SF-36 and the development of new assessment tools for quality of life

The use of assessment tools for quality of life has allowed the incorporation of the views of patients in health decision-making. This article presents the characteristics and changes experienced by one of the most used questionnaires of quality of life at present the Short Form 36-item Health Survey SF-36 . We also discuss the issues related to the construction properties and applications of this measuring tool and other derived measures as the SF-12 the SF-8 the Dynamic Health Assessment DYNHA and the SF-6D. We emphasize the use of the SF-36 for assessing the effectiveness of interventions in health the SF-12 for the tracking of health disorders the SF-8 for the monitoring of population health the DYNHA for individualized evaluations in clinical practice and the SF-6D for economic analysis in health. Information on the versions validated for Portuguese language and the permission to use the questionnaires are provided.