6 items measuring intention 17 items measuring social factors 13 items measuring perceived consequences 5 items measuring affect Examples of items from each scale are given in box four [see Additional File 1].
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Sensitivity analysis determines the level of uncertainty in the components of the evaluation by repeating the comparison between cost items and consequences while varying the assumptions underlying the estimates.
Number of items: anticipated consequences – 10 15; frequency of past behaviour – 2. Response formats: anticipated consequences – five or seven point Likert type scales indicating degree of agreement with the item; frequency of past behaviour – open questions.
A comprehensive literature review and consultation with psychosocial infertility experts generated an initial pool of 302 items on consequences of fertility problems on QoL in the following 14 areas (e.g. marriage/partnership, social network, emotions, cognitions, coping, treatment, physical health etc).
For the current analyses, we only used data on the condition that patient reported had the greatest personal impact, and we restricted analysis to items 1 (consequences), 3 (personal control) and 4 (treatment control), which are the optimal predictors of outcome (9).
The AUDIT has 10 items covering 3 different aspects of drinking: alcohol use (first 3 items), dependence (next 3 items), and other consequences of drinking (last 4 items) [ 27].
Three AUDIT subscale scores were calculated to measure alcohol consumption (AUDIT items 1-3), dependence (items 4-6) and problems (or adverse consequences) (items 7-10) [ 72, 75].
The final key sub-scales are timeline chronic (Items 1 5), timeline cyclical (Items 27, 28, 30, 31, 32), consequences positive (Items 6, 7, 8), consequences negative (Items 16 20), control positive (Items 10, 11, 12, 14, 15), control negative (Items 21 24), and emotional representations (Items 9, 13, 25, 26, 29).
A third measure, the IU Inventory (IUI; Gosselin et al., 2008), was developed in response to the limitations identified on the IUS and thus separated items examining IU from items measuring the consequences of IU (e.g., doubt, reassurance seeking, or avoidance).
