Assessment of patients with menorrhagia: How valid is a structured clinical history as a measure of health status?

Danny Ruta, Andrew Garratt, Yogesh Chadha, Gillian Flett, M. H. Hall, Ian Russell
In: Quality of Life Research · 1995 · vol. 4(1) , pp. 33–40 · doi:10.1007/bf00434381 · W2035655054
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A questionnaire for menorrhagia based on a structured clinical history demonstrated good reliability and validity when compared to general health measures.

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The paper developed and tested a patient-administered questionnaire for women with menorrhagia based on structured gynecologic history questions, using literature review to devise items, internal consistency and test-retest reliability checks, and validation against SF-36 general health scores and family practitioner perceptions of severity. The main sample included 351 women, with 246 referred to gynecology ambulatory clinics and 105 from four training practices in North-east Scotland, and two questions were discarded after testing. The final questionnaire showed good reliability and significant correlations between patient scores and SF-36 scale scores. This study does not explicitly discuss endometriosis or adenomyosis; it was included in the corpus via a keyword match in the upstream search index.

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Abstract

A patient-administered questionnaire for menorrhagia based on the type of questions asked when taking a gynaecological history was developed and tested using the following steps: literature reviews, devising the questions, testing responses for internal consistency and test-retest reliability and validating the questionnaire by comparing patient's scores with their responses to the SF-36 general health measure, and with family practitioner perceptions of severity. The main sample consisted of 351 women with menorrhagia, 246 referred to gynaecology ambulatory clinics and 105 from four large training practices in North-east Scotland. Following testing, two questions were discarded from the questionnaire. The final questionnaire demonstrated a good level of reliability and the resulting patient scores correlated significantly with their scores on the scales making up the general health measure. The questions asked in taking a clinical history from a woman with menorrhagia can be used to construct a valid and reliable measure of health status. This clinical measure may be a useful guide in selection for treatment and in the assessment of patient outcome following treatment. Similar content being viewed by others

References

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