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Abstract:
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Research in academic medical centers offer opportunities to collaborate on clinical projects that require novel application of both common and uncommon statistical methods. Longer survey instruments can be detrimental to clinical research due to multiple factors; 1) scoring algorithm may be complicated which may result in obtaining inconsistent scores, 2) instrument can be time consuming which may add burden to patients who are critically ill and also may impact accuracy of responses, 3) some questions may not be meaningful or could be redundant. A redesign of such instrument to a simplified, more time-efficient, statistically more robust, but still comprehensive tool to assess and grade symptoms relevant to particular clinical condition that can find broad application in research and clinical practice is desirable. This presentation will illustrate use of exploratory factor analysis as a statistical tool to reduce dimensionality, i.e., the number of questions using a survey instrument used in neurology research.
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