BACKGROUND Teaching and assessment of communication skills have become essential in medical education. The Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) has been found as an appropriate means to assess communication skills within medical education. Studies have demonstrated the importance of a valid assessment of medical students' communication skills. Yet, the validity of the performance sc...

The purpose of this paper is to report on the development of the on-line performance assessment instrument--the Assessment of Motor and Process Skills (AMPS). Issues that will be addressed in the paper include: (a) the establishment of the scoring rubric and its implementation in an extended Rasch model, (b) training of raters, (c) validation of the scoring rubric and procedures for monitoring ...

BACKGROUND Symptom rating scales are now well established in schizophrenia research but their scores are not the same as outcome. AIMS To appraise the usefulness of symptom rating scales in evaluating the outcome of people with schizophrenia. METHOD Literature on the use of the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and the Clinical Global Imp...

The evaluation of dystonia requires a reliable rating scale. The widely used Fahn-Marsden Scale (F-M) has not been sufficiently tested across multiple centers and investigators. The Dystonia Study Group developed the Unified Dystonia Rating Scale (UDRS) and a Global Dystonia Rating Scale (GDS) to serve as instruments to assess dystonia severity. In this study, 25 dystonia experts evaluated the ...

Factor analysis of Gough's 300-item Adjective Check List identified 8 highest-loading items for 7 factors of self-perception. These were alphabetized and presented with 6-point scales to 713 females in teacher training. Factor analysis of the 66 self-rating items replicated the original structure, and simple scale sums showed satisfactory internal consistency and test-retest stability. Correlat...

The Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), Numerical Rating Scale (NRS), Verbal Rating Scale (VRS), and the Faces Pain Scale-Revised (FPS-R) are among the most commonly used measures of pain intensity in clinical and research settings. Although evidence supports their validity as measures of pain intensity, few studies have compared them with respect to the critical validity criteria of responsivity, and...

Drug-induced dyskinesia is a common phenomenon in Parkinson's disease (PD) and is often socially as well as physically disabling for patients. The Movement Disorders Society commissioned a task force to assess available clinical rating scales, critique their clinimetric properties, and make recommendations regarding their clinical utility. A task force composed six clinical researchers who syst...

Study was conducted to assess the sensitivity and simplicity of various pain rating scales in patients of osteoarthritis with chronic pain so that most appropriate scale can be identified. Scales included were Wong-Baker Faces Pain Rating Scale (WBS), Numerical Rating Scale (NRS), Faces Pain Scale- Revised (FPS-R), Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) and Verbal Rating Scale (VRS). Patients were asked t...