How does your sight loss affect your quality of life?

Researchers are hoping to understand more about the ways in which visual impairment affects quality of life, and the terminology people with sight loss use to describe this impact.

The Office of Health Economics, in collaboration with several universities, is leading a study which aims to improve the measurement of health for people with visual impairment by developing one or more new questions about vision that can be added to an existing measure of health.

General measures of health are widely used in health research and are used to guide health care decision making. However, some of these measures don’t capture what’s important to people with a visual impairment. This could mean full value of health care and services for people with macular disease is not recognised. The aim of this study is to improve the measurement of health for people with a visual impairment by developing one or more new questions about vision that can be added to an existing measure of health.

Participants will be invited to take part in a telephone interview. The researchers are keen to include people with a wide range of experiences, including all levels and causes of visual impairment and including people who care for somebody with a visual impairment.

If you would like to find out more about the study, or if you would like to enrol, please contact Chris Sampson at The Office of Health Economics. You can contact Chris by email at csampson@ohe.org or by telephone on 02077478866. You can also enrol in the study using this form.