| Summary: | Health-related qualify of life (HRQOL) is being increasingly recognized as an important outcome in the healthsciences, especially in relation to chronic diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS). One of the mainshortcomings in the field is the lack of instruments designed to simultaneously assess specific aspects pertainingto each disease and general questions, which would allow comparisons to be made between differentnosological entities. We based our work on a modular model, which allows the assessment of both specific andgeneric aspects of HRQOL, and which was validated for use in Brazil. Building on the modular model wedeveloped an instrument called DEFIS, designed to compare HRQOL between MS individuals and the healthypopulation. In this preliminary study, we report on the instrument development and its psychometriccharacteristics (internal consistency and criterion validity). Results show that the adapted DEFIS version ispsychometrically adequate to compare and discriminate between the HRQOL profiles of MS patients and threesamples from the healthy population (university students, preschool teachers, and nurses).
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