Figure 4From: Measuring patient-reported outcomes: moving beyond misplaced common sense to hard science Brief checklist for assessing the quality of PRO instruments. The specific requirements of a good-quality PROM are shown. These qualities should be clearly reported in peer-reviewed publications. In many cases (including that of the most commonly employed PROMs), this information is not available. New instrument development methodologies, in particular the establishment of the scaling properties of a measure (item response theory), are essential to ensuring the quality of PROMs.Back to article page