Worldwide economic constraints on health care systems have highlighted the importance of evidence-based medicine and evidence-based health policy. The resulting clinical trials and health services research studies require instruments to monitor the outcomes of care and the output of the health system. However, the over-abundance of competing measurement scales can make choosing a measure difficult at best. Measuring Health provides in-depth reviews of over 100 of the leading health measurement tools and serves as a guide for choosing among them.LNow in its third edition, this book provides a critical overview of the field of health measurement, with a technical introduction and discussion of the history and future directions for the field. This latest edition updates the information on each of the measures previously reviewed, and includes a complete new chapter on anxiety measurement to accompany the one on depression. It has also added new instruments to those previously reviewed in each of the chapters in the book.LChapters cover measurements of physical disability, social health, psychological well-being, anxiety, depression, mental status testing, pain, general health status and quality of life. Each chapter presents a tabular comparison of the quality of the instruments reviewed, followed by a detailed description of each method, covering its purpose and conceptual basis, its reliability and validity and, where possible, shows a copy of the actual scale. To ensure accuracy of the information, each review has been approved by the original author of each instrument or by an acknowledged expert.

"Measuring Health provides in-depth reviews of over 100 of the leading health measurement tools and serves as a guide for choosing among them. Now in its third edition, this book provides a critical overview of the field of health measurement, with a technical introduction and discussion of the history and future directions for the field. This latest edition updates the information on each of the measures previously reviewed and includes a complete new chapter on anxiety measurement to accompany the one on depression. The author has also added new instruments to those previously reviewed in each chapter of the book." "Each chapter presents a tabular comparison of the quality of the instruments reviewed, followed by a detailed description of each method, covering its purpose and conceptual basis, its reliability and validity, and where possible, each chapter shows a copy of the actual scale."--BOOK JACKET.

This text provides reviews of the quality of over 100 health measurement instruments. It guides the reader in choosing among rival methods, showing how to administer and score them. It also includes a historical and technical introduction to the field of health measurement.

Worldwide economic constraints on health care systems have highlighted the importance of evidence-based medicine and evidence-based health policy. The resulting clinical trials and health services research studies require instruments to monitor the outcomes of care and the output of the health system. However, the over-abundance of competing measurement scales can make choosing a measure difficult at best. Measuring Health provides in-depth reviews of over 100 of the leading health measurement tools and serves as a guide for choosing among them.LNow in its third edition, this book provides a critical overview of the field of health measurement, with a technical introduction and discussion of the history and future directions for the field. This latest edition updates the information on each of the measures previously reviewed, and includes a complete new chapter on anxiety measurement to accompany the one on depression. It has also added new instruments to those previously reviewed in each of the chapters in the book.LChapters cover measurements of physical disability, social health, psychological well-being, anxiety, depression, mental status testing, pain, general health status and quality of life. Each chapter presents a tabular comparison of the quality of the instruments reviewed, followed by a detailed description of each method, covering its purpose and conceptual basis, its reliability and validity and, where possible, shows a copy of the actual scale. To ensure accuracy of the information, each review has been approved by the original author of each instrument or by an acknowledged expert.

This book offers a comprehensive guide to measures of health and is an essential reference resource for all health professionals and students.

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 fourth edition of Health Measurement Scales enables these groups, who often have limited knowledge of statistics, to both develop scales to measure non-tangible health outcomes, and better evaluate and differentiate between existing tools. It covers how the individual items are developed; various biases that can affect responses (eg 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 then how to determine the reliability and validity of the scale. It concludes with a discussion of 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. It synthesizes the theory of scale construction with practical advice, making it the ultimate guide to how to develop and validate measurement scales that are to be used in the health sciences.

Much research is still needed to produce universally accepted and validated methods to measure the 'quality of life' of patients before and after medical or surgical treatment. Nevertheless, doctors, medical research workers, and pharmaceutical companies as a whole should already be becoming aware of the importance of measuring 'health' in social and economic terms as well as in narrowly defined clinical terms. In this book guidelines are given on the evaluation of therapy, such as techniques for measuring quality of life using rating scales, questionnaires and statistical tests. It draws attention to issues concerning the validity of disability scales, health profiles and the initial design of tests.

Methods and Applications of Statistics in Clinical Trials, Volume 2: Planning, Analysis, and Inferential Methods includes updates of established literature from the Wiley Encyclopedia of Clinical Trials as well as original material based on the latest developments in clinical trials. Prepared by a leading expert, the second volume includes numerous contributions from current prominent experts in the field of medical research. In addition, the volume features: • Multiple new articles exploring emerging topics, such as evaluation methods with threshold, empirical likelihood methods, nonparametric ROC analysis, over- and under-dispersed models, and multi-armed bandit problems • Up-to-date research on the Cox proportional hazard model, frailty models, trial reports, intrarater reliability, conditional power, and the kappa index • Key qualitative issues including cost-effectiveness analysis, publication bias, and regulatory issues, which are crucial to the planning and data management of clinical trials

Contributors. -- Foreword. -- Preface. -- Getting Started. -- Assessing Available Information. -- Organizing and Preliminary Planning for Surgical Research -- Writing a Protocol: Animals, Humans, and Use of Biologic, Chemical, and Radiologic Agents. -- Grantsmanship. -- Informed Consent and the Protection of Human Research Subjects: Historical Perspectives and Guide to Current United States Regulations. -- Animal Care and Maintenance. -- Funding Strategies and Agencies: Academic-Industrial Relationships; Intellectual Property. -- Statistical Considerations. -- Use of Nonexperimental Studies to Evaluate Surgical Procedures and Other Interventions: The Challenge of Risk Adjustment. -- Measuring Surgical Outcomes. -- Design of Clinical Trials. -- Using Administrative Data for Clinical Research. -- Research in the Intensive Care Unit: Ethical and Methodological Issues. -- Research in the Operating Room. -- Effects of Age and Gender. -- Strategies, Principles, and Techniques Using Transgeni ...

Physicians diagnose and treat many conditions. Everyone who understands the nature of health care will be better able to participate in their own and their family’s care. The Nature of Clinical Care explains the concepts underlying medical care. It provides everybody, including students, professionals and patients, with the know-how to participate in their own care. Approachable, straightforward, and insightful, it fills a crucial gap by addressing the patient-doctor relationship, how people make diagnoses, the purposes, benefits and risks of interventions, and the art and science of Medicine. It is a vast collection of helpful resources. As such, this compendium augments our knowledge base enabling and empowering everyone who must interact with the care system and its professionals.