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. 2018 Jan 1;124(1):153-160.
doi: 10.1002/cncr.30981. Epub 2017 Sep 8.

Physical function metric over measure: An illustration with the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) and the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy (FACT)

Aaron J Kaat  1 , Benjamin D Schalet  1 , Joshua Rutsohn  1 , Roxanne E Jensen  2 , David Cella  1
Affiliations

Physical function metric over measure: An illustration with the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) and the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy (FACT)

Aaron J Kaat et al. Cancer. .

Abstract

Background: Measuring patient-reported outcomes (PROs) is becoming an integral component of quality improvement initiatives, clinical care, and research studies in cancer, including comparative effectiveness research. However, the number of PROs limits comparability across studies. Herein, the authors attempted to link the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-General Physical Well-Being (FACT-G PWB) subscale with the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Physical Function (PF) calibrated item bank. The also sought to augment a subset of the conceptually most similar FACT-G PWB items with PROMIS PF items to improve the linking.

Methods: Baseline data from 5506 participants in the Measuring Your Health (MY-Health) study were used to identify the optimal items for linking FACT-G PWB with PROMIS PF. A mixed methods approach identified the optimal items for creating the 5-item FACT/PROMIS-PF5 scale. Both the linked and augmented relationships were cross-validated using the follow-up MY-Health data.

Results: A 5-item FACT-G PWB item subset was found to be optimal for linking with PROMIS PF. In addition, a 2-item subset, including only items that were conceptually very similar to the PROMIS item bank content, were augmented with 3 PROMIS PF items. This new FACT/PROMIS-PF5 provided superior score recovery.

Conclusions: The PROMIS PF metric allows for the evaluation of the extent to which similar questionnaires can be linked and therefore expressed on the same metric. These results allow for the aggregation of existing data and provide an optimal measure for future studies wishing to use the FACT yet also report on the PROMIS PF metric. Cancer 2018;124:153-60. © 2017 American Cancer Society.

Keywords: Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy (FACT); Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS); Physical Function; item response theory; linking.

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Conflict of interest statement

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST: Dr. Cella also serves as the chief scientific officer for FACIT. FACIT also funded additional analyses on this project to Dr. Kaat. The results of this manuscript were not contingent upon sponsor approval or censorship, including that these contents do not necessarily represent an endorsement by FACIT, NCI, the NIH, or the US Federal Government.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Bland-Altman Plot for the 5-item Linking in the Follow-Up Data. The red line indicates the ideal difference (i.e. no bias). The black solid line and dashed grey lines indicate the obtained mean difference and the 95% limits of agreement, respectively. The dotted blue line indicates the locally-weighted regression (loess) line, with the expected mean difference at each average score.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Bland-Altman Plot for the FACT/PROMIS-PF5 in the Follow-Up Data. The red line indicates the ideal difference (i.e. no bias). The black solid line and dashed grey lines indicate the obtained mean difference and the 95% limits of agreement, respectively. The dotted blue line indicates the locally-weighted regression (loess) line, with the expected mean difference at each average score.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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