title: A face-to-face interview of participants in HUNT 3: the impact of the screening question on headache prevalence.
abstract: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of the screening question phrasing on the 1-year prevalence figures of headache disorders, including migraine. Of a random sample of 563 invited participants in the Nord-Trøndelag Health Survey 2006-2008 in Norway, 297 (53%) met to a face-to-face interview. There were 74.1% that reported having had headache during the last year, whereas only 31.0% stated that they had suffered from headache in the same period. The 1-year prevalence of migraine was 17.2% and of tension-type headache (TTH) 51.9%. Migraine was ten times more likely (OR = 9.96, 95% CI 4.75-20.91) among those who stated that they were headache sufferers than among those who were not. Only headache sufferers had chronic TTH or medication-overuse headache. Thus "Have you suffered from headache?" can be a useful screening question in population-based questionnaire studies if the goal is to identify most migraineurs and almost all individuals with chronic headache.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, Faculty of medicine, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, St Olavs Hospital, 7006, Trondheim, Norway. knut.hagen@ntnu.no
authors.forename: Knut
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hagen
authors.forename: John-Anker
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Zwart
authors.forename: Anne Hege
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: Aamodt
authors.forename: Kristian Berhard
authors.initials: KB
authors.lastname: Nilsen
authors.forename: Geir
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bråthen
authors.forename: Grethe
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Helde
authors.forename: Marit
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Stjern
authors.forename: Erling A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Tronvik
authors.forename: Lars Jacob
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Stovner
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D005260:Female; D020773:Headache Disorders / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009664:Norway / Q000453:epidemiology; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D015995:Prevalence; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires