Building PROMIS item banks: librarians as co-investigators

Abstract

Purpose-There is growing interest in the use of item response theory (IRT) for creation of measures of health-related quality of life (HRQOL). A first step in IRT modeling is development of item banks. Our aim is to describe the value of including librarians, and to describe processes used by librarians, in the creation of such banks.Method-Working collaboratively with PROMIS researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, a team of librarians designed and implemented comprehensive literature searches in a selected set of information resources, for the purpose of identifying existing measures of patient-reported emotional distress.Results-A step-by-step search protocol developed by librarians produced a set of 525 key words and controlled vocabulary terms for use in search statements in 3 bibliographic databases. These searches produced 6169 literature citations, allowing investigators to add 444 measurement scales to their item banks.Conclusion-Inclusion of librarians on the Pittsburgh PROMIS research team allowed investigators to create large initial item banks, increasing the likelihood that the banks would attain high measurement precision during subsequent psychometric analyses. In addition, a comprehensive literature search protocol was developed that can now serve as a guide for other investigators in the creation of IRT item banks.

Children’s family experiences: development of the PROMIS® pediatric family relationships measures

“…A comprehensive systematic literature search [29] was conducted using MEDLINE, CINHAL, PsychINFO, and HaPI databases to identify child- and parent-report measures of family relationships. Search terms were constructed to capture conceptual framework components and child- and parent-report measures of family relationships.…”

Assessment of stress and self-efficacy for the NIH Toolbox for Neurological and Behavioral Function

“…The emotion domain was intended to include a wide spectrum of concepts related to emotion, including positive and negative emotion. Our process for identifying these subdomains was based on guidelines (Klem, Saghafi, Abromitis, Stover, Dew, & Pilkonis, 2009) and began with extensive literature reviews. An NIH Toolbox Request for Information (RFI) from experts in the field (Nowinski, et al, 2013) was followed by consultation with an international group of content experts.…”

Subjective well-being measures for children were developed within the PROMIS project: presentation of first results

“…Our approach modified the well-established methods previously developed for PROMIS (7;37-39). The specific steps include concept specification, expert input, systematic literature review, parent/child interviews, cognitive interviews, translation review, and reading level analysis as displayed in figure 1.…”

“…To identify all person-reported outcome measures that assess children's SWB, we conducted a systematic literature review using an approach developed by Klem and colleagues (39). In collaboration with University of Pennsylvania biomedical librarians, we developed controlled vocabularies that operationalized (1) the SWB concepts of positive affect, life satisfaction, and meaning and purpose, (2) measurement, and (3) self-reported mode of administration.…”