Agreement between face-to-face and telephone application of the fatigue severity scale in the elderly

The objective was to investigate the agreement between face-to-face and telephone application of the Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS) in the elderly. The participants were assessed using the FSS by telephone and face-to-face. Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC-3,1) investigated the agreement between the FSS scores, for both scoring methods (sum and average), and quadratic weighted Kappa statistics to investigate the agreement between the individual items. The 55 individuals showed a total score ranging from 9 to 57 for the sum scoring method, from 1 to 6.3 for the average scoring method, and from 1 to 7 for the individual items. The level of agreement for the total scores was high ICC for the sum (0.84) and average (0.86) scoring method, while for each item, eight were considered moderate (0.21 ≤ κ ≤ 0.52), and one was low ( κ = 0.19). This study showed that the FSS is a reliable scale, for both scoring methods, to be applied by telephone in elderly individuals.