Use of open-ended questionnaires to examine the effects of tinnitus and its relation to patient-reported outcome measures.
Vinaya Manchaiah, Gerhard Andersson, Marc A Fagelson and 2 others
PMID 34726543WHAT IT FOUND
When people with tinnitus listed problems, their wording differed from when they listed life effects.
Problem lists used more hearing and social words. Life-effect lists used more first-person and negative emotion words. Together they add detail to standard questionnaires.
Key findings
01The two open-ended questions produced different linguistic patterns in nine of twelve key variables.
02Problem answers had more analytical thinking and social process words, while life-effect answers had more first-person and negative emotion words.
03Positive emotion words in problem answers were weakly positively correlated with depression scores.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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 design was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that open-ended questions improve outcomes or that linguistic patterns change with treatment. Participants were self-selected internet users registering for an online CBT study, which may limit generalizability. 104 incomplete or Spanish-language responses were removed, so the analysis covered English-language complete responses only. Only 152 of 336 participants provided at least 10 words for both open-ended questions, so the linguistic analysis was based on those who wrote longer answers. The open-ended answers were often short; the paper reports a median of 12 words in the full sample, which can skew word-count percentages. The word-count software did not consider context, so positive emotion words could reflect missing positive life aspects rather than positive feelings. Question order was fixed, which may have influenced responses. The authors state the results should be treated as preliminary and need further study.
Declared interests
The supplied publication types indicate NIH extramural support. No author conflict-of-interest declaration is included in the supplied text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that open-ended questions are validated replacements for standard tinnitus measures. The linguistic patterns differed, but correlations with standard scores were weak, the word-count software missed context, and the authors call the findings preliminary.