OBJECTIVE To evaluate the validity and reliability of the Portuguese language version of a work ability index. METHODS Cross sectional survey of a sample of 475 workers from an electrical company in the state of Sao Paulo, Southeastern Brazil (spread across ten municipalities in the Campinas area), carried out in 2005. The following aspects of the Brazilian version of the Work Ability Index w...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the psychometric characteristics of the Caregiver Preparedness Scale (CPS) in caregivers of stroke survivors. BACKGROUND Caregiver preparedness can have an important impact on both the caregiver and the stroke survivor. The validity and reliability of the CPS has not been tested for the stroke-caregiver population. METHODS We used a cross-sectional design to study a sa...

To test the reliability of the Wisconsin Gait Scale (WGS) and the Gait Abnormality Rating Scale (GARS) for hemiplegic Chinese subjects, as well as to establish the concurrent validity of these two scales with clinical measurements. [Subjects] Twenty hemiplegic stroke subjects were recruited for this study. [Methods] The subjects walked along a 10-meter walkway and their gait was videotaped from...

OBJECTIVE The study objective was to determine the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy - Ascites Index (FACIT-AI). METHODS A forward-backward translation procedure was adopted to develop the Chinese version of the FACIT-AI, which was tested in 69 patients with malignant ascites. Cronbach's α, split-half reliability, and test-...

This paper aims to propose a bootstrap method for characterizing the effect of uncertainty in shear strength parameters on slope reliability. The procedure for a traditional slope reliability analysis with fixed distributions of shear strength parameters is presented first. Then, the variations of the mean and standard deviation of shear strength parameters and the Akaike Information Criterion ...

The current paper presents an effective methodology for assessing the reliability of electromagnetic designs when considering uncertainties of design variables. To achieve this goal, the reliability index approach based on the first-order reliability method is adopted to deal with probabilistic constraint functions, which are expressed in terms of random design variables. The proposed method is...

In this paper, the network reconfiguration in the presence of distributed generation units with the aim of improving the reliability of the network is studied. For this purpose four reliability parameters in the objective function are considered, which is average energy not supplied system average interruption frequency index, system average interruption duration index and momentary average int...

OBJECTIVES To assess the reliability and validity of the Brazilian version of the Attentional Function Index. METHOD Methodological study. The sample was made up of 138 students from an undergraduate nursing course. The psychometric properties were assessed through the convergent construct validity, using the Brazilian version of the Attentional Function Index and the Portuguese-language vers...

MOTIVATION The pairwise alignment of biological sequences obtained from an algorithm will in general contain both correct and incorrect parts. Hence, to allow for a valid interpretation of the alignment, the local trustworthiness of the alignment has to be quantified. RESULTS We present a novel approach that attributes a reliability index to every pair of residues, including gapped regions, i...

In order to evaluate the reliability of radiological parameters, we retrospectively reviewed the anteroposterior pelvic x-rays of 30 hips in 15 patients with developmental dysplasia of the hip. The following parameters were studied: acetabular index, center-edge angle, c/b ratio, Sharp's angle and teardrop figure. Each of the two authors measured the parameters twice on two separate days. Stati...