The revised urinary incontinence scale: A clinical validation

The Revised Urinary Incontinence Scale was developed as a short, psychometrically sound measure for epidemiological and outcomes research. The aims of the clinical evaluation reported here were to compare the validity and responsiveness of the Revised Urinary Incontinence Scale with other measures recommended by the International Continence Society and to establish interim cut-points for scores that correspond with condition severity as defined by patients, clinicians and other indicators. The participants were 167 consecutive female patients, recruited from seven Australian continence clinics, who completed questionnaires before and after continence treatment. Treatment could be: advice from a continence nurse, physiotherapy or surgery. Measures included the Revised Urinary Incontinence Scale, the International Consultation of Incontinence-Urinary Incontinence-Short Form, the Urogenital Distress Inventory-6 and the Incontinence Severity Index. Data after treatment were available from 86 participants. Cronbach's alpha for the Revised Urinary Incontinence Scale was 0.70; 0.63 for the Urogenital Distress Inventory-6; 0.61 for the International Consultation of Incontinence-Urinary Incontinence Short Form; and 0.50 for the Incontinence Severity Index. Test-retest reliabilities estimated by intra-class correlation coefficients were 0.77, 0.74, 0.67, and 0.76 respectively. All scales were responsive to change following treatment but the Urogenital Distress Inventory-6 and the Revised Urinary Incontinence Scale had larger effect sizes, the ratio of change to its standard deviation. The Revised Urinary Incontinence Scale was strongly associated with other incontinence measures and it had evaluative discrimination when compared with other indicators of incontinence severity. The Revised Urinary Incontinence Scale is a short, reliable and valid scale for evaluation of urinary incontinence and its response to treatment.