively the Health & Labour Questionnaire, the Short Form-HLQ and PRODISQ) and several scientific papers were written on this topic including the valuation of productivity losses.
These questionnaires contributed to the development of the iMTA Productivity Cost Questionnaire (iPCQ), bundling all relevant parts of the previously mentioned questionnaires into a short generic measurement instrument. Additionally, we developed a manual containing information on the modular structure of the iPCQ and it’s scoring- and valuation methods that are used for the cost calculations. The iPCQ is a generic questionnaire and is applicable to national and international studies. Currently, 16 translations are available, among which Dutch, English, German, Spanish and French. See below for a full list of translations. For the measurement of productivity losses we recommend to apply the iPCQ.
Medical consumption
The iPCQ may be combined with the iMTA Medical Consumption Questionnaire (iMCQ), a generic instrument for measuring medical costs. The iMCQ includes questions related to frequently occurring contacts with health care providers and can be complemented with extra questions that are relevant for specific study populations.
Additionally, two questionnaires are available for measuring costs in patients with mental disorders. The recently updated Treatment Inventory of Costs in Patients with psychiatric disorders (TIC-P) allows for the measurement of medical costs and productivity losses in adults with mental disorders.
iMTA has additionally developed a Parent-Form questionnaire for measuring medical and non-medical costs in children with mental health disorders, the TIC-P kinderen (in Dutch).
To improve the feasibility and reliability, all recently developed questionnaires were ‘translated’ into simple language by a specialized agency. Additionally, a feasibility study was performed to assess the comprehensibility of the questions in practice.
Informal care
Many people provide support to a family member or friend in need of care. Lending this informal care may have a considerable impact on their life, in negative and positive ways. The overall effect on informal carers depends on the balance between these effects. Because the effects may be substantial and influence the ability of carers to persevere in their caregiving, it is pertinent that evaluations in health care take account of the impact of illness on the significant others of patients, in particular informal carers.
Researchers interested in measuring the impact of informal care and including informal care in economic evaluations of health care interventions can use the CarerQol, part of the iMTA Valuation of Informal Care Questionnaire (iVICQ).
Mental health
The Mental Health Quality of Life questionnaire (MHQoL) is a standardized, self-administered measure of quality of life that has been developed for use in people with mental health problems. Find the questionnaire here.
Permission:
Permission for questionnaire use can be requested using the registration form at the bottom of this site (for carerqol redirect here)
Contact:
For additional information on the questionnaires mentioned above (except iVICQ and MHQoL) you may contact Tim Kanters (kanters@imta.eur.nl); we will respond as soon as possible, usually within three days (please accept a slight delay in the summer and Christmas period). For iVICQ / CarerQol please redirect here.