title: Evaluation of GERD symptoms during therapy. Part II. Psychometric evaluation and validation of the new questionnaire ReQuest in erosive GERD.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Evaluation of the response of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) symptoms to treatment would be facilitated by a brief, valid, reliable and responsive, self-assessed GERD-sensitive scale. We therefore developed the Reflux Questionnaire (ReQuest). This publication describes the psychometric evaluation and validation of ReQuest.
  
  
  METHODS
  This second phase of development was based on data from a clinical trial of patients with erosive GERD who received pantoprazole 20 or 40 mg daily for 28 days and completed weekly the long, and daily the short version of ReQuest. The psychometric analyses of ReQuest included internal consistency, test-retest reliability and responsiveness. Construct validity was evaluated by comparison with the Gastrointestinal Symptom Rating Scale (GSRS) and the Psychological General Well-Being (PGWB) scale.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Validation of ReQuest indicated very high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.90) and test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient 0.94 (long-long) and 0.86 (short-short)). This was also the case for the two subscales ReQuest-GI and ReQuest-WSO with Cronbach's alpha coefficients of 0.84 and 0.81. Responsiveness was high with a responsiveness index of >0.8 at day 28. Construct validity was good.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  ReQuest is a highly reliable, valid and responsive self-assessment tool for evaluating treatment response in patients with erosive GERD, and can be applied daily.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Charité, Freie Universität, DE-13353 Berlin, Germany. hubert.moennikes@charite.de
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Mönnikes
authors.forename: K D
authors.initials: KD
authors.lastname: Bardhan
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Stanghellini
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Berghöfer
authors.forename: T D
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: Bethke
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Armstrong
mesh_terms: D023381:Endpoint Determination; D005764:Gastroesophageal Reflux / Q000145:classification / Q000473:pathology* / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D016896:Treatment Outcome