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Patient-reported outcome measures for post-COVID-19 condition: a systematic review of instruments and measurement properties
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  • Published on:
    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...

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    Conflict of Interest:
    None declared.
  • Published on:
    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...

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    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