Attributes of the MIDAS include:

Validated

For use in patients in the early recovery period following MI and in the long term.

Sensitive to change in health status

The MIDAS can readily be used to measure the outcome of any therapeutic intervention.

Reliable

Results show that the MIDAS is highly reliable, both in terms of internal reliability at the patient group level and, given the magnitude of the reliability results, potentially at the individual level.

Content

The MIDAS contains seven dimensions (physical activity; insecurity; emotional reaction; dependency; diet; concerns over medication; side effects) and so addresses a combination of concerns distinctively associated with MI patients.

Easy to use

Short and simple in format, so that it is applicable in a wide range of healthcare applications and results in high response rates. Although predominantly used as patient self-complete questionnaire the MIDAS can be interviewer administered.

Condition specific

Addresses aspects of MI not covered by generic PROs

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The MIDAS was designed and developed using methods consistent with best-practice in PRO instrument development:

1. Literature review,
2. Exploratory in-depth interviews with MI patients, until no new significant themes appeared,
3. Item generation – of a large pool of candidate questionnaire items (48 items),
4. Item reduction and scale generation – A postal survey (410 individuals with MI) was conducted to determine the acceptability of the measure. This step also enabled the development of a shorter, and more practical, instrument with fewer items, as well as the identification of sub-scales within the instrument,
5. Assessment of construct validity – A Follow up survey was undertaken to test the validity of the questionnaire in comparison with the SF-36, two clinical measures of outcome and a physical health assessment by a specialist cardiac nurse,

Further details of the development of the MIDAs are available in the Key References section.

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The function of the MIDAS is to indicate the extent of ill health in each of the seven domains assessed, therefore each dimension is scored separately using a simple scoring methodology. This allows for specific reporting on the efficacy of therapies on individual domains.

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The MIDAS is to date validated for pen and paper completion. Careful migration to a digital delivery format (for example screen based device) can be authorised. Please contact us for advice.

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