This is the website for a children’s quality of life measure suitable for use with children aged 6 years and above. It is not specific to children with health conditions and allows the child’s perspective on their quality of life to be independent of factors that may bias other people’s perspectives, such as physical disability.
The measure uses a discrepancy theoretical perspective whereby a child reports how they see their life and how it actually is now, and then to report the life they feel they would like to have. A better quality of life is indicated by a reduced discrepancy between the two responses regarding the current life and the preferred one. This method makes no pre-set judgements as to which is a better or worse quality of life answer for any individual question, for example on whether it is better to have one friend, or many friends; instead it allows the child to say how the number of friends they currently have compares to their preferred number.
This website provides some background to the development of the measure, as well as suggestions about possible updates you may wish to incorporate.
Acknowledgement of GCQ limitations
The measure was designed and published in the 1990s and would benefit from updating. We are aware that the 1997 version is gender restrictive and users are welcome to change the words ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ to alternatives such as ‘child’ or ‘young person’ to reduce issues of limiting gender identification. The measure also restricts the carer questions to ‘parents’ and does not allow for alternative carers, single parents, or for different views about different parents or carers.
It is possible to download copies of the GCQ in the original 1997 formats; alternatively you can use the list of questions and alter the boy/girl wording, as well as the parent wording. Please note that changes in the wording will reduce the relevance of the norm value data available for the measure.