Background

Headache diaries and recall questionnaires are frequently used to assess headache frequency and severity in clinical and research settings.

Methods

Using 20 weeks of data from an intervention trial with 182 participants, we evaluated concordance between an electronic headache diary administered on a daily basis and designed to capture the presence and severity of headaches on an hourly basis (the headache diary) and a recall questionnaire, with retrospective estimation of the number of headache days assessed on a monthly basis. We further examined whether the duration or severity of headaches assessed by the electronic diary impacted concordance between these two measures.

Results

Over the course of four 28-day periods, people with migraine participating in a dietary intervention reported an average of 13.7 and 11.1 headache days in the headache diary and recall questionnaire, respectively.

Conclusion

Over time, the concordance between headache days reported in these two measures tended to increase; however, the recall questionnaire headache estimates were lower than the diary measures in all four periods. When analysis was restricted to headaches lasting 8 hours or more, the number of headache days was more closely aligned with days reported in the recall questionnaire, indicating that the accuracy of recall estimates is likely to be influenced by headache duration. Restriction of analyses to moderate-to-severe headaches did not change results as much as headache duration. The findings indicate that recall questionnaires administered on a monthly basis may underestimate headache frequency and therefore should not be used interchangeably with headache diaries.

Clinical Trials.gov Identifier: NCT02012790

中文翻译：

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比较 20 周内的前瞻性头痛日记和回顾性 4 周头痛问卷：随机对照试验的二次数据分析。

背景

头痛日记和回忆问卷经常用于评估临床和研究环境中的头痛频率和严重程度。

方法

使用来自 182 名参与者的干预试验的 20 周数据，我们评估了每天管理的电子头痛日记（旨在以每小时为基础记录头痛的存在和严重程度）与回忆问卷之间的一致性，回顾性估计每月评估的头痛天数。我们进一步检查了电子日记评估的头痛持续时间或严重程度是否影响这两种测量值之间的一致性。

结果

在四个 28 天的时间里，参与饮食干预的偏头痛患者在头痛日记和回忆问卷中分别报告了 13.7 和 11.1 天的平均头痛天数。

结论

随着时间的推移，这两种测量方法中报告的头痛天数之间的一致性趋于增加；然而，回忆问卷的头痛估计值均低于所有四个时期的日记测量值。当分析仅限于持续 8 小时或更长时间的头痛时，头痛天数与回忆问卷中报告的天数更接近，表明回忆估计的准确性可能受头痛持续时间的影响。将分析限制在中度至重度头痛并没有像头痛持续时间那样改变结果。研究结果表明，每月进行的回忆问卷可能会低估头痛频率，因此不应与头痛日记交替使用。

Clinical Trials.gov 标识符：NCT02012790