Validity and concordance of self-reported diabetes mellitus by the elderly

The scope of this study was to verify the validity and concordance of self-reported diabetes (DM) by the elderly in Campina Grande, State of Paraiba. It involved a cross-sectional home-based study, conducted with 362 elderly people aged 60 years of age and above registered in the Family Health Strategy (FHS) Program in Campina Grande, State of Paraiba. A sensitivity calculation, specificity and positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) in relation to demographic and socioeconomic variables was carried out to verify the validity and reliability of self-reported DM. The Kappa test was used to verify the concordance between the diagnosis and the reporting of the disease. Among the study participants, 67.4% were women. The prevalence of diagnosed DM of 14.1% and self-reported DM of 18.1% was observed Moderate sensitivity (58.8%), excellent specificity (87.8%), moderate PPV (44.8%) and excellent NPV (92.7%), and moderate concordance of self-reported DM (Kappa = 0.413 p < 0.001) was observed. In this study, due to moderate validity and concordance of self-reported DM among the elderly, it is considered not to be advisable that self-reported DM should be used as a disease prevalence indicator in the population studied.