Reproducibility of Instruments Designed to Measure Subjective Evaluation of Female Stress Urinary Incontinence

Abstract

The aim of this study was to construct two instruments by which detailed knowledge of women's problems related to stress urinary incontinence (SUI) could be registered, and to test the reproducibility of the results obtained. Fourteen women with urodynamically proven SUI, and a mean age of 42.8 years (range 18–56) participated in the study. The leakage index was a five point scale (1 = never, 5 = always) containing thirteen types of physical exertions known to trigger urinary leakage. The social activity index contains nine social settings in which women may have problems to participate. For each parameter a 10 cm visual analogue scale (0 = impossible to participate, 10 = no problem to participate) was used for registration. The correlation coefficient for test 1 and 2 was .92 (p < 0.01) and .94 (p < 0.01) for the leakage and the social activity index, respectively. The results obtained were reproducible, and the instruments gave detailed information about how women perceived SUI.

Keywords:

• physical activity
• reproducibility
• stress urinary incontinence
• subjective evaluation