The Content Validity of a Chemotherapy-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy Patient-Reported Outcome Measure.
Ellen M Lavoie Smith, Rylie Haupt, James P Kelly and 7 others
PMID 28820525WHAT IT FOUND
Patients completing a chemotherapy neuropathy questionnaire often confused numbness with tingling and read pain questions as ordinary hand or foot pain.
Clearer wording and deleting a driving item made responses match what the questions were meant to capture.
Key findings
01Patients often confused numbness with tingling, and adding loss of feeling after numbness improved their understanding.
02Questions about shooting or burning pain initially captured general hand or foot pain until they asked whether numbness or tingling was painful.
03Some patients were unsure whether the rating scale asked about symptom severity or frequency.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study was done at one academic center in the United States, so it may not reflect other settings. Only 25 patients were interviewed, and most were non-Hispanic Caucasian. There were more women than men, partly because female-specific cancers were included. The researchers did not collect education level, so they cannot judge how education affected responses. Not all classes of neurotoxic chemotherapy drugs were represented. The work tested questionnaire wording and content validity, not reliability, validity, sensitivity, responsiveness, or patient outcomes. The shortened instrument is a prototype and needs further testing before it can be considered a standard measure.
Declared interests
The paper is listed as supported by N.I.H., Extramural. No author conflict-of-interest statement is provided.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that the shortened questionnaire is clinically validated or that using it improves patient care. The study tested wording and content validity only, and the authors say further testing is needed for reliability, validity, sensitivity, and responsiveness.