Edited by Dennis Revicki
The papers in this special collection section of Journal of Patient-Reported Outcomes were developed as part of an initiative by the Psychometrics Special Interest Group (SIG) of the International Society for Quality of Life Research (ISOQOL). Members of the SIG held several meetings to discuss different approaches to analyzing the measurement properties of PRO instruments. Three working groups were established to write this set of papers using a common dataset. SIG members were given the opportunity to review the papers and the set was approved by the ISOQOL Board of Directors prior to journal submission. The set of papers provide an overview and example application demonstrating how different psychometric methods can be used to develop and refine patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures. In the first paper in the collection, Donald Patrick provides an introduction to the three psychometric approaches and the selected data source for the method comparisons – the PROMIS® Emotional Distress – Depression Item Bank version 1.0. Each of the next three papers is dedicated to the evaluation of the item bank using a specific analytical approach; Nolte et al describes classical test theory, Cleanthous et al, Rasch measurement theory, and Stover et al. evaluates the item bank using item response theory. The collection culminates with a critique of the three evaluations and areas for consideration by Jakob Bjørner.
All articles in this issue underwent the journal’s full standard peer review process.