Scientific Background

The longitudinal study Kids-CAT started in February 2012. It is supervised by Prof. Dr. Ulrike Ravens-Sieberer and conducted in cooperation with PD Dr. Matthias Rose (Charité, Berlin), Prof. Dr. Ute Thyen (University Clinic Schleswig-Holstein, Campus Lübeck), Prof. Dr. Silke Schmidt (University of Greifswald), and Dr. Marcus O. Klein (University Clinic Schleswig-Holstein, Campus Kiel).

The Kids-CAT project is funded over 3 years by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung; BMBF). It is supported by the German Association for Allergies and Asthma (Deutscher Allergie- und Asthmabund e.V.; DAAB), the German Association for Diabetes (Deutscher Diabetiker Bund e.V.), and the Paediatric Network (Pädiatrisches Netzwerk; PAED-Net). The Kids-CAT project is aiming at developing the first German computer-adaptive test (CAT) for measuring Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) in healthy as well as in chronically ill children and adolescents.

The study includes the following steps:

1. Development of the Kids-CAT instrument using large existing data sets (of the KIDSCREEN, BELLA and DISABKIDS studies),

2. Evaluation of the reliability and validity of the Kids-CAT instrument in chronically ill children (n=150 children suffering from diabetes and n=150 children with chronic asthma), and testing the reliability and validity of the instrument, and

3. Standardisation of the Kids-CAT by a representative sample of healthy children (n=1200).

The final Kids-CAT instrument will provide a methodologically appropriate screening of HRQoL in children to be implemented in routine paediatric care. It will be developed based on Item Response Theory (IRT) facilitating an efficient, precise, reliable, and valid assessment of HRQoL. The Kids-CAT software will then be available for wide applications in paediatric care and research.

The Kids-CAT project (UKE, Hamburg, Germany) and the paediatric PROMIS project (CHOP, Philadelphia, US) are closely collaborating. The German Kids-CAT and the US paediatric PROMIS item banks were developed using similar quantitative methods (CTT+IRT). The Kids-CAT item banks differ from the American ones, in that they have been built using large existing representative German paediatric norm samples (> 15000 children). The US paediatric PROMIS item banks were developed without such an initial data base, but grounded on an extensive qualitative item banking process.

The German PROMIS item banks will be administered to German-speaking children in 2013. The item banks of the Kids-CAT and the paediatric PROMIS initiative will then be cross calibrated.