Health Measurement Scales. a Practical Guide to Their Development and Use

Description

Clinicians and those in health sciences are frequently called upon to measure subjective states such as attitudes, feelings, quality of life, educational achievement and aptitude, and learning style in their patients. This fourth edition of Health Measurement Scales enables these groups, who often have limited knowledge of statistics, to both develop scales to measure non-tangible health outcomes, and better evaluate and differentiate between existing tools.

It covers how the individual items are developed; various biases that can affect responses (eg social desirability, yea-saying, framing); various response options; how to select the best items in the set; how to combine them into a scale; and then how to determine the reliability and validity of the scale. It concludes with a discussion of ethical issues that may be encountered, and guidelines for reporting the results of the scale development process. Appendices include a comprehensive guide to finding existing scales, and a brief introduction to exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. It synthesizes the theory of scale construction with practical advice, making it the ultimate guide to how to develop and validate measurement scales that are to be used in the health sciences.

• Assists the reader in how to develop and evaluate a scale, presenting steps in scale construction in a logical order
• Enables readers to both develop scales to measure non-tangible health outcomes, and better evaluate and choose among existing instruments
• Includes extensive discussion of the newer developments in scale development, in addition to more traditional methods
• Material in this book has been developed by the extensive experience of the authors in teaching this subject, developing scales, and on student and reader feedback.
• Written in an accessible style, making it suitable for those with no experience of statistics

New to this edition

• Heavily revised chapter on generalizability theory, that leads the reader through the logic of the technique, and includes instruction on using a new, free-access computer program to aid calcuation
• Includes a new chapter on Reporting Test Results, distilling both sets of guidelines that are currently in use across healthcare
• Differentiates between validity and validation, continuing discussion begun in the third edition, and taking these ideas to a logical conclusion
• All chapters have been updated to reflect current research and theory

Table of Contents

1: Introduction
2: Basic concepts
3: Devising the items
4: Scaling responses
5: Selecting the items
6: Biases in responding
7: From items to scales
8: Reliability
9: Generalizability theory
10: Validity
11: Measuring change
12: Item response theory
13: Methods of administration
14: Ethical considerations
15: Reporting test results
Appendices