QOL Research Journal: Abandoning the language of “response shift”: a plea for conceptual clarity in distinguishing scale recalibration from true changes in quality of life

"..they have shed light on important mysteries relevant to understanding the experiences of people with chronic illness and disability. And they have focused researchers on the challenge of explaining why people with disabilities often provide quality of life reports that seem to belie their objective circumstances....The term ('response shift') suggests that the high quality of life reported by many people with chronic illness and disability are measurements artifacts - their "responses" have "shifted" - and that such people are not really experiencing high quality of life. We think such connotations, even if not originally intended, are misleading."