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The paediatric PROMIS project is part of the PROMIS initiative (“Patient Reported Outcome Measurement Information System”), a US-wide project for the development and implementation of standardised, reliable and valid questionnaires to measure the psychological, physical and social health of adults and children. PROMIS aims at the development of international comparable item banks which can be used for the long-term integration of statistical short and long questionnaires as well as efficient “Computer Adaptive Tests” (CATs) into the routine care of the US health system.

The paediatric PROMIS project is led by Prof. Dr. Christopher Forrest (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia) and since 2007 funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH). It aims to capture the health of children by use of the following dimensions: 1. physical activity/conditions, 2. subjective well-being, 3. experience of stress, 4. familial /school well-being.

Prof. Dr. phil. Ulrike Ravens-Sieberer and Prof. Dr. Matthias Rose as German cooperation partners support the development of the item bank for assessing the subjective well-being (SWB) of children. One aim is to develop item banks in a way, that it is understandable for children and includes the child's perspective on the constructs in the item wording.

In order to comprehensively represent subjective health in regard to physical, mental and social health, six paediatric item banks (anxiety, Anger, depressive symptoms, fatigue, pain and peer relationships) are currently being translated in a complex process of Translation from American English into a universal German language Version applying to Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Afterwards, the items are tested in cognitive interviews with children and adolescents (from Germany, Austria and Switzerland) for the self-Version as well as with their parents for the proxy-Version.

Furthermore, the item banks for assessing the subjective well-being (SWB) of children are collected of 5000 children and their parents at American clinical networks (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, CHOP, and Nationwide Children’s Hospital, NCH), aiming the evaluation and calibration. This will be followed by Validation studies and normation studies on 1200 US-American schoolchildren and 400 ill children. In addition, it is planned to connect the KIDSCREEN and the Kids-CAT with the PROMIS item banks psychometrically to make LQ-elicitation on children comparable for different instruments (“Patient Reported Outcome Measurement Information System”).

Contact: Prof. Dr. Ulrike Ravens-Sieberer ( ravens-sieberer@uke.de )

For further information about the PROMIS initiative please visit the American website nihpromis.org or the German Website promis-germany.de