Eftychia Volz-Sidiropoulou

Factor Analysis of the Expanded Prostate Cancer Index Composite in a Patient Group after Primary (External Beam Radiotherapy and Permanent Iodine-125 Brachytherapy) and Postoperative Radiotherapy for Prostate Cancer

Background: The Expanded Prostate Cancer Index Composite questionnaire is widely used as a comprehensive assessment of health-related quality of life issues in prostate cancer management, distinguishing urinary, bowel, sexual, hormonal domains. The primary purpose of this study was to assess the factor structure of this questionnaire. Patients and Methods: A principal component analysis with orthogonal (varimax) rotation was conducted on data collected from 418 patients after primary (external beam radiotherapy and permanent iodine-125 brachytherapy) and postoperative radiotherapy for prostate cancer. Results: Health-related quality of life scores well demonstrated differences in subpopulations before radiotherapy and different toxicity profiles of specific radiotherapy concepts. The extraction of 12 factors accounted for 75.5% of the variance. With exception of the sexual domain, a strong dependence between the function in a domain and the related bother was found. The concept to discriminate urinary incontinence and urinary irritation/ obstruction subscales was supported. However, the items ‘bleeding with urination’ and ‘bloody stools’ have loaded on separate factors. After separation of the items of the function and bother subscales, a 4-factor solution was confirmed to be optimal, respectively. Conclusion: The obtained factor structure corresponds to the original Expanded Prostate Cancer Index Composite subscales. Minor divergences have been found, depicting especially items concerning ‘incontinence’ and ‘bleeding’ as distinct aspects of a domain.

Do subjective measures of attention and memory predict actual performance? Metacognition in older couples.

Older individuals who recognize their cognitive difficulties are more likely to adjust their everyday life to their actual cognitive functioning, particularly when they are able to estimate their abilities accurately. We assessed self- and spouse-ratings of memory and attention difficulties in everyday life of healthy, older individuals and compared them with the respective test performance. Eighty-four older individuals (womens age, M = 67.4 years, SD = 5.2; mens age, M = 68.5 years, SD = 4.9) completed both the self and the spouse versions of the Attention Deficit Questionnaire and the Everyday Memory Questionnaire and completed two neuropsychological tests. Using the residual score approach, subjective metacognitive measures of memory and attention were created and compared with actual test performance. Significant associations between subjective and objective scores were found only for men and only for episodic memory measures. Men who underreported memory difficulties performed more poorly; men who overreported memory difficulties performed better. Mens recognition performance was best predicted by subjective measures (R² = .25), followed by delayed recall (R² = .14) and forgetting rate (R² = .13). The results indicate gender-specific differences in metacognitive accuracy and predictive validity of subjective ratings.

The Positive Illusory Bias in Children and Adolescents With ADHD: Further Evidence

Objective: This study aimed to examine the accuracy of self-reports of children and adolescents with ADHD in evaluating activity limitations. Method: Self-reports of children/adolescents with ADHD (n = 89) were compared with those of nonreferred children (n = 94), relative to parent reports about children’s competence. Competence was measured with a 34-item rating scale. Behavioral disorders were documented with the Child Behavior Checklist. Results: Children/adolescents with ADHD were much more likely than controls to overestimate their competence in certain daily activities relative to parent reports, demonstrating a positive illusory bias. Positive illusory bias was found to be pronounced in activities, which were expected to be affected by symptoms of ADHD. Overestimations of competencies were more likely to be accompanied with externalizing problems. Conclusion: Results support the presence of the positive illusory bias also in the domain of everyday life activities. Improvement of self-evaluation of competencies should become a focus of treatment.

Skala zur Erfassung von Aufmerksamkeitsdefiziten (SEA)

The objective of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of the Attention Deficits Questionnaire (ADQ), a new Rating scale for the assessment of attention deficits. Two-hundred and two patients with neurological disorders (e.g., traumatic brain injury, stroke) filled out the self rating version of ADQ (ADQ-S). The proxy rating version of the ADQ (ADQ-P) was provided from psychologists, occupational therapists or psychological technical assistants. Rasch analysis was applied and indicated that the ADQ measures a single dimension and demonstrated good person separation (ADQ-S: 2.86/ADQ-P: 3.40) and reliability (ADQ-S: .89/ADQ-P: .92) as well as a very good item separation (ADQ-S: 4.10/ADQ-P: 5.37) and reliability (ADQ-S: .94/ADQ-P: .97). However, as a whole the items of the ADQ were relatively easy for the included patients. In order to enhance the difficulty of the scale, so that it becomes more appropriate to assess a broader range of attention problems, new items have to be added. Intraclass correlation coefficient between self- and proxy- reports was low (ICC = .34). In summary, initial psychometric properties suggested that the ADQ is a promising rating scale for the assessment of attention deficits.

Development and initial psychometric properties of the ‘ICIQ-Cog’: a new assessment tool to measure the disease-related impact and care effort associated with incontinence in cognitively impaired adults

To develop a new assessment tool, the ICIQ‐Cog, to measure the disease‐related impact of incontinence in cognitively impaired adults and the effort associated with the care of this population, and to present the initial psychometric properties of this tool and outline the possible clinical implications.

Quo vadis measurement of change

Background: The aim of this study is to examine the interest for relation between quality of life (QOL) and well being of an implementation of a program of physical activity, with patients of Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Methods: This is a correlation study. The study includes 27 patients with MS, mean age 44 years, 58,3 % women, 37,5% currently married, 67% retired, mean school level of 12,5 years. We use the questionnaire and the Multiple Sclerosis Quality of Life scale (MSQol-54) and sub scale psychological well-being (PWB) of Mental Health Inventory The program consists of an intervention to promote physical activity (IPPA) in a group of eight people, in once a week sessions of 90 minutes, during seven weeks. We analyze the results through the Spearman correlation tests between the dimensions of MSQOL-54 and Well-being. Findings: The Results the correlations between PWB and the domains of MSQOL-54 before application of IPPA and the end of the implementation of IPPA, showed that there were statistically significant correlations between all variables. Discussion: In this study, suggests that IPPA can play an important in the relation between the QOL and PWB of these patients.23rd Annual Conference of the International Society for Quality of Life Research Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 Cutting edge research plenary (1) Consensus-based standards and criteria for evaluating the content validity of patient-reported outcome measures: a COSMIN Delphi study Caroline B. Terwee, PhD, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Cecilia A. Prinsen, PhD, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Alessandro Chiarotto, MS (PhD Student), VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Marjan J. Westerman, PhD, VU University, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Henrica de Vet, PhD, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Donald Patrick, PhD, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States; Jordi Alonso, PhD, IMIM (Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute), Barcelona; CIBER en Epidemiologı́a y Salud Pública (CIBERESP), Madrid; Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), Barcelona, Spain; Lex M. Bouter, PhD, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Lidwine B. Mokkink, PhD, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands Aims: Content validity is considered to be the most important measurement property of a Patient-Reported Outcome Measure (PROM). Guidelines to evaluate content validity of PROMs are emerging, but there is a lack of a consensus-based checklist for assessing the quality of content validity studies. The current COSMIN standards only consider whether certain things have been done, but not how they were done, and the quality of the PROM development is not taken into account. Also consensus-based criteria for what constitutes good content validity of PROMs are lacking. The aim of this study was to reach consensus on standards and criteria for evaluating the content validity of PROMs. Standards refer to design requirements of studies and are used to evaluate the quality of studies on PROM development and content validity. Criteria refer to what constitutes good content validity and are used to evaluate the content validity of the PROM itself. Methods: A Delphi consensus study was performed in three email rounds among COSMIN users, authors of systematic reviews of PROMs and (methodological) papers on content validity. Potential standards and criteria were extracted from a systematic literature search. Participants were asked to rate the relevance of each proposed standard and criterion on a 5-point scale. In addition, they were invited to make comments. RESULTS: 158 experts from 21 countries participated. Consensus was reached on 28 standards for evaluating the quality of PROM development studies and 37 standards for evaluating the quality of studies evaluating the content validity of a PROM. Consensus was reached on 9 criteria for evaluating the content validity (i.e. relevance, comprehensiveness, and comprehensibility) of the PROM itself. The standards and criteria were pilot tested in a systematic review evaluating the content validity of PROMs for low back pain patients and slight adaptations were made. A user manual was developed with explanations and examples on how each item should be completed. Conclusions: The new COSMIN standards and criteria can be used in systematic reviews of PROMs to evaluate the content validity of PROMs for a given context and population in a standardized and transparent way. (2) Telling the interpretation story: the case for strong anchors and multiple methods Cheryl D. Coon, PhD, Outcometrix, Tucson, AZ, United States Aims: The patient-reported outcome (PRO) field continues to debate best practices for establishing thresholds for interpreting change on instruments. To gain insight into the value of common methods for determining thresholds, this simulation study intended to generate data with known properties against which the methods could be considered. Methods: Data were generated based on a t-score metric with half of the 1000-simulee sample (i.e., placebo) experiencing no change (centered at 0) and half (i.e., treatment) experiencing a 0.5standard deviation improvement (centered at 5). Five-category anchors were generated from the same distributions, with correlations between the PRO scores and the anchors ranging from 0.3 to 0.8. The ‘‘true’’ threshold for improvement was set at a score of 5. Methods evaluated included classification statistics (i.e., sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value), discriminant analysis, and regression. Results: Results for a correlation of 0.3 were difficult to interpret, which is consistent with the literature that proposes the correlation between the anchor and the PRO instrument be stronger than 0.3. The thresholds that might be considered from the 0.3 correlation results were deflated, which risks setting the bar for interpretation too low. A correlation of 0.5 produced more easily interpretable results, with thresholds ranging from approximately 4–9, depending on the method. A correlation of 0.8 produced more distinct inflection points, with thresholds ranging from approximately 4–8. Even with the strongest correlation, the PRO scores produced false positives and false negatives. Conclusions: This simulation study 123 Qual Life Res (2016) 25:1–196 DOI 10.1007/s11136-016-1390-7