The Wisconsin Upper Respiratory Symptom Survey is responsive, reliable, and valid.
OBJECTIVE
To assess reliability, responsiveness, importance to patients, and convergent validity for the Wisconsin Upper Respiratory Symptom Survey (WURSS-44) and to develop a short-form WURSS.


METHODS
Community-based recruitment of participants with colds. Prospective monitoring from within 48 hours of first symptom until 2 days after end of cold. The WURSS-44 includes 1 global illness severity item, 32 symptom-based items, 10 functional quality-of-life items, and 1 item assessing global change. The SF-36, SF-8, and the Jackson cold scale were used as external comparators.


RESULTS
Participants included 104 women and 45 men, aged 18 to 80 years, self-reporting on 1,681 person-days of illness. Factor analysis suggested 10 dimensions, with reliability coefficients from 0.62 to 0.93. Comparing daily WURSS-44 to Jackson and SF-8 yielded Pearson correlation coefficients from 0.73 to 0.93, and from -0.60 to -0.84, respectively. Importance to patients and responsiveness assessment yielded a short version, the WURSS-21. Guyatt's responsiveness index was 0.54 for the SF-8, 0.61 for the Jackson, 0.71 for the WURSS-44, and 0.80 for the WURSS-21, suggesting that a two-armed trial would require 74 participants for the WURSS-21, 92 for the WURSS-44, 124 for the Jackson scale, and 156 for the SF-8.


CONCLUSIONS
The construct validity of WURSS-44 is supported by measures of reliability, responsiveness, importance to patients, and convergence. A shorter version, the WURSS-21, may be even more responsive.
Barrett
Bruce
B
Department of Family Medicine, University of Wisconsin Medical School, Madison, 53715, USA. bruce.barrett@fammed.wisc.edu
Brown
Roger
R
Mundt
Marlon
M
Safdar
Nasia
N
Dye
Leota
L
Maberry
Rob
R
Alt
Jennifer
J
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003139:Common Cold / Q000150:complications / Q000175:diagnosis*; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011446:Prospective Studies; D011594:Psychometrics; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018401:Sample Size; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D016896:Treatment Outcome