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Validity of Parental Reporting of Recent Episodes of Acute Otitis Media: A Slone Center Office-based Research (SCOR) Network Study

Slone Epidemiology Center at Boston University (LV, RMV, AAM), Boston, MA
Department of Biostatistics, Boston University School of Public Health (AO), Boston, MA

Correspondence: Corresponding author: Louis Vernacchio, MD, MSc, Slone Epidemiology Center at Boston University, 1010 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA 02215 (E-mail: lvernacchio{at}slone.bu.edu)

Background: The validity of parental reporting of children’s health outcomes is an important methodological issue in community-based pediatric research. We assessed the validity of parents’ reports of their children’s acute otitis media (AOM) history over the previous month in a pilot study of xylitol for AOM prevention.

Methods: Parents of children participating in a study conducted in the Slone Center Office-Based Research (SCOR) Network were interviewed monthly for 3 months and asked whether their child had been diagnosed with AOM in the previous month. A blinded physician reviewed medical records. Results from parental interviews and medical records were compared by correlation analysis.

Results: Medical records were obtained for 102 of 120 children (85.0%); 272 monthly interviews were completed. for the agreement between parental reports and medical records was 0.88 [95% confidence intervals (CI): 0.76 to 0.94]. The positive predictive value of a parental report of an AOM episode within the previous month was 85.0%, and the negative predictive value was 99.1%.

Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that parental reporting of children’s recent AOM history correlates well with medical records. Parental interview is a reasonable approach to collecting data on recent AOM outcomes, particularly in large-scale community-based studies where obtaining medical records is often impractical.