Electronic patient-reported outcome validation: Disablement in the physically active scale

Abstract

Context: Determining patient outcomes is essential to quality health care. Administering electronic patient-reported outcomes measures (PROMs) offers potential advantages, including faster completion and efficient data access and storage. However, commonly used PROMs have not been studied across multiple administration modes, limiting clinicians to paper forms until the electronic versions are validated. Objective: To determine the validity of an electronic version of the Disablement in the Physically Active (DPA) scale compared with the paper version. Main Outcome Measure(s): Electronic and paper versions of the DPA scale were randomly administered to 117 participants (38 women, 79 men; age ¼ 21.6 6 5.9 years) 24 to 48 hours apart. Responses were compared using Pearson product moment correlations, canonical correlations, and covariance modeling. Results: The electronic version of the DPA scale was strongly correlated with the paper version when compared using a bivariate correlation (r ¼ 0.86, P, .001) or covariance modeling approach (r ¼ 0.90, P, .001). Conclusions: The electronic version of the DPA scale was comparable with the paper version, making the former more efficient for use in athletic training. This study provides a template for other clinician-researchers to perform similar evaluations of electronic PROMs to determine their equivalency with the paper versions before implementing them in practice.