How to Investigate the Effects of Groups on Changes in Longitudinal Patient-Reported Outcomes and Response Shift Using Rasch Models

In order to investigate patients’ experience of healthcare, repeated assessments of patient-reported outcomes (PRO) are increasingly performed in observational studies and clinical trials. Changes in PRO can however be difficult to interpret in longitudinal settings as patients’ perception of the concept being measured may change over time, leading to response shift (longitudinal measurement non-invariance) and possibly to erroneous interpretation of the observed changes in PRO. Several statistical methods for response shift analysis have been proposed, but they usually assume that response shift occurs in the same way in all individuals within the sample regardless of their characteristics. Many studies aim at comparing the longitudinal change of PRO into two groups of patients (treatment arm, different pathologies, …). The group variable could have an effect on PRO change but also on response shift effect and the perception of the questionnaire at baseline. In this paper, we propose to enhance the ROSALI algorithm based on Rasch Measurement Theory for the analysis of longitudinal PRO data to simultaneously investigate the effects of group on item functioning at the first measurement occasion, on response shift and on changes in PRO over time. ROSALI is subsequently applied to a longitudinal dataset on change in emotional functioning in patients with breast cancer or melanoma during the year following diagnosis. The use of ROSALI provides new insights in the analysis of longitudinal PRO data.