In association with

  • Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board
  • West of England Academic Health Science Network
  • National Institute for Health Research

Glossary

Qualitative

“Qualitative research is used to explore and understand people’s beliefs, experiences, attitudes, behaviour and interactions. It generates non- numerical data, e.g. a patient’s description of their pain rather than a measure of pain. In health care, qualitative techniques have been commonly used in research documenting the experience of chronic illness and in studies about the functioning of organisations. Qualitative research techniques such as focus groups and in-depth interviews have been used in one-off projects commissioned by guideline development groups to find out more about the views and experiences of patients and carers”.

https://www.scielo.br/j/rsp/a/qtCBFFfZTRQVsCJtWhc7qnd/?format=pdf&lang=en

Quality-adjusted life years (QALYs)

Calculated by adjusting the estimated number of life-years an individual is expected to gain from an intervention for the expected quality of life in those years. The quality of life score will range between 0 for death, to 1 for perfect health, with negative scores being allowed for states considered worse than death.

Sensitivity analysis

A process through which the robustness of an economic model is assessed by examining the changes in results of the analysis when key variables are varied over a specified range.

Triangulation

“Triangulation, first used in 1959, is defined as a combination of multi methods in a study of the same object or event to depict more accurately the phenomenon being investigated”.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8514935

Values-Present

The value in today’s terms of future costs or benefits (after discounting).