A cross-sectional feasibility study of an English-language survey in Switzerland using the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System-29.
Matthew Kerry, Thanh Elsener
A 29-item health survey (PROMIS-29) can be feasibly administered to English speakers in Switzerland: 156 of 215 invited adults finished it, and the instrument showed acceptable reliability and validity.
This is a feasibility check, not evidence that any treatment works.
Key findings
1Of 215 invited English-speaking adults in Swiss cities, 156 completed the 29-item survey (73% completion), a rate comparable to the 72% completion of the most recent Swiss Household Panel.
2All seven PROMIS-29 scales met the internal-consistency threshold (omega ≥ 0.70), and confirmatory factor analysis showed strong item-factor loadings with RMSEA below 0.06, though the comparative fit index was 0.93, slightly under the recommended 0.95.
3All scales correlated above 0.30 with a single-item self-rated health measure except Depression (r = 0.29, p < 0.05), and all showed appropriately weak correlations (<0.30) with unrelated variables such as years in Switzerland.
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What it does not show
Purposive sampling through social and sports clubs in four cities means the sample is not representative of all English speakers in Switzerland, and the authors acknowledge potential selection bias. Respondents were not thoroughly screened for native or fluent English; 20 were later found to have answered in German, and the authors could not confirm their language proficiency. Only a single-item self-rated health measure was used as an external correlate, limiting the convergent-validity evidence. Several COSMIN criteria remain unexamined: measurement error, responsiveness over time, criterion validity against clinical diagnoses, and cross-cultural validity across Swiss languages. The comparative fit index of 0.93 fell just below the 0.95 threshold, and the authors note this should be re-checked in a larger sample. Most dropouts occurred at the very start of the survey (after the demographics section), which the authors suggest may reflect a cultural convention of placing demographics at the end in German-speaking countries.
Declared interests
The survey was indirectly supported by a Swiss National Science Foundation grant (Projekt Nr. 212698, 'Ask the Patient: Improving Swiss Healthcare Value through Patient-Reported Outcomes'). Open-access publication was funded by Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW). No participant compensation was provided. No industry sponsor or treatment manufacturer is named.
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