Validation of Bladder Health Instrument for Evaluation in Women

The Prevention of Lower Urinary Symptoms (PLUS) Research Consortium is working to optimize prevention of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) in women and adolescent females across their life spans. The ability to measure bladder health and key risk and protective factors is crucial to the PLUS mission. To describe and measure the spectrum of bladder health in diverse populations, researchers need a valid and reliable instrument. To date, the Consortium's work on design of a bladder health instrument has been a culmination of expert opinion, information from focus groups, and incorporation of previously validated items and language where appropriate, along with cognitive interviews of participants from the general public. The next step in the consortium's work is to prospectively collect data to test and validate bladder health instrument (BHI) items for inclusion in a final bladder health scale (BHS) that can assess the full range of bladder health of women. This will be through a combination of general population recruitment for completing mailed surveys, clinical population recruitment for completing surveys and an in-person evaluation, and postpartum women.