Health Measurement Scales

Clinicians and those in health sciences are frequently called upon to measure subjective states such as attitudes, feelings, quality of life, educational achievement and aptitude, and learning style in their patients. This fifth edition of Health Measurement Scales enables these groups to both develop scales to measure non-tangible health outcomes, and better evaluate and differentiate between existing tools.Health Measurement Scales is the ultimate guide to developing and validating measurement scales that are to be used in the health sciences. The book covers how the individual items are developed; various biases that can affect responses (e.g. social desirability, yea-saying, framing); various response options; how to select the best items in the set; how to combine them into a scale; and finally how to determine the reliability and validity of the scale. It concludes with a discussionof ethical issues that may be encountered, and guidelines for reporting the results of the scale development process. Appendices include a comprehensive guide to finding existing scales, and a brief introduction to exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, making this book a must-read for anypractitioner dealing with this kind of data.

1 Introduction to Health Measurement Scales; 2 Basic concepts; 3 Devising the items; 4 Scaling responses; 5 Selecting the items; 6 Biases in responding; 7 From items to scales; 8 Reliability; 9 Generalizability theory; 10 Validity; 11 Measuring change; 12 Item response theory; 13 Methods of administration; 14 Ethical considerations; 15 Reporting test results; Appendix A: Where to find tests; Appendix B:A (very) brief introduction to factor analysis; Author Index; Subject Index