Reliability and Validity of Mediterranean Colorectal Cancer Registry

Although central cancer registry programs have many benefits (the determination of national cancer incidences, strategic planning of health care systems etc.) data entry in such programs is often collected in restricted variables and physicians participating in the registration process may not be able to interact with each other during the management of their patients. For these reasons, a complete record in national general cancer registries can only be established retrospectively and the direct contribution to patient-specific diagnosis / treatment is limited. On the other hand, local registries have many advantages like easy integration of the data into the hospital electronic systems and multidisciplinary proactive enrollment.

Thus, characteristics of ongoing colorectal cancer registries (Swedish, South Australian, Oregon, Lublin, Ontario etc.) reported previously in the English medical literature are reviewed and an electronic form is tabulated for the Mediterranean Colorectal Cancer Registry. This study will examine the validity and reliability of this registry. Aspects of the analysis will cover construct validity, content validity, parallel forms reliability, test-retest reliability, split half internal consistency and face validity.