Telephone reliability of the Frenchay Activity Index and EQ-5D amongst older adults

Background: Older adults may find it problematic to attend hospital appointments due to the difficulty associated with travelling to, within and from a hospital facility for the purpose of a face-to-face assessment. This study aims to investigate equivalence between telephone and face-to-face administration for the Frenchay Activities Index (FAI) and the Euroqol-5D (EQ-5D) generic health-related quality of life instrument amongst an older adult population. Methods: patients aged >65 (n = 53) who had been discharged to the community following an acute hospital admission underwent telephone administration of the FAI and EQ-5D instruments seven days prior to attending a hospital outpatient appointment where they completed a face-to-face administration of these instruments. Results: Overall, 40 subjects datasets were complete for both assessments and included in analysis. The FAI items had high levels of agreement between the two modes of administration (item kappa s ranged 0.73 to 1.00) as did the EQ-5D (item kappa s ranged 0.67-0.83). For the FAI, EQ-5D VAS and EQ-5D utility score, intraclass correlation coefficients were 0.94, 0.58 and 0.82 respectively with paired t-tests indicating no significant systematic difference (p = 0.100, p = 0.690 and p = 0.290 respectively). Conclusion: Telephone administration of the FAI and EQ-5D instruments provides comparable results to face-to-face administration amongst older adults deemed to have cognitive functioning intract at a basic level, indicating that this is a suitable alternative approach for collection of this information.