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Quality of Life Research

Erschienen in:

01.10.2007 | Original Paper

Controlling for occasion-specific effects when assessing the test–retest reliability of self-report health questionnaires

verfasst von: Joseph A. Olsen, Daniel A. Bloch, George J. Bloch

Erschienen in: Quality of Life Research | Ausgabe 8/2007

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Abstract

Objective

This study proposes a method for self-report health questionnaires to adjust test–retest reliability for changes during the test–retest interval based on an external measure, and to distinguish such changes from random response errors.

Methods

In our application, eighty participants completed the Symptoms of Illness Checklist (SIC) on two occasions, two weeks apart, immediately before interviews given on each occasion by one of two physicians in a crossover design. The physician interview scores served as external measures, and structural equation modeling was used to estimate the parameters of a model that corrected for the occasion-specific effect of participants’ responses using information from the interviews.

Results

Correcting for changes in symptoms during the test–retest interval increased SIC test–retest reliability from .744 to .804 and significantly improved model fit (χ² _diff(1) = 30.78, p < .001).

Conclusions

The results suggest methods that can improve the evaluation of self-report health questionnaire test–retest reliability by identifying changes using an external measure, and distinguishing these from random response errors; these increased the estimated SIC test–retest reliability and indicated that the SIC was indeed able to measure changes over the studied time interval. This method can be applied across a broad range of questionnaires.

Nur mit Berechtigung zugänglich

AMOS allows the model to be specified graphically in the form of a path diagram—in the present case the illustration presented in Fig. 1, but without the triangle and the lines emanating from it (these intercepts are estimated by default in AMOS). If the reader wishes to obtain a copy of the AMOS program file used in the present study, please contact Joseph Olsen at joseph_olsen@byu.edu.

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Titel: Controlling for occasion-specific effects when assessing the test–retest reliability of self-report health questionnaires
verfasst von: Joseph A. Olsen
Daniel A. Bloch
George J. Bloch
Publikationsdatum: 01.10.2007
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: Quality of Life Research / Ausgabe 8/2007
Print ISSN: 0962-9343
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-2649
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-007-9246-9

Springer Medizin

Abstract

Objective

Methods

Results

Conclusions

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