Health status assessment via the World Wide Web

We explored the use of the World Wide Web to collect health status information for medical outcomes research. The RAND 36-Item Health Survey 1.0 (RAND-36), which contains the 36 multiple-choice questions of the Medical Outcomes Study SF-36 "Short Form" and differs only in its simplified scoring scheme, was made available for anonymous use on the Internet. Participation in the survey was invited through health-related Internet news groups and mailing lists. Participants entered data and received, their scores using the World Wide Web protocol. Entries were recorded from 15 June 1995 to 14 June 1996 (1 year). The survey was completed anonymously by 4876 individuals with access to the World Wide Web. Two-thirds completed the survey within 5 minutes, and 97% did so within 10 minutes. The item-completion rate was 99.28%. Values of Cronbach's alpha of 0.76 to 0.90 for the scoring scales matched the high reliability found in the Medical Outcomes Study. The World Wide Web provides a method of rapidly measuring individual health status and may play an important role in advancing health services research and outcomes-based patient care.