Discriminative Performance and Preliminary Psychometric Evaluation of the Study-Specific Composite Questionnaire Including Vaginal Laxity Questionnaire.

introduction and hypothesisVaginal laxity (VL) is a subjective complaint for which no standardized diagnostic instrument is currently available. We aimed to assess the discriminative performance and preliminary psychometric properties of the study-specific composite questionnaire.

methodsIn this prospective single-center study, 119 French-speaking women were included: 29 consulting for bothersome VL and 90 women from the local community without self-identified VL symptoms. Participants completed a composite questionnaire including the French Vaginal Laxity Questionnaire (VLQ), exploratory semantic and anatomical items, and selected items from existing pelvic floor questionnaires. The primary objective was to select the optimal VLQ cutoff that best discriminated symptomatic from asymptomatic women, using the Youden index. Secondary objectives were temporal stability at 15 days, construct validity, and exploratory internal consistency of the supplementary multi-item symptom cluster.

resultsA VLQ score ≤ 2 best discriminated between groups, with 86.2% sensitivity, 90.0% specificity, and an area under the curve of 0.905. Symptomatic women reported lower VLQ scores and more frequently endorsed related descriptors and symptoms. Among 52 participants who completed repeat testing after 15 days, agreement was good to excellent for most items. Internal consistency applied only to the supplementary multi-item symptom cluster, not to the single-item VLQ.

conclusionsThe study-specific composite questionnaire showed strong discriminative performance and satisfactory temporal stability as a brief patient-reported measure of symptomatic VL.