Commentary RE: Hard Measures of Subjective Outcomes: Validating Symptom Indexes in Urology

Urology was⁎ ⁎⁎ Refers to https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022534717369653 (https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5347(17)36965-3). ⁎ Refers to https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022534717369653 (https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5347(17)36965-3). among the first surgical specialties to embrace the field of psychometrics, the process of describing and quantifying objective outcomes. Understanding and reliably measuring the patient experience of disease (namely symptoms) was novel in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Reliable measures are designed to yield consistent results when repeated. Validity is also a big component of such measures. They need to quantify what they are supposed to.