OBJECTIVE To evaluate the measurement properties of the Upper Extremity Functional Status module of the Orthotics and Prosthetics User Survey (OPUS). DESIGN Methodological research on an outcome measure administered by clinical interview. PATIENTS A convenience sample of 61 adults who had unilateral upper limb amputations and completed rehabilitation at the Institute for Rehabilitation in L...

BACGROUND Resilience has been defined as the capacity or the ability to rebound from and positively adapt to significant stressors, despite experiences of significant adversity or trauma. To capture to what extent an individual copes with stress in a resilient fashion the Brief Resilient Coping Scale (BRCS) was developed. This tool was validated in people with chronic disease, such as rheumatoi...

OBJECTIVES To design and validate a questionnaire to measure visual symptoms related to exposure to computers in the workplace. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING Our computer vision syndrome questionnaire (CVS-Q) was based on a literature review and validated through discussion with experts and performance of a pretest, pilot test, and retest. Content validity was evaluated by occupational health, opt...

The purpose of this research was to develop an objective, linear measure of mothers’ confidence to care for children assisted with medical technology in their homes. Three technologies were addressed, namely, trachesotomy, tracheostomy and ventilator, and BiPAP/CPAP. All mothers (N=53) were from Chicago, USA and primary caregivers for children assisted with medical technologies. The theoretical...

Performance appraisals have been frequently investigated for inaccuracies attributable to raters. In addition to rater contributions, problems in measurement can arise from properties of instrumentation. If administered items do not parallel the full range of employee performance, a restriction of range can occur. Here employees are rated similarly (no distinction made) not because of rater err...

BACKGROUND A person's sense of coherence (SOC) reflects their perception that the world is meaningful and predictable, and impacts their ability to deal with stressors in a health-promoting manner. A valid, reliable, and sensitive measure of SOC is needed to advance health promotion research based on this concept. The 13-item Sense of Coherence Scale (SOC-13) is widely used, but we reported in ...

This paper describes a class of rater effects that depict rater-by-time interactions. We refer to this class of rater effects as DRIFT differential rater functioning over time. This article describes several types of DRIFT (primacy/recency, differential centrality/extremism, and practice/fatigue) and Rasch measurement procedures designed to identify these types of DRIFT in rating data. These pr...