Standardized Questionnaire Time Burden for Practitioners and Patients.

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Clinical Outcomes Assessment
• Patient-Reported Outcomes (PROs)

Background:

• Limited research exists on the time required to complete patient-reported outcome questionnaires.
• Understanding completion time is crucial for efficient clinical practice and data integrity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate completion times for commonly used PRO questionnaires.
• To determine variability in completion times.
• To assess demographic influences (age, gender, education) on completion time.

Main Methods:

• Literature review identified nine frequently cited PRO questionnaires.
• Patients completed one questionnaire, with completion time recorded.
• Statistical analysis compared mean times and assessed demographic factors.

Main Results:

• Completion times varied, with the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) activity score taking the longest and the Short Form-36 (SF-36) and Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Arthritis Index (WOMAC) the shortest.
• The UCLA activity score showed the highest variation in completion time.
• Patients aged 55 years and older consistently took longer to complete questionnaires; gender and education level showed no significant association.

Conclusions:

• Prolonged questionnaire completion times may compromise the accuracy of patient-reported outcomes.
• Further research should investigate the impact of completion time on data validity and explore accuracy with multiple questionnaires per visit.