Ethics approval and consent to participate:
The Institutional Review Board of the Amsterdam University Medical Centers (location VUmc), confirmed that for this project the requirements of the Dutch Medical Research Involving Human Subjects Act (Wet medische-wetenschappelijke onderzoek met mensen) do not apply, so their ethical review is not required.
Participants were provided with an information email, prior to commencing the survey. We assumed informed consent when participants took part in the survey. We asked permission to acknowledge the panelists.
Consent for publication:
We have permission from all acknowledged people to publish their name.
Availability of data and materials:
The rounds and feedback reports generated during the current study are available in the OSF.io repository, see https://osf.io/6fnw3/.
Competing interests:
LM, HdV, LB, JA, DP and CT are the developers of the COSMIN Risk of Bias checklist for patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) [12] and the COSMIN guideline for conducting systematic reviews of PROMs [27].
Funding:
This work is part of the research programme Veni (received by LM) with project number 91617098, funded by ZonMw (The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development). The funding body has no role in the study design, the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data or in the writing of this manuscript.
Authors' contributions:
LM, MB, CvdV, LB, JA, DP, HdV and CT were involved in the design of the study and in the invitation of the panelists. LM prepared the survey rounds, the feedback reports, and draft of the tool; LM, MB, CT analyzed the rounds. LM, MB, CvdV, LB, JA, DP, HdV and CT contributed to the discussion of the findings. LM, MB, CvdV, LB, JA, DP, HdV and CT read, revised and approved each round. LM, MB and CT prepared the manuscript. LM, MB, CvdV, LB, JA, DP, HdV and CT have read, revised and approved the manuscript.
Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to all the panelists of this study, who provided us with many helpful and critical comments and arguments (in alphabetical order): M.A. D’Agostino, Dorcas Beaton, Sophie van Belle, Sandra Beurskens, Kristie Bjornson, Jan Boehnke, Patrick Bossuyt, Don Bushnell, Stefan Cano, Saskia le Cessie, Alessandro Chiarotto, Mike Clark, Jon Deeks, Iris Eekhout, Jim Farnsworth II, Oke Gerke, Sabine Goldhahn, Robert M. Gow, Philip Griffiths, Cristian Gugiu, Jean-Benoit Hardouin, Désirée van der Heijde, I-Chan Huang, Ellen Janssen, Brian Jolly, Lars Konge, Jan Kottner, Brittany Lapin, Hanneke van der Lee, Mariska Leeflang, Nancy Mayo, Sue Mallett, Joy C. MacDermid, Geert Molenberghs, Holger Muehlan, Koen Neijenhuijs, Raymond Ostelo, Laura Quinn, Dennis Revicki, Jussi Repo, Johannes B. Reitsma, Anne W. Rutjes, Mohsen Sadatsafavi, David Streiner, Matthew Stephenson, Berend Terluin, Zyphanie Tyack, Werner Vach, Gemma Vilagut Saiz, Marc K. Walton, Matthijs Warrens, Daniel Yee Tak Fong.
I am grateful to Charlotte Teunissen, Femke Rutters, Sandra Amor and Erik Nutma all working at the Amsterdam UMC, location VUmc, for their time to teach me about laboratory and imaging tests.
We would like to thank Ilse Jansma for her help to develop the search strings for PubMed, and EMBASE.
This Delphi study was funded by ZonMw (The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development) (grant number 016.176.098).
Authors' information (optional)
1 Amsterdam UMC, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of Epidemiology and Data Science, Amsterdam Public Health research institute, Amsterdam, the Netherlands;
2 Amsterdam UMC, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam Rheumatology and Immunology Center, Amsterdam, the Netherlands;
3 Maastricht University, School of Health Professions Education, Department of Educational Development and Research, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Maastricht, the Netherlands;
4 Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Amsterdam, the Netherlands;
5 Health Services Research Unit, IMIM-Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute; CIBER Epidemiología y Salud Pública (CIBERESP), Barcelona, Spain;
6 Department of Health Services, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.