EHealth University of Twente

19. Development of an item bank to measure factual disease and treatment related knowledge of rheumatoid arthritis patients in the treat to target era

Keywords:

Item response theory; patient knowledge

Description:

Knowledge about their disease and its treatment is a prerequisite for patients with rheumatoid arthritis to contribute to shared decision making. Patient education interventions have therefore been recommended as an integral part of the management of Rheumatoid Arthritis. The development of the various questionnaires that exist to assess patient knowledge in RA predate relevant advances in the management in RA, such as the introduction of biological medications and the treat-to-target paradigm. Moreover, questions about RA treatment that are included in previous instruments were based on clinical best practices that have not always withstood the test of time.

In this project we have developed an Item response theory based item bank to assess factual disease related knowledge in RA patients. A useful feature the item bank is that  that new items can be added and outdated items removed from the item bank, without changing the underlying scale on which the scores are expressed. This allows comparability with studies to be maintained as new insights about the disease evolve. Another advantage is that IRT based disease knowledge scores are directly comparable even if different items are administered to different patients. The project has thus far resulted in a calibrated item bank and two short-forms that can be used in intervention studies. Two ongoing studies aim to cross-culturally validate an English version of the item bank and to assess the responsiveness of the short-forms.

Partners:

IQ Healthcare, TiH

Contact person(s) in the SMHA lab:

Martijn Oude Voshaar, Mart van de Laar