The Medical Outcome Study‐HIV Health Survey: A systematic review and reliability generalization meta‐analysis

Abstract

The Medical Outcome Study‐HIV Health Survey (MOS‐HIV) is one of the most used questionnaires for the evaluation of the health‐related quality of life (HRQoL) in people living with HIV (PLWHIV) in both medical settings and research studies. This study aimed to estimate the average reliability of the MOS‐HIV scores and to evaluate the characteristics of the studies that could explain the variability between reliability estimates. Furthermore, the study aimed to estimate the induction rate of the reliability of the MOS‐HIV. A systematic review of the previous literature, including studies that reported α and/or test–retest coefficients with the data at hand for the total score of the MOS‐HIV and the subscales, was conducted. Fifty studies (52 samples; N = 14,132) were included in the reliability generalization meta‐analysis. The average α coefficient for the total score of MOS‐HIV was .91 and above .80 for all of the subscales, except for role functioning, which had an average coefficient of .76. Different study dimensions were related to the heterogeneity of reliability between studies. Reliability induction was found to be 76.1%. The results obtained in the present study indicate that the MOS‐HIV is a reliable instrument for HRQoL evaluation in PLWHIV, for clinical and research purposes. In the clinical practice of health services, nurses could employ this gold standard for reliable evaluations of HRQoL in PLWHIV.