Efficiency of Static and Computer Adaptive Short Forms Compared to Full-Length Measures of Depressive Symptoms

• Published in: Quality of life research Vol. 19; no. 1; pp. 125 - 136
• Main Authors: Choi, Seung W., Reise, Steven P., Pilkonis, Paul A., Hays, Ron D., Cella, David
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer 01.02.2010; Springer Netherlands; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Applied psychology; Banking industry; Banks; Calibration; Clinical outcomes; Computer Simulation; Depression - diagnosis; Depressive disorders; Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted - methods; Disability Evaluation; Efficiency metrics; Employee assistance programs; Estimates; Estimators; Humans; Information storage and retrieval systems; Information systems; Item response theory; Logistics; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Mental depression; Models, Psychological; Predictive Value of Tests; Psychometric Methods and Statistics; Psychometrics; Psychometrics - methods; Public Health; Quality of life; Quality of Life Research; Reproducibility of Results; Research methodology; Sociology; Standard deviation; Surveys and Questionnaires; Term weighting; Computer adaptive testing; Short form; Two-stage testing; PROMIS; Item response theory
• DOI: 10.1007/s11136-009-9560-5
• ISSN: 0962-9343

Purpose Short-form patient-reported outcome measures are popular because they minimize patient burden. We assessed the efficiency of static short forms and computer adaptive testing (CAT) using data from the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) project. Methods We evaluated the 28-item PROMIS depressive symptoms bank. We used post hoc simulations based on the PROMIS calibration sample to compare several shortform selection strategies and the PROMIS CAT to the total item bank score. Results Compared with full-bank scores, all short forms and CAT produced highly correlated scores, but CAT outperformed each static short form in almost all criteria. However, short-form selection strategies performed only marginally worse than CAT. The performance gap observed in static forms was reduced by using a two-stage branching test format. Conclusions Using several polytomous items in a calibrated unidimensional bank to measure depressive symptoms yielded a CAT that provided marginally superior efficiency compared to static short forms. The efficiency of a two-stage semi-adaptive testing strategy was so close to CAT that it warrants further consideration and study.