Psychometric characteristics of the chronic Otitis media questionnaire 12 (COMQ – 12): stability of factor structure and replicability shown by the Serbian version

Table 1 Basic 1st-visit descriptives of clinical groups and healthy individuals in Phase 1 Study

Data at 1st Visit	Unaffected controls N = 60	Inactive COM N = 20	Active mucosal COM N = 21	Active squamous COM N = 19
Data at 1st Visit	Mean (SD), Skew	Mean (SD), Skew	Mean (SD), Skew	Mean (SD), Skew
Age	43.52 (16.03), 0.153	44.20 (15.85), −0.180	45.47 (16.89), −0.173	36.47 (15.59), 0.891
Better ear average HL		24.81 (11.83), 0.885	32.14 (16.74), 1.352	33.09 (21.46), 1.393
Worse ear average HL		38.89 (11.76), 0.745	59.76 (17.26), 2.255	59.34 (16.32), 0.698
Raw total COMQ-12	1.02 (1.88), 2.345	20.10 (8.40), 0.000	30.63 (9.99), −0.843	29.68 (11.75), −0.055
Disease duration %-ile split		50.0,50.0	38.1, 61.9	36.8, 63.2
Educational level %-ile split	55.0,45.0,0	50.0, 45.0, 5.0	42.9, 52.4, 4.8	26.3,68.4, 5.3

The percentages male and female in the COM groups totaling 60 were 43.3 & 56.7% and the percentage with left side affected (ie candidate ear for operation) was 51.7%. The reported disease duration is expressed as the near-median split at 8 years, although it is recognised this figure may not be veridical. Educational level is dichotomised at primary plus secondary, versus beyond secondary, then missing data. The apparently greater educational qualification level of the squamous relative to other groups is not significant (Fisher Exact p, 2-tail 0.16). In each variable, skew standard errors are 0.512, 0.501, 0.524 for the three clinical groups and 0.309 for controls. In the main analyses later using HL, the value is taken from the affected ear, ie the candidate for operation, as having more disease-relevant variance. This is also in nearly all cases the worse ear. Though differing little here, age was extensively explored as a control covariate in analyses subsequently reported, but it never improved model fit

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