The SWAL-QOL outcomes tool for oropharyngeal dysphagia in adults: II. Item reduction and preliminary scaling

• Published in: Dysphagia 2000, Vol.15 (3), p.122-133
• Main Authors: McHorney, C A, Bricker, D E, Robbins, J, Kramer, A E, Rosenbek, J C, Chignell, K A
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Cost of Illness; Deglutition Disorders - diagnosis; Deglutition Disorders - physiopathology; Deglutition Disorders - therapy; Dentistry; Female; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Oropharynx - physiopathology; Patient Satisfaction; Psychometrics - statistics & numerical data; Quality of Life; Reproducibility of Results; Sensitivity and Specificity; Surveys and Questionnaires
• ISSN: 0179-051X
• DOI: 10.1007/s004550010013

The SWAL-QOL outcomes tool was constructed for use in clinical research for patients with oropharyngeal dysphagia. The SWAL-QOL was constructed a priori to enable preliminary psychometric analyses of items and scales before its final validation. This article describes data analysis from a pretest of the SWAL-QOL. We evaluated the different domains of the SWAL-QOL for respondent burden, data quality, item variability, item convergent validity, internal consistency reliability as measured by Cronbach's alpha, and range and skewness of scale scores upon aggregation and floor and ceiling effects. The item reduction techniques outlined reduced the SWAL-QOL from 185 to 93 items. The pretest of the SWAL-QOL afforded us the opportunity to select items for the ongoing validation study which optimally met our a priori psychometric criteria of high data quality, normal item distributions, and robust evidence of item convergent validity.