PURPOSE This study was undertaken to develop a performance-based instrument to measure a range of function present among nursing home (NH) residents and to establish the reliability and validity of the measures. DESIGN AND METHODS Fourteen items integral to daily life in a NH setting were administered to 95 NH residents with sufficient cognitive ability to follow a one-step command at baselin...

Retained surgical items (RSIs) are surgical instruments, such as laparotomy sponges and suture needles, that are le‰ in a patient’s body post-surgery. Œese incredibly costly mistakes also pose a serious health risk. Manual methods of tracking are highly inaccurate at scale, and modern methods (including embedded RF chips) are costly and limited to larger objects. We implemented a vision-based t...

The purpose of this project was to conduct a systematic review to identify instruments designed to evaluate the quality of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of natural health products (NHPs). Instruments were examined for inclusion of items assessing methods, identity and content of the NHP, generalizability of results and instructions for use. Online databases, websites, textbooks and refere...

The 20-item Somatoform Dissociation Questionnaire (SDQ-20; Nijenhuis, Spinhoven, Van Dyck, Van der Hart, & Vanderlinden, 1996) evaluates the severity of somatoform dissociation. The SDQ-20 items were derived from a pool of 75 items describing clinically observed somatoform dissociative symptoms that in clinical settings had appeared upon reactivation of particular dissociative parts of the pers...

According to federal law, polling places must be accessible to persons with disabilities. The rate of compliance with these laws, however, is not known. Our purpose was to determine whether polling places in the Greater Kansas City area were physically accessible to persons with disabilities. Students, faculty, and staff members from four professional programs representing two universities comp...

BACKGROUND While there are number of frameworks which focus on supporting the implementation of evidence based approaches, few psychometrically valid measures exist to assess constructs within these frameworks. This study aimed to develop and psychometrically assess a scale measuring each domain of the Theoretical Domains Framework for use in assessing the implementation of dietary guidelines w...

OBJECTIVE To develop a short instrument to examine quality of life (QoL) which specifically addresses patients with movement disorders treated by deep brain stimulation (DBS). DESIGN The instrument was developed within an existing concept of a modular questionnaire (questions on life satisfaction: "general life satisfaction" QLS(M)-A, and "satisfaction with health" QLS(M)-G), in which each it...

This article will provide information about the Pragmatics Checklist, which consists of 45 items and is scored as: (1) not present, (2) present but preverbal, (3) present with one to three words, and (4) present with complex language. Information for both children who are deaf or hard of hearing and those with normal hearing are presented. Children who are deaf or hard of hearing are significan...

The purpose of this study was to assess the physical fitness level of independent-living Turkish males aged from 60 to >80 years. 849 healthy and physically independent male adults participated in this study voluntarily. Participants divided into five age groups as 60-64, 65-69, 70-74, 75-79 and >80. SFT protocol that included six items (chair stand test, arm curl test, 2 min step test, chair s...

This research evaluated the psychometric properties of a brief self-report measure of HIV-related knowledge, the 18-item HIV Knowledge Questionnaire (HIV-KQ-18). Low-income men and women (N = 1,019) responded to 27 items that represented the domain of interest. Item analyses indicated that 18 items, with item-total correlations ranging from .24 to .57, be retained. Additional analyses demonstra...