background and purpose: using valid and reliable instruments is an important way for collecting data in qualitative researches. this paper is a report of a study conducted to examine the extent of psychometric properties of the scales in research papers published in journal of advanced nursing. methods: in this study, the journal of advanced nursing was chosen for systematic review. all article...

BACKGROUND After incomplete spinal cord injury (iSCI), patients suffer important sensorimotor impairments, such as abnormal locomotion patterns and spasticity. Complementary to current clinical diagnostic procedures, the analysis of muscle synergies has emerged as a promising tool to study muscle coordination, which plays a major role in the control of multi-limb functional movements. OBJECTI...

Large governmental payments for ecosystem services programs (PES) have frequently been criticized for their limited environmental effectiveness. The use of local intermediaries has been considered as one possibility for improving the environmental effectiveness of such programs. German Landcare Associations (LCAs) have been identified as one intermediary that holds the potential to positively i...

LEGO building materials have been adapted as a therapeutic modality for increasing motivation to participate in social skills intervention, and providing a medium through which children with social and communication handicaps can effectively interact. A 3 year retrospective study of long-term outcome for autistic spectrum children participating in LEGO therapy (N = 60) compared Vineland Adaptiv...

BACKGROUND Parents of children with cerebral palsy (CP) often experience high levels of stress. Little is known however on the different sources of stress parents experience. The purpose of the present study was to explore the relation between aspects of parental distress in the parenting role and the child's limitations in functional skills and the child's behavioural difficulties, in parents ...

The importance of emotional aspects in developing cognitive and social abilities has already been underlined by many authors even if there is no unanimous agreement on the factors constituting adaptive abilities, nor is there any on the way to measure them or on the relation between adaptive ability and cognitive level. The purposes of this study was to test the psychometric characteristics of ...

Nowadays, Value engineering (V.E.) is considered as a tool of construction management that can help companies to improve their procedures, services and final products regarding the client’s needs, as an end user, with respect to time, cos t and quality. The V.E. process has evolved from previous methods based on the concept of value and functional approach. These methods were pioneered by Lawre...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to establish the construct validity of the Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six (FOCUS©). This measure is reflective of concepts in the International Classification of Functioning Disability and Health--Children and Youth framework. It was developed to capture 'real-world' changes (e.g. communicative participation) in preschoolers' communication f...

In this paper, I show that scales (or hierarchies) have been appealed to in various functions: They have been used to formulate descriptive generalizations (on a single language), and to formulate cross-linguistic generalizations. They have also been used for binary relations, and for implicational relations among more than two items on the scale. This yields four uses of scales (descriptive re...

OBJECTIVE To develop a clinical and instrumental protocol to assess the postural and dynamic effects following treatment with botulinum neurotoxin A in children with cerebral palsy affected by spastic equinus. DESIGN Open study, in which every patient served as his or her own control. PATIENTS Ten sequential children with cerebral palsy and spastic dynamic equinus foot. METHODS Botulinum ...