Health Measurement Scales: A practical guide to their development and use (Oxford Medical Publications)

by David Streiner (Author), Geoff Norman (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $4.49

  This is the new edition of the highly successful practical guide for clinicians developing tools to measure subjective states, attitudes or non-tangible outcomes in their patients. It is widely used by people from many disciplines, who have only a limited knowledge of statistics. This thoroughly updated edition of Health Measurement Scales, Third Edition gives more details on cognitive requirements in answering questions, and how this influences scale development. There is now an expanded discussion of generalizability theory, a completely revised chapter on Item Response Theory and many revisions are included, based on the latest research findings. These features combine to provide the most up-to-date guide to measuring scale development available. It synthesizes the theory of scale construction with practical advice, culled from the literature and the authors' experience, about how to develop and validate measurement scales to be used in the health sciences. The theory goes into issues of reliability, generalizability theory, validity, the measurement of change, the cognitive requirements of answering questions, and item response theory. Practical issues cover devising the items, biases that may affect the responses, pre-testing and weeding out poorly performing items, combining items into scales, setting cut points, and the practical issues of using scales in various ways, such as face-to-face interviews; mailed or telephone-administered surveys; and over the Internet. One chapter also discusses some of the ethical issues that scale developers and users should be aware of. Appendices lead the reader to other readings; sources of already developed scales and items; and a very brief introduction to exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis.

• Used

  Paperback
  1991

  $3.36

  The increased awareness of the impact of health care on the quality of human life means that clinical researchers working in a wide spectrum of disciplines need information about soft measures such as pain, depression, or function. A sound, scientific, and reproducible system of measurement is required by clinicians and researchers in disciplines such as psychiatry, rheumatology, oncology and other health professions such as nursing, physiotherapy and occupational therapy. Based on a graduate course developed by the authors at McMaster University, this book describes the principles of measurement, developed in education and psychology, for a health sciences audience. The book discusses both traditional topics in measurement, eg item selection and reliability, and contemporary topics such as generalizability theory and latent tract theory, covering all the steps necessary in developing a new measurement scale, from the initial literature search to the design and analysis of reliability and validity studies. Many of the standard topics are addressed using a minimum of algebra and technical vocabulary. Although the examples are drawn from health sciences, the book should also be useful to all students of measurement in the social and behavioural sciences.