Using PozQoL in community and peer support services

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Why use PozQoL in community and peer support services

PozQoL can help community and peer organisations measure and track the quality of life of HIV-positive clients.

Community and peer organisations that have used PozQoL in their practice found that it supported:

  • Evaluating the impact of programs on the quality of life of their clients
  • Discussion about quality of life and how clients are managing compared to other people with HIV

💡 Tips for using PozQoL in community and peer services

The following tips were developed in consultation with community and peer workers who are using PozQoL in their work.

How to incorporate PozQoL into your work

Community and peer organisations have incorporated PozQoL in the following ways:

  • Including the 13 PozQoL items in client intake forms — PozQoL scores collected in this way can be:
    • Used to identify potential concerns early with individual clients
    • Collated as group PozQoL scores to help services understand the average QoL of their clients, identify trends, and evaluate their work
  • Incorporating PozQoL into evaluation questionnaires
  • Using PozQoL alongside other validated scales, for examples for resiliency, stigma, and other social outcome indicators

When to administer PozQoL to your clients

We recommend administering PozQoL:

  • At intake — this provides baseline data and allows you to identify potential concerns as early as possible
  • Before and two months after interventions — this is recommended for one-off interventions, such as workshops or retreats
  • Every two to six months — this is recommended for ongoing services, such as mental health support or case management*

* We have found that changes generally occur over periods of two or three months. PozQoL trials in ongoing programs suggest that measurable changes to overall and domain scores do not tend to occur more quickly than this.

Overcoming logistical constraints

To minimise the data collection burden on their clients and staff, community and peer organisations have incorporated PozQoL into:

  • Online evaluation surveys, either as standalone or as part of an online client management system
  • Paper-based evaluation surveys to be entered into a simple spreadsheet template at a later time
  • Using PozQoL describes in more detail how to administer PozQoL and what to do with responses
  • PozQoL scale and tools provides links to the different language versions of the PozQoL scale and other tools to help you use it