The Canine Orthopedic Index. Step 1: Devising the Items

OBJECTIVE: To develop questions for an owner-completed outcome assessment instrument for dogs with orthopedic disease. STUDY DESIGN: Focus groups, key-informant interviews, surveys. SAMPLE POPULATION: Owners of dogs with osteoarthritis (OA). METHODS: Audio recorded focus groups were transcribed. Descriptive statistics around discussed topics were calculated. A list of frequently discussed behaviors underwent discrimination and frequency endorsement analysis and was circulated for refinement among veterinarians experienced in treating dogs with orthopedic disease. The final list of behaviors was transformed into a series of questions and organized as the preliminary instrument for testing in further studies. RESULTS: Owners (n = 27) participated in 4 focus groups. Based on the frequency of comments generated during focus groups and key-informant interviews, 30 behaviors were further screened by discrimination analysis and endorsement frequency in an additional cohort of 60 owners. No behaviors were classified as "good" for discriminating between front and hind limb disease so a single, non-limb-specific instrument was developed. Four behaviors had an endorsement frequency ≤ 33% and were not considered further for inclusion in the preliminary instrument. Twenty-one questions associated with the remaining behaviors were used to create the preliminary Canine Orthopedic Index (COI) for psychometric testing in further studies. CONCLUSIONS: A 21-question owner-completed COI was successfully developed in preparation for psychometric testing studies.