The Conference was opened by Mr. Joan Clos, Major of the City of Barcelona and it was closed by the President of ISOQOL, Dr. Sharon Wood-Dauphinée together with past-presidents, Donald Patrick, PhD, and Monika Bullinger, PhD and with the president elect Ivan Barofsky, PhD.

  For the first time, and surely due to the fact of celebrating the conference in Barcelona, Spanish participation was very high. Spain was the country presenting the highest number of communications, just after the United States. The third country with most participants was the United Kingdom. Other countries with a high participation were France, The Netherlands, German, Norway, Italy and Canada. Finally, we should emphasise the participation, although minor, of investigators from countries such as Finland, Lithuania, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Cuba, Colombia and Zimbabwe.

  This success in terms of participation is probably related with, on the one hand, the emphasis of the Organising Committee in the dissemination of the 6 Annual Conference; on the other hand, with the increasing interest in Health-Related Quality of Life research, specifically in the context of health care services.

Oral and Poster Communications

  As usual, the 6 Annual Conference included Oral and Poster sessions, in which the best communications were presented. This year, the abstracts received by the conference achieved the record figure of 503.

  The selection process was based in the evaluation of a total of 16 experts, who reviewed all the abstracts received. Each abstract was evaluated by three experts. Evaluators did not evaluate those abstracts with which they had a potential conflict of interest. Abstracts were primarily evaluated using an Overall Judgement rating score. Additionally, evaluators rated on a 1 to 5 scale the following specific characteristics: appropriateness, originality, scientific quality and completeness of data, the scores of which were combined in a single composite score.

  Abstracts were ordered first by their median score in the Overall Judgement. Within the same median, abstracts were ranked by the minimum score obtained. Subsequently, abstracts were ranked by their Composite Score. This method produced a unique rank order for each abstract. A total of 434 (86%) were finally selected for presentation in the 6 Annual Conference, of which 154 were selected for oral presentations and the remaining, 280, for poster presentations.

  Accepted abstracts came from 32 different countries, the majority from Europe, followed by North America and Asia, including countries such as Argentina, Iran, Malaysia, Mexico, Romania, United Arab Emirates or Zimbabwe. Among the first three countries with more presentations appeared the United States, Spain and the United Kingdom. Other countries with a high frequency of presentation were The Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Sweden and Norway. This pattern was reflected in the total of abstracts submitted by each country.

Plenary session I: QoL Assessment and Health Policy

• 'Use of quality of life assessment in social decision making'
  by Prof. Allan Williams, PhD, York, UK.
• 'Quality of life, health status and vulnerable populations'
  by Prof. Donald Patrick, PhD, MSPH, Seattle, USA.
  

Plenary session II: QoL Assessment & the Clinic: Research & Practice

• 'Contribution of quality of life assessment to clinical trials'
  by Dr. David Osoba, MD, Vancouver, CA.
• 'The use of QoL measures in practice: an implementation framework'
  by Dr. Allen Hutchinson, FFPHM, Sheffield, UK.

  Invited sessions were held out on Friday, November 5th:

• 'A synthesis of psychometric and econometric approaches to the measurement of health-related quality of life', by Prof. John Brazier, PhD, MSc, Sheffield, UK.
• 'Challenges for clinical interpretation of changes in quality of life', by Prof. Paul W. Jones, PhD, FRCP, London, UK.
• 'Truth, language, and the status quo: implicit philosophies in quality of life measurement', by Prof. Sonja Hunt, PhD, Edinburgh, UK.
• 'Disability and depressive symptoms in later life', by Prof. Johan Ormel, PhD, Groningen, The Netherlands.

  A basic objective of the Society has always been the implication of developing countries in this field. For instance, in 1996 the conference was celebrated in Manila, Philippines. In the current edition, the implication of Latin-American countries was promoted, since in previous editions their participation had been very limited. The scholarship program was designed with this objective, making it easier for the attendance of young researchers from Latin-American countries to attend the 6 Annual Conference of the International Society for Quality of Life Research and the Spanish meeting I Reunión Española de Calidad de Vida Relacionada con la Salud.

  Scholarships included travel expenses, 6 Annual Conference and Spanish meeting registration fees, and staying 7 days in Barcelona.

  This meeting was held the day before the 6 Annual Conference began and involved about 140 participants. The Scientific activities that were carried out were:

  Inaugural Session:

• 'Measurement of perceived health: balance and perspectives', by Dr. Jordi Alonso
• 'Contribution of measurement of quality of life to clinical research', by Dr. Gaietà Permanyer
• 'Instruments of quality of life adapted to Spanish', by Dr. Xavier Badia

Invited Communications:

• 'Quality of life in cancer patients', by Dr. Juan Ignacio Arrarás Urdaniz
• 'Quality of life in respiratory rehabilitation', by Dr. Rosa Güell
• 'Parkinson and quality of life', by Pablo Martínez Martin
• 'Quality of life in primary care: COOP/WONCA charts', by Dr. Luis Lizán Tudela
• 'Rheumatic patients and quality of life', by Dr. Zulma Ortiz.

  A Young Investigator and three Best Poster Presentations awards were organised in the 6 Annual Conference, as previous editions. There were some criteria to be candidate to these awards. Among them, and principally, the author had to be under 35 year-old, in order to stimulate the research in young people.

  Due to the difficulties to evaluate all the candidates to the 1999 ISOQOL Young Investigator Award and Best Poster Presentations, a pre-selection based in the rank (<79) obtained in the abstract evaluation in June, 1999, was made.

  Each oral presentation (Young Investigator Award) was independently evaluated by two reviewers during the oral sessions. Poster communications were also independently evaluated by four different reviewers, along the day they were exposed. All reviewers judged the communications following a rate scale from 1 to 10, in five different dimensions: originality, scientific quality, data analysis, quality of presentation, overall judgement.

  The Young Investigator Award was for Joke Korevaar, MSc, from the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Academic Medical Centre of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, for her oral communication 'Changes in Quality of Life after the First Three Months of Chronic Dialysis Treatment: the Necosad-2 Study' (Qual Life Res 1999; 8(7): 592).

  In order to evaluate the rate of satisfaction of the attendants to the 6th Annual Conference, a questionnaire was designed. This questionnaire was responded by a total of 64 participants. Of all of them, the 75% evaluated the overall meeting organization with a punctuation of 'excellent' or 'very good'.

  In relation with scientific aspects, a 90% of the people who answered gave 'very good' and 'excellent' punctuations to oral sessions. Poster sessions were not so positively evaluated and a 24% considered they were fair or poor. Workshops were evaluated as excellent or very good by a 45%. Closing Ceremony and Awards were evaluated by a 40% as 'very good' or 'excellent'.