title: Performance of health status measures with a pen based personal digital assistant.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Rheumatology, Diakonhjemmet Hospital, Oslo, Norway. t.k.kvien@medisin.uio.no
authors.forename: T K
authors.initials: TK
authors.lastname: Kvien
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Mowinckel
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Heiberg
authors.forename: K L
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Dammann
authors.forename: Ø
authors.initials: Ø
authors.lastname: Dale
authors.forename: G J
authors.initials: GJ
authors.lastname: Aanerud
authors.forename: T N
authors.initials: TN
authors.lastname: Alme
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Uhlig
mesh_terms: 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