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Validation of the German version of novel Eread reading chart

Session Details

Session Title: Quality of vision evaluation techniques

Session Date/Time: Tuesday 08/10/2013 | 14:00-16:00

Paper Time: 14:00

Venue: Elicium 2 (First Floor)

First Author: : A.Prinz AUSTRIA

Co Author(s): :    N. Hirnschall   A. Dexl   G. Grabner   O. Findl     

Abstract Details

Purpose:

To develop a validated standardized logarithmic reading chart "Eread" to be used in the clinical and research setting. Purpose of this study was to validate the German version of the Eread chart.

Setting:

Department of Ophthalmology, Hanusch Hospital, Vienna, Austria

Methods:

Thirty-nine German sentences were created for this project. Participants read all sentences using the same print size, contrast and luminance settings monocularly to assess reading time and reading errors for each sentence at 2 timepoints 3 weeks apart. Reliability was determined by calculating Cronbach’s alpha and coefficient of selectivity of all 39 sentences. The confidence interval of reading time was defined as the overall median ± 1.5 x standard deviation (SD). Only sentences that fulfilled this interval of reading time in 50% or more of all cases were considered for the final set of the Eread chart.

Results:

In total, 108 participants, 62 healthy volunteers (average age: 26.5; SD: 9.0; range: 18 - 74) and 46 pseudophakic patients (average age: 72.0; SD: 6.7; range: 56 – 84) were included in this study. Reliability analysis yielded an overall Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.994. The coefficient of selectivity of the 39 sentences varied from 0.87 to 0.93. Additionally, all sentences showed a high-corrected item-total correlation. Total median reading time for each sentence was 4.4 seconds (sec) (range: 4.0 – 5.0) at the baseline visit. All sentences except one fulfilled the validation criteria. Reading time was weakly influenced by the age of the participants (Coefficient of variance 0.036, p < 0.001).

Conclusions:

The German version of the Eread chart provided highly reliable inter-item and test-retest result in a heterogeneous group of participants with normal visual acuity. In the near future, the Eread are planned to be available in several languages (English, French, Italian, Spanish and in a second phase in most European languages) to allow comparison of reading function across European countries.

Financial Interest:

NONE