Itch Severity Scale: a self-report instrument for the measurement of pruritus severity
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Assessing pruritus severity is difficult because of its subjective nature. A questionnaire that takes into account how the symptom is perceived by the patient may provide a more accurate representation of the pruritus. However, recently developed questionnaires do not specifically quantify severity of the symptom. OBJECTIVES: To develop a self-report questionnaire to measure pruritus severity and to provide initial evidence of its validity and reliability. METHODS: We modified a previously developed interview for the characterization and evaluation of pruritus, which was completed along with the RAND-36 Health Status Inventory and Dermatology Life Quality Index by patients with psoriasis-associated pruritus. Exploratory factor analysis, studies of internal consistency, and correlation analyses with health-related quality of life scores were used to help determine which components of the modified pruritus interview to include in the new questionnaire, the Itch Severity Scale (ISS). The ISS was then assessed for construct validity, internal consistency reliability and test-retest reliability. RESULTS: Seven of the initial 11 components of the modified pruritus interview were included in the ISS. ISS scores correlated moderately with physical (r=-0 x 483) and mental (r=-0 x 492) health composite scores of the RAND-36 and strongly with Dermatology Life Quality Index scores (r=0 x 628), evidence of construct validity. It had an internal consistency reliability of 0 x 80 and a test-retest reliability of 0 x 95. CONCLUSIONS: Based on this preliminary evidence of validity and reliability, this new seven-item ISS may be useful in comparing pruritus severity among different disease populations or in assessing pruritus treatment effectiveness.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".