• Christian J Cerrada, Janice Weinberg, Karen J Sherman, and Robert B Saper.
• Department of Family Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center, 1 Boston Medical Center Place, Dowling 5 South, Boston, MA 02118, USA. cerrada@usc.edu.
• BMC Res Notes. 2014 Jan 1;7:227.

BackgroundLittle is known about the reliability of different methods of survey administration in low back pain trials. This analysis was designed to determine the reliability of responses to self-administered paper surveys compared to computer assisted telephone interviews (CATI) for the primary outcomes of pain intensity and back-related function, and secondary outcomes of patient satisfaction, SF-36, and global improvement among participants enrolled in a study of yoga for chronic low back pain.ResultsPain intensity, back-related function, and both physical and mental health components of the SF-36 showed excellent reliability at all three time points; ICC scores ranged from 0.82 to 0.98. Pain medication use showed good reliability; kappa statistics ranged from 0.68 to 0.78. Patient satisfaction had moderate to excellent reliability; ICC scores ranged from 0.40 to 0.86. Global improvement showed poor reliability at 6 weeks (ICC = 0.24) and 12 weeks (ICC = 0.10).ConclusionCATI shows excellent reliability for primary outcomes and at least some secondary outcomes when compared to self-administered paper surveys in a low back pain yoga trial. Having two reliable options for data collection may be helpful to increase response rates for core outcomes in back pain trials.Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov: NCT01761617. Date of trial registration: December 4, 2012.

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