The measurement properties of five generic discriminative health related quality of life (HRQOL) questionnaires were determined. The study subjects included 127 injured workers receiving wage replacement benefits under the Ontario Workers' Compensation system. Of the 127 workers, 47% had disorders of the upper limb, 12% had disorders of the neck and upper back, and 27% had disorders of the lower back. Each patient completed several profiles including SF-36 (Acute), Nottingham Health Profile (NHP), Duke Health Profile (Duke), Health status section of the Ontario Health Survey (OHS), and the Sickness Impact Profile (SIP). The findings indicated that the use of different tools may give different pictures of health for the same individual. The SF-36 and the Duke were best distributed. The SIP had high ceiling effects and also had practical limitations of being too long to apply in a study with an already heavy respondent burden. The NHP was able to discriminate between respondents with different self rated health, overcoming the high ceiling effects observed. The SF-36 was the next strongest. Except for the OHS mobility subscale, correlations suggest moderate to good convergent validity between tools.

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