Clinical and psychosocial predictors of illness duration from randomised controlled trial of prescribing strategies for sore throat

Abstract
The methods are reported in full elsewhere.3 General practitioners documented the clinical characteristics of 716 patients presenting with sore throat, who were then randomised to one of three prescribing strategies (antibiotics, no antibiotics, delayed antibiotics). Patients recorded satisfaction with the consultation and how well their concerns had been dealt with on four point Likert scales (very, moderately, slightly, not at all) after the consultation and kept a diary of symptoms until better Resolution of symptoms was documented by 579 patients (81%).3 The Likert scales showed good test-retest reliability.3 In 75 consecutive attenders Likert scales on satisfaction and dealing with concerns both demonstrated criterion validity: rank correlations with previously validated scales of the medical interview satisfaction scale questionnaire4 were 0.56 and 0.58 for overall satisfaction and 0.63 and 0.61 for the distress-relief subscale.