Validity of parental reporting of recent episodes of acute otitis media: a Slone Center Office-Based Research (SCOR) Network study.
BACKGROUND
The validity of parental reporting of children's health outcomes is an important methodological issue in community-based pediatric research. We assessed the validity of parents' reports of their children's acute otitis media (AOM) history over the previous month in a pilot study of xylitol for AOM prevention.


METHODS
Parents of children participating in a study conducted in the Slone Center Office-Based Research (SCOR) Network were interviewed monthly for 3 months and asked whether their child had been diagnosed with AOM in the previous month. A blinded physician reviewed medical records. Results from parental interviews and medical records were compared by correlation analysis.


RESULTS
Medical records were obtained for 102 of 120 children (85.0%); 272 monthly interviews were completed. Kappa for the agreement between parental reports and medical records was 0.88 [95% confidence intervals (CI): 0.76 to 0.94]. The positive predictive value of a parental report of an AOM episode within the previous month was 85.0%, and the negative predictive value was 99.1%.


CONCLUSIONS
The results of this study suggest that parental reporting of children's recent AOM history correlates well with medical records. Parental interview is a reasonable approach to collecting data on recent AOM outcomes, particularly in large-scale community-based studies where obtaining medical records is often impractical.
Vernacchio
Louis
L
Slone Epidemiology Center at Boston University, 1010 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA. lvernacchio@slone.bu.edu
Vezina
Richard M
RM
Ozonoff
Al
A
Mitchell
Allen A
AA
D000208:Acute Disease; D000284:Administration, Oral; D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000379:methods*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D010033:Otitis Media / Q000517:prevention & control*; D035622:Parental Notification; D010865:Pilot Projects; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013549:Sweetening Agents / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000627:therapeutic use; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014993:Xylitol / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000627:therapeutic use
D013549:Sweetening Agents; D014993:Xylitol