The Short Form Health Survey is a survey of patient health. The SF-36 is a measure of health status and is commonly used in health economics

Health economics

Health economics is a branch of economics concerned with issues related to efficiency, effectiveness, value and behavior in the production and consumption of health and health care...

 as a variable in the quality-adjusted life year calculation to determine the cost-effectiveness

Cost-effectiveness

Cost-effectiveness analysis is a form of economic analysis that compares the relative costs and outcomes of two or more courses of action. Cost-effectiveness analysis is distinct from cost-benefit analysis, which assigns a monetary value to the measure of effect...

 of a health treatment. The original SF-36 came out from the Medical Outcome Study, MOS, done by the RAND Corporation. Since then a group of researchers from the original study went ahead and released a commercial version of SF-36 while the original SF-36 is available in public domain license free from RAND

RAND

RAND Corporation is a nonprofit global policy think tank first formed to offer research and analysis to the United States armed forces by Douglas Aircraft Company. It is currently financed by the U.S. government and private endowment, corporations including the healthcare industry, universities...

.

Difference between the SF-36 and the RAND-36

The SF-36 and RAND-36 include the same set of items that were developed in the Medical Outcomes Study. Scoring of the general health and pain scales is different, however. The differences in scoring are summarized by Hays, Sherbourne, and Mazel (Health Economics, 2: 217-227, 1993)

Scoring

The SF-36 consists of eight scaled scores, which are the weighted sums of the questions in their section. Each scale is directly transformed into a 0-100 scale on the assumption that each question carries equal weight.

The eight sections are:

• vitality
• physical functioning
• bodily pain
• general health perceptions
• physical role functioning
• emotional role functioning
• social role functioning
• mental health

Uses

• Evaluating individual patients health status
• Researching the cost-effectiveness
  Cost-effectiveness
  Cost-effectiveness analysis is a form of economic analysis that compares the relative costs and outcomes of two or more courses of action. Cost-effectiveness analysis is distinct from cost-benefit analysis, which assigns a monetary value to the measure of effect...
  
  of a treatment
• Monitoring and comparing disease burden

Limitations

• The survey does not take into consideration a sleep variable
• The survey has a low response rate in the >65 population

Further reading

• Medical Outcomes Study: 36-Item Short Form Survey
• SF-36 Health Survey (Version 1.0)
• Pearson, L. "Medical Outcome Short Form (36) Health Survey" Updated August 2005.
• Comparing the incomparable? A systematic review of competing techniques for converting descriptive measures of health status into QALY-weights
• SF-36: A community for measuring health outcomes using SF tools