A validated daytime urinary incontinence questionnaire

P Sureshkumar, LP Roy, JF Knight, JC Craig

Centre for Kidney Research, Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, Westmead NSW 2145, Australia.

Introduction. Daytime urinary incontinence is a common problem but there has been no previously validated instrument to accurately define the population based prevalence. We developed a self administered questionnaire and tested its repeatability, which was then used in a prevalence survey of daytime urinary incontinence in a random sample of children starting primary school in Sydney.
Methods. The repeatability test was performed by resending a second questionnaire to a subsample of participants, 4 weeks after the baseline data were collected. Topics covered in the questionnaire included personal, family history of incontinence, voiding symptoms and socioeconomic status information. Agreement for categorical data was assessed using kappa( ), a statistic which measures agreement beyond that expected by chance alone. Kappa ranges from 0 to 1 where 0 represents agreement by chance and 1 represents perfect agreement. The continuous data were analysed using the method by Bland and Altman. In this approach the 95% confidence intervals for the difference between the responses to the first and the second questionnaire were determined.
Results. 166 subjects completed the repeat questionnaire with a response rate of 78.5%. The mean age was 5.6 years (range 3.5-7, median 5.7). The agreement ranged from 83% to 100%(mean 91%) and the kappa coefficient ranged between 0.34 - 1.00(mean kappa 0.70). For continuous data the 95% limits of agreement were narrow.
Conclusion. The reproducibility of the daytime urinary incontinence questionnaire had a mean kappa of 0.7 which is regarded as substantial agreement for categorical data and narrow 95% confidence intervals suggesting good agreement for continuous data. We consider it a useful instrument to be used to ascertain information on urinary incontinence and other voiding symptoms.

Presented at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, Perth, May 1999

Correspondence
Premala Sureshkunar
PremalaS@chw.edu.au