Demographic Correlates of Fatigue in the US General Population: Results from the PROMIS Initiative, 2011, Junghaenel et al

Demographic Correlates of Fatigue in the US General Population: Results from the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Initiative

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3744100/. free access

Abstract
Objective
To investigate demographic correlates of fatigue in the US general population using a new instrument developed by the Patient-Reported Outcome Measurement Information System (PROMIS). First, we examined correlations between the new PROMIS instrument and the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Fatigue (FACIT-F) and the SF-36v2 Vitality subscale. Based on prior findings, we further examined several demographic correlates of fatigue: whether women would report higher levels of fatigue compared to men, and whether married people would experience lower levels of fatigue compared to unmarried people. We also explored the relationship between age, education, and fatigue.

Methods
Analyses were based on fatigue ratings by 666 individuals from the general population. Fatigue was assessed with the new PROMIS instrument, the FACIT-F, and the SF-36v2 Vitality subscale. Differences in fatigue were examined with independent samples t-tests and univariate ANOVAs.

Results
The three fatigue instruments were highly intercorrelated. Confirming prior reports, women reported higher levels of fatigue than men. Married participants reported significantly less fatigue than their unmarried counterparts. Univariate ANOVAs yielded a main effect for participants’ age; younger participants gave significantly higher fatigue ratings. We also found a main effect for participants’ education. Participants with a masters or doctoral degree had significantly lower ratings of fatigue than participants with some college education and education up to high school.

Conclusion
Female gender, not being married, younger age and lower educational attainment were each associated with increased fatigue in the general population and the three fatigue instruments performed equally well in detecting the observed associations.

 

The reason I wanted to post this paper is that it gives the level of fatigue reported by a general population sample, using a range of fatigue measurement tools (all surveys).



Females reported higher levels of fatigue than men using every scale - quite a lot more. And it's not because the females are, on average, older. The highest scores are in the child bearing and rearing years - age 30 to 44, and in the years when people often feel they have to do long hours at work to get ahead.

If researchers think that ME/CFS or Long Covid is mostly just fatigue, and do surveys to quantify the level of fatigue, it's not surprising that they find a higher level of reported fatigue in females. That on its own should not automatically lead them to assume ME/CFS or Long Covid is more common in females.

If surveys are to be used, we need to see results from a healthy control cohort, to ground the results in some sort of reality.

The same goes for things like depression and anxiety too. So often we see much being made of the percentage of people with ME/CFS or Long Covid who have depression. But the percentage is typically the same or less than that for the general population, let alone that for people dealing with a chronic illness.