Establishment and reliability test of a "Vertigo Council Diagnosis Questionnaire" for patients with chronic vestibular dysfunction: preliminary study.

OBJECTIVES This study aims to establish a "Vertigo Council Diagnosis Questionnaire" for patients with chronic vestibular dysfunction and show the reliability of this questionnaire. MATERIALS AND METHODS A "Vertigo Council Diagnosis Questionnaire" consisting of 10 questions was prepared by 15 specialist physicians and analyzed for reliability using the "translation-back-translation" method. RESULTS When all the items of our questionnaire were evaluated, the content validity ratio ranged from 0.6 to 0.87, and the content validity index was 0.676. The conformity ratio between the real diagnosis and the diagnosis based on the questionnaire was 63.19%, and the kappa was 0.441 (moderate). No significant difference was found between the first and second responses to any of the questions (p>0.05). There was no significant difference between question conformity (conformity between the first and second responses) and diagnostic conformity (conformity between the real diagnosis and the diagnosis based on the questionnaire) (p>0.05) in any of the questions. No relationship was found between diagnostic conformity and sociodemographic data (age, sex, education, occupation) (p>0.05). CONCLUSION Our study results suggest that, in Turkish patients, diagnosis of vertigo should be based on face-to-face interviews, and clinical and laboratory evaluations rather than a questionnaire.