Search PubMed⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search PubMed

Results for “Validity”

Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 649 records · Page 36Linked to original sources
PubMed2000

Validation of a questionnaire measuring patient satisfaction with general practitioner services.

BACKGROUND: In order that patient satisfaction may be assessed in a meaningful way, measures that are valid and reliable are required. This study was undertaken to assess the construct validity and internal reliability of the previously developed Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire (PSQ). METHOD: A total of 1390 patients from five practices in the North of England, the Midlands, and Scotland completed the questionnaire. Responses were checked for construct validity (including confirmatory factor analysis to check the factor structure of the scale) and internal reliability. RESULTS: Confirmatory factor analysis showed that items loaded on the appropriate factors in a five factor model (doctors, nurses, access, appointments, and facilities). Scores on the specific subscales showed highly significant positive correlations with general satisfaction subscale scores suggesting construct validity. Also, the prediction (derived from past research) that older people would be more satisfied with the service was borne out by the results (F (4, 1312) = 57.10; p < 0.0001), providing further construct validation. The five specific subscales (doctors, nurses, access, appointments, and facilities), the general satisfaction subscale, and the questionnaire as a whole were found to have high internal reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.74-0.95). CONCLUSION: The results suggest that the PSQ is a valid and internally reliable tool for assessing patient satisfaction with general practitioner services.

Factor Analysis, Statistical↗
PubMed2005

[Texas revised inventory of grief: adaptation to Spanish, reliability and validity].

OBJECTIVES: To adapt into Spanish the Texas Revised Inventory of Grief (TRIG) of Faschinbaguer et al (1977, 1981) and to examine its reliability and validity. DESIGN: Two stages: a) cross-culture adaptation of a questionnaire, and b) cross-sectional study of reliability and validity. SETTING: Primary care teams in Vizcaya, north of Spain. PARTICIPANTS: 118 people who had been widowed between 3 months and 3 years before the study. MAIN MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS: Cross-culture adaptation: the TRIG was translated from American English, then back-translated and finally compared with the version in American Spanish by Grabowski & Frantz (1993). Reliability: the Cronbach's alpha coefficients (internal consistency) of the 2 TRIG scales were 0.75 and 0.86. Factorial validity: all items except one threw saturation >0.40 on the 2 factors extracted from the varimax rotation. Validity by hypothesis: the TRIG scales showed differences (P<.05) between the grieving in terms of the expected or unexpected character of death, the place where death occurred and time elapsed since the death. The scores on the adapted TRIG were similar to scores on the American Spanish TRIG for Latins and higher than those on the original TRIG and the American Spanish TRIG for Anglo-saxons. Convergent validity: the 2 TRIG scales correlated positively (P<.05) with all the clinical scales on the Inventory of Grief Experiences of Sanders et al (1985) and García García et al (2001). CONCLUSIONS: In the evaluation of grief due to the death of the spouse, the TRIG adapted to Spanish is as reliable and valid as the original version.

Aged↗
PubMed2004

Evaluation of GERD symptoms during therapy. Part II. Psychometric evaluation and validation of the new questionnaire ReQuest in erosive GERD.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Evaluation of the response of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) symptoms to treatment would be facilitated by a brief, valid, reliable and responsive, self-assessed GERD-sensitive scale. We therefore developed the Reflux Questionnaire (ReQuest). This publication describes the psychometric evaluation and validation of ReQuest. METHODS: This second phase of development was based on data from a clinical trial of patients with erosive GERD who received pantoprazole 20 or 40 mg daily for 28 days and completed weekly the long, and daily the short version of ReQuest. The psychometric analyses of ReQuest included internal consistency, test-retest reliability and responsiveness. Construct validity was evaluated by comparison with the Gastrointestinal Symptom Rating Scale (GSRS) and the Psychological General Well-Being (PGWB) scale. RESULTS: Validation of ReQuest indicated very high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.90) and test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient 0.94 (long-long) and 0.86 (short-short)). This was also the case for the two subscales ReQuest-GI and ReQuest-WSO with Cronbach's alpha coefficients of 0.84 and 0.81. Responsiveness was high with a responsiveness index of >0.8 at day 28. Construct validity was good. CONCLUSION: ReQuest is a highly reliable, valid and responsive self-assessment tool for evaluating treatment response in patients with erosive GERD, and can be applied daily.

Endpoint Determination↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Reliability and validity of a measure of perceived diabetes and dietary competence in African American women with type 2 diabetes.

PURPOSE: A general measure of perceived diabetes and dietary competence (PDDC) was developed to assess a person's sense of confidence and perceived behavioral control in diabetes and dietary self-management. Internal structure, reliability, and construct validity were evaluated. METHODS: There were 2 samples of African American women with type 2 diabetes; 226 patients in the development sample and 225 patients in the validation sample. Factor analysis, Cronbach's coefficient alpha, and correlation analysis were used to assess reliability and validity of the PDDC measure. RESULTS: Three subscales were empirically determined by factor analysis: positive competence, negative dietary competence, and negative control. Cronbach's alphas for all subscales were good. Predicted relationships with measures of perceived health competence, self-efficacy, social support, and perceived dietary barriers were largely supported in construct validation. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides initial support for the internal reliability and validity of a perceived diabetes and dietary competence measure. Further research is needed to determine its validity in other samples of African Americans with type 2 diabetes and its clinical utility in evaluating diabetes self-management training.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

ECVAM's activities in validating alternative tests for skin corrosion and irritation.

ECVAM has funded and managed validation studies on in vitro tests for skin corrosion, resulting in the validities of four in vitro tests being endorsed by the ECVAM Scientific Advisory Committee: the rat skin transcutaneous electrical resistance (TER) assay, two tests based on the use of commercial reconstituted human skin equivalents, EPISKIN and EpiDerm, and another commercially-produced test, CORROSITEX. In the European Union (EU), a new test method on skin corrosion (B.40), incorporating the rat skin TER and human skin model assays, was included in Annex V of Directive 67/548/EEC in mid-2000, thereby making the use of in vitro alternatives for skin corrosion testing of chemicals mandatory in the EU. At the recommendation of its Skin Irritation Task Force, ECVAM has funded prevalidation studies on five in vitro tests for acute skin irritation: EpiDerm, EPISKIN, PREDISKIN, the pig-ear test, and the mouse-skin integrity function test (SIFT). However, none of the tests met the criteria (set by the Management Team for the studies) for inclusion in a large-scale formal validation study. Thus, to date, there are no validated in vitro tests for predicting the dermal irritancy of chemicals. Following further work on the EPISKIN, EpiDerm and SIFT test protocols and/or prediction models after the completion of the prevalidation studies, it appears that the modified tests could meet the performance criteria defined for progression to a validation study. This will now be assessed independently by the ECVAM Skin Irritation Task Force, with the objective of taking a decision before the end of 2002 on whether to conduct a formal validation study.

Animal Testing Alternatives↗
PubMed2006

Designing validation studies more efficiently according to the modular approach: retrospective analysis of the EPISKIN test for skin corrosion.

It is claimed that the modular approach to validation, which involves seven independent modules, will make the assessment of test validity more flexible and more efficient. In particular, the aspects of between-laboratory variability and predictive capacity are formally separated. Here, the main advantage of the approach is to offer the opportunity for reduced labour, and thus to allow study designs to be more time efficient and cost effective. The impact of this separation was analysed by taking the ECVAM validation study on in vitro methods for skin corrosivity as an example of a successful validation study - two of its methods triggered new OECD test guidelines. Lean study designs, which reduced the number of tests required by up to 60%, were simulated with the original validation data for the EPISKIN model. By using resampling techniques, we were able to demonstrate the effects of the lean designs on three between-laboratory variability measures and on the predictive capacity in terms of sensitivity and specificity, in comparison with the original study. Overall, the study results, especially the levels of confidence, were only slightly affected by the lean designs that were modelled. It is concluded that the separation of the two modules is a promising way to speed-up prospective validation studies and to substantially reduce costs, without compromising study quality.

Animal Testing Alternatives↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Validation of two risk models for perioperative mortality in patients undergoing elective abdominal aortic aneurysm surgery.

The authors validated 2 clinical risk models for perioperative mortality in patients scheduled for elective open abdominal aortic aneurysm surgery (AAA surgery). They studied 361 patients who underwent elective AAA surgery between 1991 and 1999 (validation population). Two clinical risk models were validated. The first was developed in 238 patients from Leiden University Hospital (Leiden risk model). The Leiden risk model was modified to provide predictions for the validation population based on 6 predictors including age, gender, a history of previous myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, renal disease, and pulmonary disease. The second was a recently published simpler risk model developed in 820 patients in the UK Small Aneurysm Trial (UK risk model) and included 3 predictors (age and renal and pulmonary comorbidity). Logistic regression was used to quantify the relationship between predictors and outcome (mortality within 30 days of surgery). Validation further included the concordance statistic (c-statistic) for discriminative ability and the Hosmer-Lemeshow test for model reliability. The perioperative mortality in the validation population was 6.6% (24/361). Predictors had similar odds ratios, with particularly strong effects of congestive heart failure, pulmonary disease, and renal impairment. The Leiden risk model had reasonable good ability (c-statistic 0.72) and showed adequate calibration (chi(2)=3.3, p=0.97). It could particularly identify a low-risk group. The UK risk model did not perform well (c-statistic 0.60), showing statistically significant lack of fit (chi(2)=64.9, p<0.001). This study showed similar predictive ability of previously identified predictors for perioperative mortality. The Leiden risk model could identify a low-risk group, while the UK risk model showed a relatively poor performance. The current study supports the use of the Leiden model for preoperative risk assessment.

Aged↗
PubMed2006

Identifying dyspepsia in the Greek population: translation and validation of a questionnaire.

BACKGROUND: Studies on clinical issues, including diagnostic strategies, are considered to be the core content of general practice research. The use of standardised instruments is regarded as an important component for the development of Primary Health Care research capacity. Demand for epidemiological cross-cultural comparisons in the international setting and the use of common instruments and definitions valid to each culture is bigger than ever. Dyspepsia is a common complaint in primary practice but little is known with respect to its incidence in Greece. There are some references about the Helicobacter Pylori infection in patients with functional dyspepsia or gastric ulcer in Greece but there is no specific instrument for the identification of dyspepsia. This paper reports on the validation and translation into Greek, of an English questionnaire for the identification of dyspepsia in the general population and discusses several possibilities of its use in the Greek primary care. METHODS: The selected English postal questionnaire for the identification of people with dyspepsia in the general population consists of 30 items and was developed in 1995. The translation and cultural adaptation of the questionnaire has been performed according to international standards. For the validation of the instrument the internal consistency of the items was established using the alpha coefficient of Chronbach, the reproducibility (test - retest reliability) was measured by kappa correlation coefficient and the criterion validity was calculated against the diagnosis of the patients' records using also kappa correlation coefficient. RESULTS: The final Greek version of the postal questionnaire for the identification of dyspepsia in the general population was reliably translated. The internal consistency of the questionnaire was good, Chronbach's alpha was found to be 0.88 (95% CI: 0.81-0.93), suggesting that all items were appropriate to measure. Kappa coefficient for reproducibility (test - retest reliability) was found 0.66 (95% CI: 0.62-0.71), whereas the kappa analysis for criterion validity was 0.63 (95% CI: 0.36-0.89). CONCLUSION: This study indicates that the Greek translation is comparable with the English-language version in terms of validity and reliability, and is suitable for epidemiological research within the Greek primary health care setting.

Dyspepsia↗
PubMed2003

Validation of the Rheumatoid and Arthritis Outcome Score (RAOS) for the lower extremity.

BACKGROUND: Patients with inflammatory joint diseases tend due to new treatments to be more physically active; something not taken into account by currently used outcome measures. The Rheumatoid and Arthritis Outcome Score (RAOS) is an adaptation of the Knee injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) and evaluates functional limitations of importance to physically active people with inflammatory joint diseases and problems from the lower extremities. The aim of the study was to test the RAOS for validity, reliability and responsiveness. METHODS: 119 in-patients with inflammatory joint disease (51% RA) admitted to multidisciplinary care, mean age 56 (+/-13), 73% women, mean disease duration 18 (+/-14) yr were consecutively enrolled. They all received the RAOS, the SF-36, the HAQ and four subscales of the AIMS2 twice during their stay for test of validity and responsiveness. Test-retest reliability of the RAOS questionnaire was calculated on 52 patients using the first or second administration and an additional mailed questionnaire. RESULTS: The RAOS met set criteria of reliability and validity. The random intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC 2,1) for the five subscales ranged from 0.76 to 0.92, indicating that individual comparisons were possible except for the subscale Sport and Recreation Function. Inter-item correlation measured by Cronbach's alpha ranged from 0.78 to 0.95. When measuring construct validity the highest correlations occurred between subscales intended to measure similar constructs. Change over time (24 (+/- 7) days) due to multidisciplinary care was significant for all subscales (p < 0.001). The effect sizes ranged from 0.30-0.44 and were considered small to medium. All the RAOS subscales were more responsive than the HAQ. Some of the SF-36 subscales and the AIMS2 subscales were more responsive than the RAOS subscales. CONCLUSION: It is possible to adapt already existing outcome measures to assess other groups with musculoskeletal difficulties in the lower extremity. The RAOS is a reliable, valid and responsive outcome instrument for assessment of multidisciplinary care. To fully validate the RAOS further studies are needed in other populations.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed2004

Self-administration and interviewer-administration of the German Chronic Respiratory Questionnaire: instrument development and assessment of validity and reliability in two randomised studies.

BACKGROUND: Assessment of health-related quality of life (HRQL) is important in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Despite the high prevalence of COPD in Germany, Switzerland and Austria there is no validated disease-specific instrument available. The objective of this study was to translate the Chronic Respiratory Questionnaire (CRQ), one of the most widely used respiratory HRQL questionnaires, into German, develop an interviewer- and self-administered version including both standardised and individualised dyspnoea questions, and validate these versions in two randomised studies. METHODS: We recruited three groups of patients with COPD in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The 44 patients of the first group completed the CRQ during pilot testing to adapt the CRQ to German-speaking patients. We then recruited 80 patients participating in pulmonary rehabilitation programs to assess internal consistency reliability and cross-sectional validity of the CRQ. The third group consisted of 38 patients with stable COPD without an intervention to assess test-retest reliability. To compare the interviewer- and self-administered versions, we randomised patients in groups 2 and 3 to the interviewer- or self-administered CRQ. Patients completed both the standardised and individualised dyspnoea questions. RESULTS: For both administration formats and all domains, we found good internal consistency reliability (Crohnbach's alpha between 0.73 and 0.89). Cross-sectional validity tended to be better for the standardised compared to the individualised dyspnoea questions and cross-sectional validity was slightly better for the self-administered format. Test-retest reliability was good for both the interviewer-administered CRQ (intraclass correlation coefficients for different domains between 0.81 and 0.95) and the self-administered format (intraclass correlation coefficients between 0.78 and 0.86). Lower within-person variability was responsible for the higher test-retest reliability of the interviewer-administered format while between person variability was similar for both formats. CONCLUSIONS: Investigators in German-speaking countries can choose between valid and reliable self-and interviewer-administered CRQ formats.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Validity, reliability and responsiveness of the "Schedule for the Evaluation of Individual Quality of Life-Direct Weighting" (SEIQoL-DW) in congenital heart disease.

BACKGROUND: The 'Schedule for the Evaluation of Individual Quality of Life-Direct Weighting' (SEIQoL-DW) is an instrument developed to measure individual quality of life. Although this instrument has been used in numerous studies, data on validity and reliability are sparse. This study aimed to examine aspects of validity, reliability and responsiveness of the SEIQoL-DW on data obtained in adults with congenital heart disease, by using the new standards of psychological testing. METHODS: We evaluated validity evidence based on test content, internal structure, and relations to other variables, as well as the stability and responsiveness of the SEIQoL-DW. Evidence was provided by both theoretical considerations and empirical data. Empirical data were acquired from two studies. Firstly, using a cross-sectional study design, we included 629 patients with congenital heart disease. Secondly, 130 of the 629 initially included patients readministered the questionnaires approximately one year after the first data collection. In addition to the SEIQoL-DW, linear analog scales were used to assess overall quality of life and perceived health. RESULTS: We found that the SEIQoL-DW is not a valid measure of quality of life, but rather assesses determinants that contribute to individuals' quality of life. The SEIQoL-DW consistently proved to be valid and reliable to assess those determinants. However, responsiveness in patients with congenital heart disease may be problematic. CONCLUSION: Based on theoretical and empirical considerations, the SEIQoL-DW cannot be considered as a quality of life instrument. Nonetheless, it is a valid and reliable instrument to explore determinants for patients' quality of life.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2005

Injection Drug Use Quality of Life scale (IDUQOL): a validation study.

BACKGROUND: Existing measures of injection drug users' quality of life have focused primarily on health and health-related factors. Clearly, however, quality of life among injection drug users is impacted by a range of unique cultural, socioeconomic, medical, and geographic factors that must also be considered in any measure. The Injection Drug User Quality of Life (IDUQOL) scale was designed to capture the unique and individual circumstances that determine quality of life among injection drug users. The overall purpose of the present study was to examine the validity of inferences made from the IDUQOL by examining the (a) dimensionality, (b) reliability of scores, (c) criterion-related validity evidence, and (d) both convergent and discriminant validity evidence. METHODS: An exploratory factor analysis using principal axis factoring in SPSS 12.0 was conducted to determine whether the use of a total score on the IDUQOL was advisable. Reliability of scores from the IDUQOL was obtained using internal consistency and one-week test-retest reliability estimates. Criterion-related validity evidence was gathered using variables such as stability of housing, sex trade involvement, high-risk injection behaviours, involvement in treatment programs, emergency treatment or overdose over the previous six months, hospitalization and emergency treatment over the subsequent six month period post data collection. Convergent and discriminant validity evidence was gathered using measures of life satisfaction, self-esteem, and social desirability. RESULTS: The sample consisted of 241 injection drug users ranging in age from 19 to 61 years. Factor analysis supports the use of a total score. Both internal consistency (alpha = .88) and one-week test-retest reliability (r = .78) for IDUQOL total scores were good. Criterion-related, convergent, and discriminant validity evidence supports the interpretation of IDUQOL total scores as measuring a construct consistent with quality of life. CONCLUSION: The findings from this study provide initial evidence to support the use of the IDUQOL total score. The results of the study also suggest the IDUQOL could be further strengthened with additional attention to how some IDUQOL domains are described and satisfaction is measured.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Development and validation of the short version of the Psychological General Well-Being Index (PGWB-S).

BACKGROUND: The PGWBI is a 22-item health-related Quality of Life (HRQoL) questionnaire developed in US which produces a self-perceived evaluation of psychological well-being expressed by a summary score. The PGWBI has been validated and used in many countries on large samples of the general population and on specific patient groups. Recently a study was carried out in Italy to reduce the number of items of the original questionnaire, yielding the creation of a shorter validated version of the questionnaire (PGWB-S). The purpose of the present paper is to describe the methods adopted and to report and discuss the relevance of results. METHODS: Data for this study were collected from 4 different population samples: two general population samples a student and a patient sample. On the basis of the results of the first (development) sample population, six relevant items were identified statistically from the original questionnaire and grouped to assemble a new summary scale. Following the newly created 6-item questionnaire was administered in three independent population samples. Descriptive statistics, correlation coefficients, univariate and multivariate regression analyses were used to compare the performance of the long and short questionnaire, within and between population samples and across relevant subgroups. A further independent sample extracted by an ongoing cancer clinical trial served as final validation step. RESULTS: Overall, the questionnaires were administered to 1443 subjects. Six items were selected by a step-wise approach to explain 90% of the variance of the summary measure of the original questionnaire. Response rates reached 100%, while missing items were not observed. University students (n = 400) showed the highest mean value of the summary measure (75.3); while the patient sample (n = 28) had the lowest score (71.5). The correlation coefficients between the summary measures and the single items according to the different studies were satisfactory, reaching the highest estimates in the student sample. The internal consistency showed high values of the Cronbach's alpha coefficient (range 0.80-0.92) for all three study samples, coming close to the value of the coefficient established for the original questionnaire (0.94). A cross-validation in an independent sample of 755 cancer patients confirmed the item selection procedure and amount of variance explained by the new shorter questionnaire (ranging from 90. 2 to 95.1 %, across age and sex strata). CONCLUSION: The newly identified PGWB-S showed good acceptability and validity for the use in various settings in Italy. The translation of the PGWB-S into different languages, and its use in other linguistic settings will add evidence about its cross-cultural validity.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2007

Parent proxy-report of their children's health-related quality of life: an analysis of 13,878 parents' reliability and validity across age subgroups using the PedsQL 4.0 Generic Core Scales.

BACKGROUND: Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) measurement has emerged as an important health outcome in clinical trials, clinical practice improvement strategies, and healthcare services research and evaluation. While pediatric patient self-report should be considered the standard for measuring perceived HRQOL, there are circumstances when children are too young, too cognitively impaired, too ill or fatigued to complete a HRQOL instrument, and reliable and valid parent proxy-report instruments are needed in such cases. Further, it is typically parents' perceptions of their children's HRQOL that influences healthcare utilization. Data from the PedsQL DatabaseSM were utilized to test the reliability and validity of parent proxy-report at the individual age subgroup level for ages 2-16 years as recommended by recent FDA guidelines. METHODS: The sample analyzed represents parent proxy-report age data on 13,878 children ages 2 to 16 years from the PedsQL 4.0 Generic Core Scales DatabaseSM. Parents were recruited from general pediatric clinics, subspecialty clinics, and hospitals in which their children were being seen for well-child checks, mild acute illness, or chronic illness care (n = 3,718, 26.8%), and from a State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) in California (n = 10,160, 73.2%). RESULTS: The percentage of missing item responses for the parent proxy-report sample as a whole was 2.1%, supporting feasibility. The majority of the parent proxy-report scales across the age subgroups exceeded the minimum internal consistency reliability standard of 0.70 required for group comparisons, while the Total Scale Scores across the age subgroups approached or exceeded the reliability criterion of 0.90 recommended for analyzing individual patient scale scores. Construct validity was demonstrated utilizing the known groups approach. For each PedsQL scale and summary score, across age subgroups, healthy children demonstrated a statistically significant difference in HRQOL (better HRQOL) than children with a known chronic health condition, with most effect sizes in the medium to large effect size range. CONCLUSION: The results demonstrate the feasibility, reliability, and validity of parent proxy-report at the individual age subgroup for ages 2-16 years. These analyses are consistent with recent FDA guidelines which require instrument development and validation testing for children and adolescents within fairly narrow age groupings and which determine the lower age limit at which reliable and valid responses across age categories are achievable. Even as pediatric patient self-report is advocated, there remains a fundamental role for parent proxy-report in pediatric clinical trials and health services research.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

The Southampton Needs Assessment Questionnaire (SNAQ): a valid tool for assessing the rehabilitation needs of disabled people.

OBJECTIVE: To validate the Southampton Needs Assessment Questionnaire (SNAQ) for use with disabled people during face-to-face interviews. DESIGN: The SNAQ was designed to be used in a cross-sectional survey of disabled people with a physical disability with a follow-up study one year later. Content and criterion validity was examined using 32 disabled people who took part in the pilot study. Construct validity and internal reliability was examined using data from 93 disabled people who took part in the main survey. Responsiveness of the questionnaire was evaluated using the data gathered during a follow-up study of 77 people had taken part in the original study. OUTCOME MEASURES: The OPCS Disability Severity Scales (OPCS) and the Functional Independence Measure (FIM) were used to measure level of disability of participants, the Nottingham Health Profile (NHP) and the UK version of the SF-36 to examine perceived health status. PARTICIPANTS: People with a primary physical disability, aged 16-65, randomly selected from two disability registers in southern England. MAIN RESULTS: Content and criterion validity were established. Construct validity and internal reliability of the SNAQ was good. Inter-rater reliability was not tested since only one researcher conducted the interviews. Test-retest reliability was not formally tested because of the probability that participants would learn from the first needs assessment questionnaire and that different results on a retest occasion could arise from this. The SNAQ was sensitive in picking up changes over time. CONCLUSION: The SNAQ has shown good validity (content, coverage and construct), internal reliability, sensitivity and responsiveness. Further studies are needed to define the consequences of meeting or not meeting the rehabilitation needs of disabled people. Inter-rater reliability remains to be established.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2001

Cross-cultural validation of the McGill Quality of Life questionnaire in Hong Kong Chinese.

The main focus of palliative care services is to improve patients' quality of life (QOL). The potential value of assessment of QOL in palliative care is being increasingly recognized. The McGill Quality of Life questionnaire (MQOL) is designed specifically for palliative care patients, but its cross-cultural validity needs to be determined before it can be applied in populations of different cultures and ethnic groups. The cross-cultural validity of MQOL was investigated using a translated and modified version in Chinese--the MQOL-HK--in 462 palliative care patients in Hong Kong. Results show that the MQOL-HK is acceptable, valid and reliable. There is good acceptability, construct validity, convergent and divergent validity, test-retest and inter-rater reliability. Our study confirms that QOL does have cross-culturally robust constructs. Principal components analysis shows that the domains of physical, psychological, existential and support are all relevant and applicable in Chinese culture. Multiple regression analysis reveals that existential domain is the most important domain in predicting overall QOL. 'Face', eating and sex are additional facets of QOL that also need to be considered. The worst physical symptom on admission is the item of QOL with the lowest score, which need more care and attention by palliative care workers. A cross-culturally validated QOL instrument cannot just help ensure an accurate evaluation of profile, determinants, and changes of QOL, but is also a valuable asset for future comparison and evaluation of palliative care services and interventions across the world.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Consensual validity parameters of the Zuckerman-Kuhlman personality questionnaire: evidence from self-reports and spouse reports.

One way of validating questionnaire responses is correlating them with ratings made by external assessors who know the ratee well: This is known as consensual validity. In this study, we assessed the consensual validity of the Zuckerman-Kuhlman Personality Questionnaire (ZKPQ; Zuckerman, 2002; Zuckerman, Kuhlman, Joireman, Teta, & Kraft, 1993). A multitrait-multimethod matrix of self-reported and spouse reported personality ratings was used to establish convergent and discriminant validity by means of Campbell and Fiske's (1959) evaluative criteria. Self-reports of 86 men and 85 women were correlated with their spouses' reports. Intraclass correlations ranged from .47 to .63 for the 5 dimensions, providing strong evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. The results obtained favor the use of the ZKPQ as a valid self-report measure of personality traits.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Validity and reliability of activity measures in African-American girls for GEMS.

PURPOSE: To determine the reliability and validity of physical activity monitors and self-report instruments suitable for young African-American girls. METHODS: A validation study was conducted by the Girls health Enrichment Multi-site Studies (GEMS) research team to compare an accelerometer with a pedometer and two self-report instruments for assessing physical activity in African-American girls, age 8-9 yr. Girls (N= 68) attended two clinic visits spaced 4 d apart. Each girl wore a MTI/CSA accelerometer (used as the criterion standard for validity) and a pedometer simultaneously for four consecutive days. Girls completed on two occasions a 24-h physical activity checklist of yesterday and usual activities, including sedentary activities (GEMS Activity Questionnaire, GAQ), and a 3-d computerized self-report instrument (Activitygram). RESULTS: Girls were (mean +/- SD) 9.0 +/- 0.6 yr old and had a body mass index of 19.4 kg x m. Reliability measured by intraclass correlations (ICC) and Pearson correlation coefficients (r) were calculated for the MTI/CSA (ICC = 0.37, P< 0.0001), pedometer (ICC = 0.08, = 0.094), Activitygram (ICC = 0.24) (P = 0.005), and GAQ for physical (r = 0.80, P< 0.0001) and sedentary (r = 0.3-0.5, P< 0.005) activities. Significant Pearson correlations between the MTI/CSA and the other instruments, as a measure of validity, were observed for the 4-d average pedometer score (r = 0.47, P< 0.0001), 3-d average Activitygram score (r = 0.37, P= 0.002), and the average of the two yesterday and two usual GAQ activity scores for a subset of 18 physical activities questions (r = 0.27, = 0.03; and r = 0.29,P = 0.02, respectively). The MTI/CSA was uncorrelated with single day scores from the three other instruments. CONCLUSION: The reliability of the instruments tested was acceptable, except the pedometer. Validity correlations were significant when more than one day was used. Self-report instruments need further development for improved reliability and validity.

Activities of Daily Living↗