2025-03-312025-03-312023-05-03Schönenberg, A., Santos García, D., Mir Rivera, P., Wu, J.J., Heimrich, K.G., Mühlhammer, H.M. y Prell, T. (2023). Using network analysis to explore the validity and influential items of the Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire-39. Scientific reports, 13 (1), 7221. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-34412-4.2045-2322https://hdl.handle.net/11441/171211Quality of life (QoL) in people with Parkinson´s disease (PD) is commonly measured with the PD questionnaire 39 (PDQ 39), but its factor structure and construct validity have been questioned. To develop effective interventions to improve QoL, it is crucial to understand the connection between different PDQ 39 items and to assess the validity of PDQ 39 subscales. With a new approach based on network analysis using the extended Bayesian Information Criterion Graphical Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (EBICglasso) followed by factor analysis, we mostly replicated the original PDQ 39 subscales in two samples of PD patients (total N = 977). However, model fit was better when the “ignored” item was categorized into the social support instead of the communication subscale. In both study cohorts, “depressive mood”, “feeling isolated”, “feeling embarrassed”, and “having trouble getting around in public/needing company when going out” were identified as highly connected variables. This network approach can help to illustrate the relationship between different symptoms and direct interventional approaches in a more effective manner.application/pdf8 p.engAttribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Parkinson's DiseaseQuestionnaire-39info:eu-repo/semantics/articleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess10.1038/s41598-023-34412-4