Assessing baseline dependency of anchor-based minimal important change (MIC): don't stratify on the baseline score!

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

The minimal important change (MIC) of a patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) is often suspected to be baseline dependent, typically in the sense that patients who are in a poorer baseline health condition need greater improvement to qualify as minimally important. Testing MIC baseline dependency is commonly performed by creating two or more subgroups, stratified on the baseline PROM score. This study's purpose was to show that this practice produces biased subgroup MIC estimates resulting in spurious MIC baseline dependency, and to develop alternative methods to evaluate MIC baseline dependency.

Methods

Datasets with PROM baseline and follow-up scores and transition ratings were simulated with and without MIC baseline dependency. Mean change MICs, ROC-based MICs,

SUBMITTER: Terluin B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8481187 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature