Abstract
In the introduction, the authors point to the fact that statistical significance of the change in indicators of quality of life is not identical with clinically important change. They ask a question how to assess the minimal important, meaningful change among all clinical changes.
In the 2nd part, they give an overview of different designations for this change. In the 3rd part, they present three types of change: criterion-referenced change, precision-referenced change and at last the change assessed compositely integrating the both mentioned approaches.
The 4th part gives the overview of particular methods for assessing the minimal change and brings near their advantages and disadvantages. The 5th part sums up the attempts to more general change assessing, namely by the means of percents, the effect size, and by the means of standard error of measurement.
The last part takes a think about the difficulties that occur when we strive to measure the minimal clinical important change.