• Montserrat Ferrer, Ferran Pellisé, Oscar Escudero, Luis Alvarez, Angels Pont, Jordi Alonso, and Richard Deyo.
• Health Services Research Unit, Institut Municipal d'Investigació Mèdica (IMIM-IMAS), Barcelona, Spain.
• Spine. 2006 May 20;31(12):1372-9; discussion 1380.

Study DesignProspective study of patients with subacute osteoporotic fracture (SOF) or chronic low back pain (CLBP).ObjectiveTo evaluate reliability, validity, and responsiveness of a purposefully brief outcome instrument.Summary Of Background DataA minimum standardized "core set" was proposed for monitoring patients with low back pain in 1998, but an assessment of metric properties was still lacking.MethodsThe Core Set, SF-36, and Oswestry questionnaires were completed by 154 patients. Test-retest reproducibility was evaluated in a subsample of 43 stable patients with CLBP. Responsiveness was evaluated by estimating effect size (ES) of pre-postsurgery changes in 50 patients with SOF and 23 with CLBP.ResultsThe total Core Set showed good reproducibility with intraclass correlation coefficients on test-retest near the highest standard of 0.9, whereas internal consistency differed between patients with CLBP and those with SOF (Cronbach's alpha of 0.92 and 0.64, respectively). Most correlations of the Core Set with SF-36 and Oswestry, previously hypothesized as high, were >0.65, demonstrating good construct validity. Sensitivity to change of the Core Set (ES 0.4-2.3) is similar to the Oswestry (ES 0.7 and 2.3).ConclusionsThese findings support the potential usefulness of the Core Set when respondent burden is a major concern. However, subscale scores need to be further tested in other populations before they can be widely recommended.

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