PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Louis Vernacchio
AU  - Richard M. Vezina
AU  - Al Ozonoff
AU  - Allen A. Mitchell
TI  - Validity of Parental Reporting of Recent Episodes of Acute Otitis Media: A Slone Center Office-based Research (SCOR) Network Study
AID  - 10.3122/jabfm.2007.02.060125
DP  - 2007 Mar 01
TA  - The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine
PG  - 160--163
VI  - 20
IP  - 2
4099  - http://www.jabfm.org/content/20/2/160.short
4100  - http://www.jabfm.org/content/20/2/160.full
SO  - J Am Board Fam Med2007 Mar 01; 20
AB  - 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. κ 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.