Agreement Between Home-Based Measurement of Stool Calprotectin and ELISA Results for Monitoring Inflammatory Bowel Disease Activity.

BACKGROUND & AIMS: An increasing number of physicians use repeated measurements of stool calprotectin to monitor intestinal inflammation in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs). A lateral flow-based rapid test allows patients to measure their own stool calprotectin values at home. The test comes with a software application (IBDoc; Bühlmann Laboratories AG, Schönenbuch, Switzerland) that turns a smartphone camera into a results reader. We compared results from this method with those from the hospital-based reader (Quantum Blue; Bühlmann Laboratories AG) and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) analysis. METHODS: In a single-center comparison study, we asked 101 participants (10 years of age or older) in the Netherlands to perform the IBDoc measurement on stool samples collected at home, from June 2015 to October 2016. Participants then sent the residual extraction fluid and a fresh specimen from the same bowel movement to our pediatric and adult IBD center at the University Medical Center Groningen, where the level of calprotectin was measured by the Quantum Blue reader and ELISA analysis, respectively. The primary outcome was the agreement of results between IBDoc and the Quantum Blue and ELISA analyses, determined by Bland-Altman plot analysis. RESULTS: We received 152 IBDoc results, 138 samples of residual extraction fluid for Quantum Blue analysis, and 170 fresh stool samples for ELISA analysis. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient was 0.94 for results obtained by IBDoc vs Quantum Blue and 0.85 for results obtained by IBDoc vs ELISA. At the low range of calprotectin level (<500 µg/g), 91% of IBDoc-Quantum Blue results were within the predefined limits of agreement (±100 µg/g), and 71% of IBDoc-ELISA results were in agreement. At the high range of calprotectin level (≥500 µg/g), 81% of IBDoc-Quantum Blue results were within the predefined limits of agreement (±200 µg/g) and 64% of IBDoc-ELISA results were in agreement. CONCLUSIONS: Measurements of fecal levels of calprotectin made with home-based lateral flow method were in agreement with measurements made by Quantum Blue and ELISA, as long as concentrations were <500 µg/g. For patients with concentrations of fecal calprotectin above this level, findings from IBDoc should be confirmed by another method. (Netherlands Trial Registration Number: NTR5133).

Measuring the Quality of University Lectures: Development and Validation of the Instructional Skills Questionnaire (ISQ).

In higher education, student ratings are often used to evaluate and improve the quality of courses and professors' instructional skills. Unfortunately, student-rating questionnaires rarely generate specific feedback for professors to improve their instructional skills. The impact of student ratings on professors' instructional skills has proven to be low. This study concerns the psychometric properties of the Instructional Skills Questionnaire (ISQ), a new theory-based student-rating-of-teaching questionnaire with specific questions concerning lecturing skills. The ISQ is administered after a single lecture. This way, it serves as a formative feedback instrument for university professors during courses to assist them to improve and (re-) evaluate their skills if necessary. The ISQ contains seven dimensions of professors' instructional skills and three student (self perceived) learning outcomes. In this study, Dutch students in 75 courses rated three 90-minute lectures (T1, T2 and T3) of their respective professors using the ISQ. In total, 14,298 ISQ-forms were used to rate 225 lectures. The teacher level reliabilities of the seven dimensions were found to be good at each measurement occasion. In addition, confirmatory multilevel factor analysis confirmed a seven dimensional factor structure at the teacher level at each measurement occasion. Furthermore, specific teacher level factors significantly predicted students' (self-assessed) learning outcomes. These results partly supported the proposed theoretical framework on the relationship between the ISQ teaching dimensions and the student learning process, and provided evidence for the construct validity of the instrument. In sum, the ISQ is found to be a reliable and valid instrument, which can be used by professors and faculty development centers to assess and improve university teaching.