Interpreting Health Outcome Measures

Interpreting effect size to estimate responsiveness of outcome measures.

Interpreting rehabilitation outcome measurements.

OBJECTIVE With the increased use of standardized outcome instruments in rehabilitation, questions frequently arise as to how to interpret the scores that are derived from these standardized outcome instruments. This article uses examples drawn from the Activity Measure for Post Acute Care to illustrate 4 different data analysis and presentation strategies that can be used to yield meaningful ou...

Interpreting the results of patient reported outcome measures in clinical trials: The clinician's perspective

This article deals with the problem of interpreting health-related quality of life (HRQL) outcomes in clinical trials. First, we will briefly describe how dichotomization and item response theory can facilitate interpretation. Based on examples from the medical literature for the interpretation of HRQL scores we will show that dichotomies may help clinicians understand information provided by H...

Interpreting scores on multiple sclerosis-specific patient reported outcome measures (the PRIMUS and U-FIS)

BACKGROUND The PRIMUS is a Multiple Sclerosis (MS)-specific suite of outcome measures including assessments of QoL (PRIMUS QoL, scored 0-22) and activity limitations (PRIMUS Activities, scored 0-30). The U-FIS is a measure of fatigue impact (scored 0-66). These measures have been fully validated previously using an MS sample with mixed diagnoses. The aim of the present study was to validate the...

Outcome Measures

Compliance with established standards has been the benchmark of evaluating all kinds of academic, professional, commercial and administrative endeavours over the last one hundred years or so. Academic awards, for example, have been gained by passing examinations specific to that discipline of study. The awards themselves have been subject to accreditation procedures, often established by both i...