Abstract
The objectives of this study were to determine the test–retest reliability of two self-perceived recovery questions in patients with recent whiplash-associated disorders (WAD), and to assess whether remembering previous answers influences reliability. The self-perceived general recovery and self-perceived change in neck pain questions were administered to 46 patients with recent WAD 6 weeks after recruitment and again 3–5 days later. At follow-up, we also asked participants if they remembered their previous answers. We used the intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC) to measure the reliability of the original ordinal response structure and kappa statistics for dichotomized responses. The ICC [95% confidence intervals (CI)] for the general recovery and for the change in neck pain questions were 0.70 (0.60–0.80) and 0.80 (0.72–0.87), respectively. The kappa statistic (95% CI) for the general recovery question was 0.81 (0.64–0.99) when recovery was defined as “completely better” or “much improved”. The kappa statistic (95% CI) for the change in neck pain question was 0.80 (0.62–0.99) when recovery was defined as “very much better” or “better”. Our analysis suggests that the test–retest reliability may be higher for participants who remembered their previous responses. In conclusion, our results suggest that self-perceived recovery questions have adequate reliability for use in epidemiological research of WAD.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Cassidy JD, Carroll LJ, Côté P, Frank J (2007) Does multidisciplinary rehabilitation benefit whiplash recovery? Results of a population-based incidence cohort study. Spine 32:126–131
Côté P, Cassidy JD, Carette S, Boyle E, Shearer HM, Stupar M, Ammendolia C, van der Velde G, Hayden JA, Yang X, van Tulder M, Frank JW (2008) Protocol of a randomized controlled trial of the effectiveness of physician education and activation versus two rehabilitation programs for the treatment of whiplash-associated disorders. The University Health Network Whiplash Intervention Trial. Trials 9:75
Ferrari R, Rowe BH, Majumdar SR, Cassidy JD, Blitz S, Wright SC, Russell AS (2005) Simple educational intervention to improve the recovery from acute whiplash: results of a randomized, controlled trial. Acad Emerg Med 12:699–706
Fischer D, Stewart AL, Bloch DA, Lorig K, Laurent D, Holman H (1999) Capturing the patient’s view of change as a clinical outcome measure. JAMA 282(12):1157–1162
Beaton DE, Tarasuk V, Katz JN, Wright JG, Bombardier C (2001) “Are you better?” A qualitative study of the meaning of recovery. Arthritis Rheum 45(3):270–279
Streiner DL, Norman GR (2003) Health measurement scales: a practical guide to their development and use, 3rd edn. Oxford University Press, Toronto
Stewart M, Maher CG, Refshauge KM, Bogduk N, Nicholas M (2007) Responsiveness of pain and disability measures for chronic whiplash. Spine 32(5):580–585
Spitzer WO, Skovron ML, Salmi LR et al (1995) Scientific monograph of the Quebec task force on whiplash-associated disorders: redefining “whiplash” and its management. Spine 20:1S–73S
Marx RG, Menezes A, Horovitz L, Jones EC, Warren RF (2003) A comparison of two time intervals for test-retest reliability of health status instruments. J Clin Epidemiol 56:730–735
Walter SD, Eliasziw M, Donner A (1998) Sample size and optimal designs for reliability studies. Stat Med 17:101–110
Shrout PE, Fleiss JL (1979) Intraclass correlations: uses in assessing rater reliability. Psychol Bull 86:420–428
Portney LG (2000) Foundations of clinical research: applications to practice, 2nd edn. Prentice Hall Health, Upper Saddle River
SAS 9.1 for Windows, SAS Institute Inc., Cary
Stata/sE 9.2 for windows. StataCorp LP, College Station
Gardner PL (1975) Scales and statistics. Rev Educ Res; 45:43–57
Fleiss JL, Cohen J (1973) The equivalence of weighted kappa and the intraclass correlation coefficient as measures of reliability. Educ Psychol Measurement 33:613–619
Carroll LJ, Holm LW, Hogg-Johnson S et al (2008) Course and prognostic factors for neck pain in whiplash-associated disorders (WAD): results of the bone and joint decade 2000–2010 task force on neck pain and its associated disorders. Spine 33:S83–S92
Acknowledgments
This study was funded by an industry grant from AVIVA Canada to the University Health Network. We thank Dr. Marion McGregor and David Soave from the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College for their assistance with the study.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ngo, T., Stupar, M., Côté, P. et al. A study of the test–retest reliability of the self-perceived general recovery and self-perceived change in neck pain questions in patients with recent whiplash-associated disorders. Eur Spine J 19, 957–962 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00586-010-1289-x
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00586-010-1289-x