There is a rather large, and unfortunate, discrepancy in the outcome between self-reported and standardized assessment of olfactory function. Questions for self-evaluation are commonly used that provide no information of with what to compare (comparison target) one’s olfactory function. We therefore investigated whether responses differed between an unspecific question and two questions providing comparison targets. Ninety-six healthy community-dwelling individuals (62.5 % women) aged 49–80 years evaluated their odor identification ability, followed by standardized assessment of odor identification ability. Results revealed that response patterns varied significantly depending on comparison target. While 81 % reported normal function when no further comparison target was presented, 69 % reported normal function when referring to age-related olfactory changes in identification ability. In turn, sensitivity of the accuracy of self-reported reduced odor identification ability (with standardized assessment as reference) increased from 11 to 37 %, whereas specificity decreased from 86 to 71 % when providing a comparison target. Accuracy of self-reported olfactory function can be increased by including a comparison target. However, standardized assessment is to be preferred over self-reported assessment, irrespective of how the question is formulated.

中文翻译：

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我们如何提出“您的嗅觉如何？”这个问题是否重要？

自我报告的和嗅觉功能的标准化评估之间的结果存在相当大且不幸的差异。自我评估的问题通常被使用，它不提供与嗅觉功能进行比较（比较目标）的信息。因此，我们调查了一个非特定性问题和两个提供比较目标的问题之间的回答是否有所不同。49-80岁的96位健康的社区居民个人（62.5％的女性）评估了他们的气味识别能力，然后对气味识别能力进行了标准化评估。结果显示，响应模式因比较目标而异。当没有提出进一步的比较目标时，有81％的人报告功能正常，69％的人在提及与年龄相关的嗅觉识别能力改变时报告了正常功能。反过来，自我报告的减少气味识别能力（以标准化评估为参考）准确性的敏感性从11％上升到37％，而提供比较目标时特异性从86％下降到71％。通过包含比较目标，可以提高自我报告的嗅觉功能的准确性。但是，无论问题是如何提出的，标准化评估均应优于自我报告评估。通过包含比较目标，可以提高自我报告的嗅觉功能的准确性。但是，无论问题是如何提出的，标准化评估均应优于自我报告评估。通过包含比较目标，可以提高自我报告的嗅觉功能的准确性。但是，无论问题是如何提出的，标准化评估均应优于自我报告评估。