Literature Review for Items
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Drawing from decades of experience reflected in published peer–reviewed literature
and previous work of the investigators, PROMIS begins the item bank development
by cataloguing items from well–established instruments that have been extensively
tested and have excellent track records.
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PROMIS investigators then conducted inclusive searches and evaluations of existing
instruments to enrich the pool of domain–relevant items that are considered
potential candidates for the PROMIS item banks. Searches started with MEDLINE and
Health and Psychosocial Instruments, but also include proprietary databases like
Patient–Reported Outcome and Quality of Life Instruments Database (PROQOLID).
Each domain work–group constructs their own search strategy based upon the
specific needs identified within the domain. For example, the Emotional Distress
domain group identified 4 general areas (referred to as "subdomains")
for starting bank development: depression, anxiety, anger, and substance misuse.
They created search strategies to identify all known items covering these topics
as a starting point for PROMIS banks.
Importantly, the process allowed manual searches of files by investigators to identify
items that were not found through the database searches. For example, the PROMIS
Statistical Center had accumulated databases of items in a variety of domains in
which they had researched previously. They made these item lists available to PROMIS
researchers. At this stage of the process, items are not filtered out if they apply
to a specific population; such items are kept for further qualitative analysis.
By performing these searches, PROMIS investigators identify thousands of items relevant
to the domains PROMIS is trying to measure. At that point, no judgment is made regarding
the quality or redundancy of the items; they are only selected if their content
fit or are deemed proximal to the domain definitions.
The text above is an excerpt from a published Klem, et. al. article in the Quality of Life Research journal. For a full summary, please reference the following publication: Klem M, Saghafi E, Abromitis R, Stover A, Dew MA, Pilkonis P. Building PROMIS item banks: librarians as co-investigators. Qual Life Res. 2009 Sep;18(7):881-8. Epub 2009 June 23.