DeltaQuest Foundation, Inc., 31 Mitchell Road, Concord, MA, 01742, USA.
Departments of Medicine and Orthopaedic Surgery, Tufts University Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
Qual Life Res. 2022 Aug;31(8):2247-2257. doi: 10.1007/s11136-021-03023-9. Epub 2021 Oct 27.
The growth in response-shift methods has enabled a stronger empirical foundation to investigate response-shift phenomena in quality-of-life (QOL) research; but many of these methods utilize certain language in framing the research question(s) and interpreting results that treats response-shift effects as "bias," "noise," "nuisance," or otherwise warranting removal from the results rather than as information that matters. The present project will describe the various ways in which researchers have framed the questions for investigating response-shift issues and interpreted the findings, and will develop a nomenclature for such that highlights the important information about resilience reflected by response-shift findings.
A scoping review was done of the QOL and response-shift literature (n = 1100 articles) from 1963 to 2020. After culling only empirical response-shift articles, raters characterized how investigators framed and interpreted study research questions (n = 164 articles).
Of 10 methods used, papers using four of them utilized terms like "bias" and aimed to remove response-shift effects to reveal "true change." Yet, the investigators' reflections on their own conclusions suggested that they do not truly believe that response shift is error to be removed. A structured nomenclature is proposed for discussing response-shift results in a range of research contexts and response-shift detection methods.
It is time for a concerted and focused effort to change the nomenclature of those methods that demonstrated this misinterpretation. Only by framing and interpreting response shift as information, not bias, can we improve our understanding and methods to help to distill outcomes with and without response-shift effects.
反应转移方法的发展为研究生活质量（QOL）研究中的反应转移现象提供了更强大的经验基础；但其中许多方法在提出研究问题和解释结果时使用了某些语言，将反应转移效应视为“偏差”、“噪声”、“干扰”或其他需要从结果中删除的因素，而不是需要考虑的信息。本项目将描述研究人员在研究反应转移问题时提出问题和解释发现的各种方式，并为这些方式制定一个术语，突出反应转移发现所反映的关于弹性的重要信息。
对 1963 年至 2020 年的 QOL 和反应转移文献（n=1100 篇）进行了范围综述。在仅剔除实证反应转移文章后，评估者对调查员研究问题的框架和解释方法进行了特征描述（n=164 篇）。
在所使用的 10 种方法中，有 4 种方法使用了“偏差”等术语，并旨在消除反应转移效应以揭示“真实变化”。然而，调查员对自己结论的反思表明，他们并不真的认为反应转移是需要消除的错误。提出了一个结构化的命名法，用于在各种研究背景和反应转移检测方法中讨论反应转移结果。
现在是时候集中精力改变那些表现出这种误解的方法的命名法了。只有将反应转移视为信息，而不是偏差，我们才能提高我们的理解和方法，帮助提炼有和没有反应转移效应的结果。
