Summary of literature review of test-retest reliability of Patient Global Assessment in rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
| Author, Reference | Population and Study Design | Results |
|---|---|---|
| Hanly15 | 61 patients with RA; teaching clinic or office practice; initial questionnaire within 24 h or MD assessment; followup assessment on 27 patients after mean 3 mo; used RADAR questionnaire, replacing first question with 10 cm VAS of PGA | Looked mainly at correlation between MD and patient assessments; no information about test-retest reliability of PGA vs PGA or MDGA vs MDGA |
| Hernandez-Cruz16 | 22 patients with RA; time between assessments 90–120 min | Weighted kappa and ICC calculated; kappa = 0.58; ICC = 0.48 |
| Pincus17 | Test-retest of PGA examined in a subset of patients; total of 688 patients, of which 162 had RA; 112 patients (all-comers) filled out 2 PGA (one at start of visit, one at end of visit): therefore about 27 patients with RA filled out both; | Spearman’s correlation coefficient (rho) used; reported as “kappa scores for all items ranging from 0.65 to 0.81 (all p < 0.001)...” (data not shown) |
| Lassere18 | 24 patients (not RA-specific); questionnaires administered on day 1 and day 8 | Looked at ICC and SDD; ICC = 0.94; SDD 95% limits of agreement = −18 to 16 |
| Athale19 | Paper version of PGA vs computer version: no test-retest of same format; convenience sample of 63 RA patients (complete data for 43 patients) | ICC = 0.911 |
| Pincus7 | Main goal of study to compare traditional linear PGA VAS to a 21-circle version of the PGA, but test-retest reliability of standard VAS also studied; patients had any rheumatologic diagnosis (not specific to RA); 264 patients studied for test-retest of traditional 10 cm VAS; patients completed 2 assessments at the visit; time separation ≤ 1 h | Spearman rank-order correlation and ICC used to estimate test-retest reliability; Spearman correlation = 0.92; ICC = 0.93; both significant at p < 0.0001 |
RADAR: Rapid Assessment of Disease Activity in Rheumatology; PGA: Patient Global Assessment; MDGA: Physician Global Assessment; ICC: intraclass correlations; SDD: smallest detectable difference.