Health and Quality of Life Outcomes BioMed Central Editorial Open Access Not-only-a-title Clare Bradley*1 and Marcello Tamburini2 Address: 1Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey, TW20 0EX, UK and 2Predictive and Preventive Medicine, Istituto Nazionale Tumori, Via Venezian, 1, 20133 Milan, Italy Email: Clare Bradley* - ; Marcello Tamburini - tamburini@ * Corresponding author Published: 6 January 2003 Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 2003, 1:1 This article is available from: Received: 10 December 2002 Accepted: 6 January 2003 © 2003 Bradley and Tamburini; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article: verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in all. | BioMed Central Health and Quality of Life Outcomes Editorial Not-only-a-title Clare Bradley 1 and Marcello Tamburini2 Open Access Address department of Psychology Royal Holloway University of London Egham Surrey TW20 0EX UK and 2Predictive and Preventive Medicine Istituto Nazionale Tumori Via Venezian 1 20133 Milan Italy Email Clare Bradley - Marcello Tamburini - tamburini@ Corresponding author Published 6 January 2003 Received 10 December 2002 Accepted 6 January 2003 Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 2003 1 l This article is available from http content 1 1 1 2003 Bradley and Tamburini licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in all media for any purpose provided this notice is preserved along with the article s original URL. In the course of eliciting feedback on possible titles for this new journal the comments revealed a fascinating range of views on the terminology commonly used and abused in the literature. We describe here some highlights of the exploration on the meaning and the implication of the words that led to the title chosen after much deliberation. The working title used by the Editor Marcello Tamburini during the early planing stages of this journal was Quality of Life Outcomes . When he issued invitations to join the Editorial Board Clare Bradley replied that there was indeed scope for the kind of journal described and welcomed the initiative but expressed concern about the title as follows I think the use of the term quality of life in the title of the journal Quality of Life Research has contributed to the confusion about the measures described within the journal. Health status measures are often referred to as quality of life measures when they are actually measuring quality of health not quality of life. There are very important differences between the two and when those differences are not recognised it .
