PRECiS (Patient Reported Evaluation of Cognitive State): psychometric evaluation of a new patient reported outcome measure of the impact of stroke

Objective: Determine the psychometric properties of PRECiS (Patient Reported Evaluation of Cognitive State): A new patient-centred, patient reported outcome measure for perceived impact of cognitive problems, developed through qualitative work, systematic review and service user consultation.

Design: An observational study exploring acceptability, internal consistency, construct validity, inter-rater reliability and test-retest reliability, with opportunistic qualitative data on sensitivity to change.

Setting: Home visits in the community.

Participants: Stroke survivors with self-reported cognitive difficulties and informal carers.

Measures: The 27 item PRECiS was self-completed with support, and proxy completed by informal carers. We collected descriptive cognitive screening test data, and measures of overall stroke impact, mood and activities of daily living to explore construct validity.

Results: Data were collected from 159 (visit 1) and 66 (visit 2) stroke survivors and 86 informal carers. PRECiS showed good acceptability (no missing values or floor/ceiling effects, minimal skewness); high internal consistency (α = 0.94, indicative of potential redundancy); with moderate to strong construct correlations in the directions hypothesised (0.40 to 0.74). An intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.85 indicated good test-retest reliability. Where self-reported change had occurred from visit 1 to 2, PRECiS appeared sensitive. Using carers as proxy respondents is not supported by this analysis (inter-rater ICC = 0.43).

Conclusions: PRECiS is a patient-centred, practical and reliable measure assessing perceived impact of cognitive problems from the unique perspective of stroke survivors.