BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The Nottingham Extended Activities of Daily Living (EADL) Scale is frequently used in clinical practice and research in rehabilitation to assess patients’ independence in activities of daily living. Summative scores are used for this purpose, but this is problematic because the EADL is an ordinal level measurement scale. OBJECTIVES To examine the fit of data to the Rasc...

PURPOSE To report piloting and initial validation of the VQoL_CYP, a novel age-appropriate vision-related quality of life (VQoL) instrument for self-reporting by children with visual impairment (VI). METHODS Participants were a random patient sample of children with VI aged 10-15 years. 69 patients, drawn from patient databases at Great Ormond Street Hospital and Moorfields Eye Hospital, Unit...

The aim of this work was to evaluate the measurement properties and hierarchical item structure of the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). Data were taken from a cross-sectional study regarding fatigue and sleep-related aspects of PD. One hundred and eighteen consecutive patients with neurologist-diagnosed PD without significant co-morbidities (54% men; mea...

The 12-item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-12) is an abbreviated version of the SF-36, one of the most widely used patient-reported health outcome rating scales. Similar to the SF-36, it yields summary scores of physical and mental health (PCS and MCS, respectively). However, SF-36 derived PCS and MCS scores have not been found valid in neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease (PD). Her...

The model of hierarchical complexity (MHC) provides an analytic a priori measurement of the difficulty of tasks. As part of the theory of measurement in mathematical psychology, the model of hierarchical complexity (Commons and Pekker, 2008) defines a new kind of scale. It is important to note that the orders of hierarchical complexity of tasks are postulated to form an ordinal scale. A formal ...

BACKGROUND The Questionnaire to Identify Knee Symptoms (QuIKS) was recently developed to promote activity by screening for experiences related to early symptoms in people with emergent chronic knee pain problems, such as osteoarthritis (OA) - like knee pain. The main purpose of the current study was to evaluate measurement properties of the QuIKS using Rasch analysis in a sample of people with ...

This paper examines the sensitivity to change over time of the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Assessment Questionnaire (ALSAQ-40). Individuals' health status change was assessed by means of the Rasch-based Reliable Change Index (RCI) for ALSAQ-40 questionnaires completed on two occasions, three months apart. In addition, at follow-up respondents indicated how much change they had experienced sin...

The validation of ability scales describing multidimensional skills is always challenging, but not impossible. This study applies a multistage, criterion‐referenced approach that uses a framework of aligned texts and reading tasks to explore the validity of the ACTFL and related reading proficiency guidelines. Rasch measurement and statistical analyses of data generated in three separate langua...

BACKGROUND Rasch analysis with a focus on Differential Item Functioning (DIF) is increasingly used for examination of psychometric properties of health outcome measures. To take account of DIF in order to retain precision of measurement, split of DIF-items into separate sample specific items has become a frequently used technique. The purpose of the paper is to present and summarise recent adva...

Background The Patient-Rated Wrist Evaluation (PRWE) was developed as a wrist joint specific measure of pain and disability and evidence of sound validity has been accumulated through classical psychometric methods. Rasch analysis (RA) has been endorsed as a newer method for analyzing the clinical measurement properties of self-report outcome measures. The purpose of this study was to evaluate ...