Results Summary and Professional Abstract
Peer-Review Summary
Peer review of PCORI-funded research helps make sure the report presents complete, balanced, and useful information about the research. It also assesses how the project addressed PCORI’s Methodology Standards. During peer review, experts read a draft report of the research and provide comments about the report. These experts may include a scientist focused on the research topic, a specialist in research methods, a patient or caregiver, and a healthcare professional. These reviewers cannot have conflicts of interest with the study.
The peer reviewers point out where the draft report may need revision. For example, they may suggest ways to improve descriptions of the conduct of the study or to clarify the connection between results and conclusions. Sometimes, awardees revise their draft reports twice or more to address all of the reviewers’ comments.
The awardee made the following revisions in response to peer review:
- In response to reviewer concerns about the lack of information related to missing data at the item level in this study of scale development, the awardee added information about measures it took to minimize missing data for the legacy, validity, and neuropathic pain measures. In the data-analysis section, the investigator also added more information about measures taken to minimize missing data. Furthermore, in the results section, the awardee provided more information on the occurrence of missing data in candidate item banks.
- The awardee responded to reviewer concerns about the potential stigma for patients completing the pain scale by reporting that the awardee asked patients with chronic pain to review the language to make sure it was not stigmatizing. The awardee took the patient advisors’ advice and added two more positively framed self-efficacy items to the pain scale to reduce the negativity of the measure. The awardee added information to the results section about the cognitive interview, including the proportion of people with clinically important levels of pain catastrophizing and self-efficacy. The awardee also noted in the limitations section that few of the study participants had these characteristics, and therefore, future qualitative research should include more individuals with such characteristics to ensure adequate representation on the clinical spectrum of chronic pain.
- The awardee addressed reviewers’ concerns that the study sample contained a disproportionately high level of well-educated people and low levels of Hispanic or African-American participants. The awardee added generalizability of the results based on the study sample to the list of study limitations.
Conflict of Interest Disclosures
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