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An electronic menstrual cycle calendar: comparison of data quality with a paper version
C B Johannes1, S L Crawford, J Woods
1New England Research Institutes, Watertown, Massachusetts 02472, USA.
Objectives:
This pilot study compared a prototype electronic menstrual calendar on a handheld computer with a paper calendar for data quality and participants' perceptions.
Design:
Twenty-three women completed identical information about menstrual bleeding and symptoms using paper and electronic calendars for 1 month each.
Results:
Use of the paper calendar resulted in more missing data than the electronic calendar for bleeding characteristics (13% vs. 4%) and symptoms (35% vs. 4%). The electronic calendar's ability to log data entries revealed retrospective entry for 61% of the data. Total data entry and cleaning time was reduced by 81% with the electronic calendar. Overall, participants preferred the electronic (70%) to the paper (22%) calendar.
Conclusions:
Data quality with conventional paper calendars may be poorer than recognized. The data-logging feature, unique to the electronic calendar, is critical for assessing data quality. Electronic menstrual calendars can be useful data collection tools for research in women's health.