1993/10/01 by Ron D. Hays, Cathy Donald Sherbourne, Cathy D. Sherbourne +2 · 4 citations
Health Professions · Medicine · Social Sciences · #Health Promotion and Cardiovascular Prevention #Health and Wellbeing Research #Health disparities and outcomes
paper · doi:10.1002/hec.4730020305
openalex publication_date 1993/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Recently, Ware and Sherbourne published a new short-form health survey, the MOS 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36), consisting of 36 items included in long-form measures developed for the Medical Outcomes Study. The SF-36 taps eight health concepts: physical functioning, bodily pain, role limitations due to physical health problems, role limitations due to personal or emotional problems, general mental health, social functioning, energy/fatigue, and general health perceptions. It also includes a single item that provides an indication of perceived change in health. The SF-36 items and scoring rules are distributed by MOS Trust, Inc. Strict adherence to item wording and scoring recommendations is required in order to use the SF-36 trademark. The RAND 36-Item Health Survey 1.0 (distributed by RAND) includes the same items as those in the SF-36, but the recommended scoring algorithm is somewhat different from that of the SF-36. Scoring differences are discussed here and new T-scores are presented for the 8 multi-item scales and two factor analytically-derived physical and mental health composite scores.