Using PozQoL in research

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Why use PozQoL in research

We encourage you to use PozQoL to research quality of life and experiences of people with HIV.

Researchers who have used PozQoL in their practice found that it:

  • Supported the reporting of changes in quality of life over time
  • Allowed them to incorporate quality of life measures into larger questionnaires for people living with HIV
  • Reduced the length of their questionnaires in some circumstances
  • Enabled community and clinical services also using PozQoL to compare their own client groups to populations in larger studies

💡 Tips for using PozQoL for research

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 research

  • Use PozQoL to complement other measures; for example, stigma, resilience, health and community service access, treatment adherence, and peer support
  • Conduct further validation studies — the English version of PozQoL was validated in 2017-2018 with a study sample of 465 adult Australians living with HIV*
  • Conduct further usability and/or sensitivity studies — the English version of PozQoL was trialled in 2018-2019 in Australian community and clinical services*
  • Conduct implementation studies

* We are particularly keen to improve our understanding of the validity, sensitivity, and usability of PozQoL in contexts outside of Australia, with more diverse community groups, and/or in languages other an English.

When to administer PozQoL

  • You can administer PozQoL as a once-off measure to understand the current quality of life of one or more groups of people living with HIV
  • To measure changes in quality of life after an intervention, we recommend administering PozQoL before and (as a minimum) two to three months after the intervention*
  • To measure ongoing changes in quality of life, we recommend administering PozQoL every two to six months*

* 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.

ℹ️ Further information

  • 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