Detailled Information

Pincus T, Swearingen C, Wolfe F. Toward a multidimensional Health Assessment Questionnaire (MDHAQ): assessment of advanced activities of daily living and psychological status in the patient‐friendly health assessment questionnaire format. Arthritis & Rheumatology. 1999;42(10):2220-30.

Further Development of a Physical Function Scale on a Multidimensional Health Assessment Questionnaire for Standard Care of Patients with Rheumatic Diseases. 

A Multidimensional Health Assessment Questionnaire (MDHAQ) for All Patients with Rheumatic Diseases to Complete at All Visits in Standard Clinical Care.

Quantitative measurement of patient status in the regular care of patients with rheumatic diseases over 25 years as a continuous quality improvement activity, rather than traditional research.

Conversion of the MDHAQ to the HAQ score: a simple algorithm developed and validated in a cohort of 13 391 real-world patients: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35108380/

To assess the validity, reliability and comprehensibility of the Developed Arabic Multidimensional Health Assessment Questionnaire (Arabic-MDHAQ) for use in standard clinical care of patients with rheumatic diseases.

Evaluating the Korean version of the Multidimensional Health Assessment Questionnaire in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

Swedish version of the multi dimensional health assessment questionnaire -- translation and psychometric evaluation.

The MDAHQ is available to academic researchers without fees. Pharmaceutical companies wishing to use the instrument should contact MDHAQ@corptransinc.com to obtain a quote.

The MDHAQ was originally developed as an assessment of functional status for use in patients with rheumatic disease. It is intended to be a shorter substitute for the HAQ with the goal of decreased patient and provider time commitment. The MDHAQ was designed to improve the ability to detect improvements in function at the lower end of the scale as compared to the MHAQ.

It contains 10 items regarding daily activity: the 8 MHAQ items plus “walk 2 miles” and “participate in recreational activities and sports as you would like.” It doesn't have susbcales.

The MDHAQ may be calculated by hand or with a calculator by adding all scored items together (at least 9 of the 10 items are required), dividing by the total number of items answered rounding to the nearest 0.1 to obtain a final score from 0–3.

A calculator or an available scoring template may also be used to give a final score from 0–10.

Ørnbjerg et al have developed an algorithm for the assessment of RA (cHAQ = 0.15+MDHAQ*1.08) which was validated in a cohort of RA patients. The discriminative power of both HAQ and cHAQ was found to be comparable in distinguishing between patients with high and low global scores (standardized mean difference: HAQ:-1.29, cHAQ:-1.35). The functional states of HAQ and cHAQ showed good agreement (Kappa value: 0.83), and baseline HAQ and cHAQ scores were well-correlated with patient global scores (r = 0.65/0.67). Bland-Altman plots showed good agreement across all functional states. Furthermore, the RA conversion algorithm was tested in patients with PsA and axSpA with similar results. These findings suggest that the cHAQ algorithm can be considered a common tool for assessing functional status in patients with RA, PsA, and axSpA.