You are here

Responses

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

Health services research
Original research
Patient-reported outcome measures for post-COVID-19 condition: a systematic review of instruments and measurement properties
Compose a Response to This Article
Compose Response

More information about text formats

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Author Information
First or given name, e.g. 'Peter'.
Your last, or family, name, e.g. 'MacMoody'.
Your email address, e.g. higgs-boson@gmail.com
Your role and/or occupation, e.g. 'Orthopedic Surgeon'.
Your organization or institution (if applicable), e.g. 'Royal Free Hospital'.
Statement of Competing Interests

PLEASE NOTE:

  • A rapid response is a moderated but not peer reviewed online response to a published article in a BMJ journal; it will not receive a DOI and will not be indexed unless it is also republished as a Letter, Correspondence or as other content. Find out more about rapid responses.
  • We intend to post all responses which are approved by the Editor, within 14 days (BMJ Journals) or 24 hours (The BMJ), however timeframes cannot be guaranteed. Responses must comply with our requirements and should contribute substantially to the topic, but it is at our absolute discretion whether we publish a response, and we reserve the right to edit or remove responses before and after publication and also republish some or all in other BMJ publications, including third party local editions in other countries and languages
  • Our requirements are stated in our rapid response terms and conditions and must be read. These include ensuring that: i) you do not include any illustrative content including tables and graphs, ii) you do not include any information that includes specifics about any patients,iii) you do not include any original data, unless it has already been published in a peer reviewed journal and you have included a reference, iv) your response is lawful, not defamatory, original and accurate, v) you declare any competing interests, vi) you understand that your name and other personal details set out in our rapid response terms and conditions will be published with any responses we publish and vii) you understand that once a response is published, we may continue to publish your response and/or edit or remove it in the future.
  • By submitting this rapid response you are agreeing to our terms and conditions for rapid responses and understand that your personal data will be processed in accordance with those terms and our privacy notice.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

Vertical Tabs

Other responses

Jump to comment:

  • Published on: 13 February 2025
    Clarification Request Regarding Construct Validity of LC-SSS
    • Gengchen Ye, Student the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University

    My name is Gengchen Ye, and I am the first author of the paper titled "The Long COVID Symptoms and Severity Score: Development, Validation, and Application," published in [Value in Health, 2024]. I recently read the systematic review published in your journal, "Patient-reported outcome measures for post-COVID-19 condition: a systematic review of instruments and measurement properties".
    Upon reviewing the supplemental materials and the main text of the article, I noticed that the construct validity results for the Long COVID Symptoms and Severity Score (LC-SSS) are described as having "1 out of 5 hypotheses confirmed." However, in our original publication, we reported that all five hypotheses were confirmed, demonstrating strong construct validity through significant correlations with quality of life and psychological measures.
    This discrepancy suggests there may have been an inadvertent misunderstanding or misinterpretation of our findings. Accurate representation of the LC-SSS’s measurement properties is crucial for researchers and clinicians who rely on your systematic review for informed decision-making.
    I kindly request that your team review this matter and consider issuing a correction or clarification to accurately reflect the construct validity results of the LC-SSS as reported in our original study.

    Thank you for your attention to this matter and for your valuable contributions to the field. I am available to p...

    Show More
    Conflict of Interest:
    None declared.
  • Published on: 13 February 2025
    Response to Clarification Request Regarding Construct Validity of LC-SSS
    • Ann-Kristin Baalmann, Research fellow Otto von Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany
    • Other Contributors:
      • Katharina Piontek, Senior research fellow
      • Christian Apfelbacher, Professor

    Thank you for your message and for sharing your comments. In response, we would like to explain our methodological approach with regard to the assessment of construct validity.

    Our systematic review follows the COSMIN methodology (Terwee et al. 2018). For the evaluation of construct validity, the review team is required to formulate generic hypotheses about expected relations-hips between the PROM under review and other well-established, high-quality comparator instruments commonly used in the field (Prinsen et al. 2018, Table 4). This approach does not aim to determine whe-ther the authors' original hypotheses were confirmed in the validation studies, but to determine if these generic hypotheses are supported. For sufficient construct validity, 75% of the hypotheses must be confir-med.

    In accordance with the COSMIN guidelines, correlations with PROMs measuring similar constructs should be above 0.5, while correlations with PROMs measuring related but dissimilar constructs should be between 0.3 and 0.5. In the study by Gengchen Ye et al., the PROMs used to assess the construct validity of the Long COVID Symptom and Severity Score (LC-SSS) measure related but dissimilar constructs, inclu-ding the EuroQol 5-Dimension 5-Level (EQ-5D-5L), EuroQol Visual Analogue Scale (EQ-VAS), Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), Insomnia Severity Index (ISI), and Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI). Therefore, corre-lations in the range of 0.3-0.5 are hypothesized. However, i...

    Show More
    Conflict of Interest:
    CA has received institutional funding from the Dr Wolff Group and Bionorica, and consultancy fees from the Dr Wolff Group, Sanofi, Rheacell,
    Bionorica and LEO Pharma for services related to outcomes research outside of Post-Covid Condition