The purpose of this study, therefore, is to evaluate the responsiveness of three PROMIS patient-reported outcome measures in patients with hand and upper extremity (non-shoulder) disorders and provide comparisons with the qDASH legacy instrument.
Cancer symptomatology was measured primarily with the Symptom Distress Scale-15 (SDS-15), adapted from the 13-item, legacy instrument developed by McCorkle and Young [ 20] and validated in many subsequent studies and languages [ 21].
To describe the unique and overlapping content of the newly developed Environmental Factors Item Banks EFIBB) and 7 legacy environmental factor instruments, and to evaluate the EFIB's construct validity by examining associations with legacy instruments.
A subset of proxy respondents completed the legacy instruments.
Mean scores for legacy scales were calculated per instrument instructions [ 17, 25- 28] in order to compare on a descriptive basis normative sample data for legacy instruments and the PROMIS proxy sample scores on these legacy instruments.
We compared the ability to detect change in physical function using original (Legacy) instruments with Item-Improved and PROMIS IRT-based instruments.
The original Legacy instruments, HAQ and PF-10, were administered and scored, then scores were arithmetically adjusted to the 0 to 100 scale.
Legacy instruments, such as the HAQ, leave 50% of subjects with scores of zero in broad populations inaccessible, and many more not accessible at the floor.
However, at present no guidelines are available that can aid an interested party to select appropriate domains for their purpose (e.g., instrument development, clinical trial, clinical evaluation); this applies to PROMIS domains as well as legacy instruments.
Now that the PROMIS physical function item bank is ready for use and studies have demonstrated its benefits over legacy instruments such as the HAQ-DI, an important next step is to disseminate it to other countries and cultures.
It would also be very interesting to study the suggested shorter versions with an improved factor structure or to compare NDI scores with other legacy instruments or with recently developed IRT item banks for pain behaviour and pain interference [ 30, 31].
