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Health Measurement Scales: Methodological Issues

Health scales or indices are composite tools aiming to measure a variety of clinical conditions, behaviors, attitudes and beliefs that are difficult to be measured quantitatively. During the past years, these tools have been extensively used in cardiovascular disease prevention. The already proposed...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Panagiotakos, Demosthenes
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Bentham Open 2009
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2801875/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20054421
http://dx.doi.org/10.2174/1874192400903010160
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author Panagiotakos, Demosthenes
author_facet Panagiotakos, Demosthenes
author_sort Panagiotakos, Demosthenes
collection PubMed
description Health scales or indices are composite tools aiming to measure a variety of clinical conditions, behaviors, attitudes and beliefs that are difficult to be measured quantitatively. During the past years, these tools have been extensively used in cardiovascular disease prevention. The already proposed scales have shown good ability in assessing individual characteristics, but had moderate predictive ability in relation to the development of chronic diseases and various other health outcomes. In this review, methodological issues for the development of health scales are discussed. Specifically, the selection of the appropriate number of components, the selection of classes for each component, the use of weights of scale components and the role of intra- or inter-correlation between components are discussed. Based on the current literature the use of components with large number of classes, as well as the use of specific weights for each scale component and the low-to-moderate inter-correlation rate between the components, is suggested in order to increase the diagnostic accuracy of the tool.
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spelling pubmed-28018752010-01-06 Health Measurement Scales: Methodological Issues Panagiotakos, Demosthenes Open Cardiovasc Med J Article Health scales or indices are composite tools aiming to measure a variety of clinical conditions, behaviors, attitudes and beliefs that are difficult to be measured quantitatively. During the past years, these tools have been extensively used in cardiovascular disease prevention. The already proposed scales have shown good ability in assessing individual characteristics, but had moderate predictive ability in relation to the development of chronic diseases and various other health outcomes. In this review, methodological issues for the development of health scales are discussed. Specifically, the selection of the appropriate number of components, the selection of classes for each component, the use of weights of scale components and the role of intra- or inter-correlation between components are discussed. Based on the current literature the use of components with large number of classes, as well as the use of specific weights for each scale component and the low-to-moderate inter-correlation rate between the components, is suggested in order to increase the diagnostic accuracy of the tool. Bentham Open 2009-11-23 /pmc/articles/PMC2801875/ /pubmed/20054421 http://dx.doi.org/10.2174/1874192400903010160 Text en © Demosthenes Panagiotakos; Licensee Bentham Open. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc//3.0 This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Article
Panagiotakos, Demosthenes
Health Measurement Scales: Methodological Issues
title Health Measurement Scales: Methodological Issues
title_full Health Measurement Scales: Methodological Issues
title_fullStr Health Measurement Scales: Methodological Issues
title_full_unstemmed Health Measurement Scales: Methodological Issues
title_short Health Measurement Scales: Methodological Issues
title_sort health measurement scales: methodological issues
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2801875/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20054421
http://dx.doi.org/10.2174/1874192400903010160
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