Development and validation of the pelvic floor inventories Leiden (PelFIs)

AIMS: To evaluate the validity and reliability in Dutch of the Pelvic Floor Inventories Leiden (PelFIs) for men and women, an administered questionnaire, developed to create a condition-specific pelvic floor questionnaire addressing all symptoms of micturition, defecation and sexual dysfunction related to pelvic floor dysfunction. METHODS: The PelFIs is an 83-item instrument for women and 76-item instrument for men measuring the degree of pelvic floor dysfunction, containing nine different domains. Questions have been selected which, from a clinical point of view, should configure a domain. The PelFIs was administered to healthy volunteers (N = 120), and to patients (N = 100). Reliability of the PelFIs was assessed by internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Construct validity was established comparing healthy volunteers and patients by intercorrelating the domains. RESULTS: A total of 220 questionnaires were completed; by 147 women and 73 men. Some domains in the men's questionnaire had a low alpha (alpha) although the overall alpha was good. The overall of the domains for men ranged from 0.53 to 0.90. The internal consistency for the total scale of men's questionnaire was 0.84. The overall of the domains in women ranged from 0.60 to 0.85. The internal consistency of the women's questionnaire was 0.88 for the total scale. Intraclass correlation ranged from 0.65 to 0.88. Differences between healthy volunteers and patients were statistically significant for all domains. CONCLUSION: The PelFIs is a new, practical and conceptually clear questionnaire, which focus on micturition, defecation and/or sexual dysfunction related to pelvic floor dysfunction.