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©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jan 7, 2015; 21(1): 292-300
Published online Jan 7, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i1.292
Published online Jan 7, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i1.292
Latent structure of irritable bowel syndrome symptom severity
Fabian Jasper, Department of Psychological Diagnostics, University of Salzburg, 5020 Salzburg, Austria
Boris Egloff, Department of Personality Psychology and Diagnostics, University of Mainz, 55099 Mainz, Germany
Andrea Roalfe, Primary Care Clinical Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom
Michael Witthöft, Department of Health Psychology, University of Mannheim, 68161 Mannheim, Germany
Author contributions: All authors contributed equally to this work.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Fabian Jasper, Department of Psychological Diagnostics, University of Salzburg, Kapitelgasse 5, 5020 Salzburg, Austria. fabian.jasper@sbg.ac.at
Telephone: +49-151-21719210 Fax: +49-151-21719210
Received: June 4, 2014
Peer-review started: June 5, 2014
First decision: July 21, 2014
Revised: August 30, 2014
Accepted: September 29, 2014
Article in press: September 30, 2014
Published online: January 7, 2015
Peer-review started: June 5, 2014
First decision: July 21, 2014
Revised: August 30, 2014
Accepted: September 29, 2014
Article in press: September 30, 2014
Published online: January 7, 2015
Core Tip
Core tip: The findings suggest that irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) symptom severity might best be understood as a continuous and multidimensional construct which can be reliably and validly assessed with the B-IBS questionnaire. The B-IBS scale is suitable to assess therapeutic outcomes of IBS treatments because it can measure IBS symptom severity in both, patients suffering from an IBS and participants who do not fulfill the diagnostic criteria for an IBS diagnosis but do show some of the associated symptoms.