Calibration of an item pool for assessing the burden of headaches: an application of item response theory to the headache impact test (HIT)
UMass Chan Affiliations
Department of Quantitative Health SciencesDocument Type
Journal ArticlePublication Date
2003-12-04Keywords
AdolescentAdult
Aged
Calibration
Disabled Persons
Factor Analysis, Statistical
Headache
Humans
Middle Aged
Quality of Life
Questionnaires
*Sickness Impact Profile
Biostatistics
Epidemiology
Health Services Research
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
BACKGROUND: Measurement of headache impact is important in clinical trials, case detection, and the clinical monitoring of patients. Computerized adaptive testing (CAT) of headache impact has potential advantages over traditional fixed-length tests in terms of precision, relevance, real-time quality control and flexibility. OBJECTIVE: To develop an item pool that can be used for a computerized adaptive test of headache impact. METHODS: We analyzed responses to four well-known tests of headache impact from a population-based sample of recent headache sufferers (n = 1016). We used confirmatory factor analysis for categorical data and analyses based on item response theory (IRT). RESULTS: In factor analyses, we found very high correlations between the factors hypothesized by the original test constructers, both within and between the original questionnaires. These results suggest that a single score of headache impact is sufficient. We established a pool of 47 items which fitted the generalized partial credit IRT model. By simulating a computerized adaptive health test we showed that an adaptive test of only five items had a very high concordance with the score based on all items and that different worst-case item selection scenarios did not lead to bias. CONCLUSION: We have established a headache impact item pool that can be used in CAT of headache impact.Source
Qual Life Res. 2003 Dec;12(8):913-33. Link to article on publisher's siteDOI
10.1023/A:1026163113446Permanent Link to this Item
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/47448PubMed ID
14651412Related Resources
Link to Article in PubMedae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1023/A:1026163113446