Performance of health status measures with a pen based personal digital assistant.
BACKGROUND
Increasing use of self reported health status in clinical practice and research, as well as patient appreciation of monitoring fluctuations of health over time, suggest a need for more frequent collection of data. Electronic use of health status measures in the follow up of patients is a possible way to achieve this.


OBJECTIVE
To compare self reported health status measures in a personal digital assistant (PDA) version and a paper/pencil version for test-retest reliability, agreement between scores, and feasibility.


METHODS
30 patients with stable rheumatoid arthritis (mean age 61.6 years, range 49.8 to 70.0; mean disease duration, 16.7 years; 63% female; 67% rheumatoid factor positive; 46.6% on disease modifying antirheumatic drugs) completed self reported health status measures (pain, fatigue, and global health on visual analogue scales (VAS), rheumatoid arthritis disease activity index, modified health assessment questionnaire, SF-36) in a conventional paper based questionnaire version and on a PDA (HP iPAQ, model h5450). Completion was repeated after five to seven days.


RESULTS
Test-retest reliability was similar, as evaluated by the Bland-Altman approach, the coefficient of variation, and intraclass correlation coefficients. The scores showed acceptable agreement, but with a slight tendency to higher scores on VAS with the PDA than the paper/pencil version. No significant differences were seen for measures of feasibility (time to complete, satisfaction score), but 65.5% preferred PDA, 20.7% preferred paper, and 13.8% had no preference.


CONCLUSIONS
The clinimetric performance of paper/pencil versions of self reported health status measures was similar to an electronic version, using an inexpensive PDA.
Kvien
T K
TK
Department of Rheumatology, Diakonhjemmet Hospital, Oslo, Norway. t.k.kvien@medisin.uio.no
Mowinckel
P
P
Heiberg
T
T
Dammann
K L
KL
Dale
Ø
Ø
Aanerud
G J
GJ
Alme
T N
TN
Uhlig
T
T
D000368:Aged; D001172:Arthritis, Rheumatoid / Q000628:therapy*; D001292:Attitude to Computers; D034201:Computers, Handheld; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D005260:Female; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized; D008875:Middle Aged; D010147:Pain Measurement; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012650:Self Disclosure; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D016896:Treatment Outcome