BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Upon accepting the invitation to participate in the 2003 National Nutrition Health Survey (NNHeS), the Philippine Neurological Association (PNA), through its research committee, decided to create and validate a questionnaire to determine the prevalences for stroke, Parkinsonism, dementia, migraine and epilepsy. This first of a two-part paper describes the validation of the 10 item PNA questionnaire.

METHODOLOGY: The five participating PNA councils contributed two questions that they believed were best able to capture the presence of the particular disease of their interest. These questions taken together formed the ten-item PNA questionnaire. Trained interviewers administered the questionnaire in neurology out-patient clinics on consecutive patients who agreed to join the study. Using neurologists' clinical diagnosis as gold standard after a face-to-face interview with the patient, the sensitivity and specificity of each item of the questionnaire were calculated.

RESULTS: The sensitivity and specificity of each item of the questionnaire showed modest results. This result is understandable for neurological syndromes with different clinical presentations having different subtypes and severity.

IMPLICATIONS: The validated PNA questionnaire was submitted to become part of the NNHeS survey. (Author)