Qual-OT: A Quality of Life Assessment Tool

Abstract

The “Qual-OT” is an assessment tool that was developed to help define quality of life for the field of occupational therapy. The questionnaire was given to practicing occupational therapists (n — 194), people with spinal cord injuries (n = 78), and people with multiple sclerosis (n = 133). The information derived was used to test the premise that quality of life can be described uniformly, and that it is a construct about which therapists and clients have the same general idea. Factor analyses of the original questions yielded seven distinct factors. Single factor ANOVAs revealed that there were differences among the diagnostic groups on these factors. These differences showed that, for the most part, practicing occupational therapists obtained higher scores on the seven factors than the other two groups.