Measuring Health: Using Rating Scales, Questionnaires & Psychometric Assessments

Measuring Health: Using Rating Scales, Questionnaires & Psychometric Assessments

Health care professions such a Medicine, Nursing, Physiotherapy, Psychology, and Occupational Therapy are commonly interested in determining the impact of health care and the quality of human life. The focus of measurement is on various domains such as, but not limited to, subjective states, diagnosing illnesses, attitudes, response to illnesses, physical disability, psychological well being, general health status and quality of life.

The focus of this discussion is to examine the various Health Instruments that are utilized to assess the above domains. The instruments include Rating Scales, Questionnaires and Psychometric Assessments.

Rating Scales

• This is a method that health researchers use to obtain information about a quantitative or qualitative attribute(s). There are 4 different types of scales that can be used to measure the characteristic of interest: Nominal, Ordinal, Interval and Ratio.

Questionnaires

• This is a method used by a variety of health personnel to obtain large amounts of data by asking a series of questions. Generally, the purpose is to gain feedback from patients about a specific topic. They are relatively inexpensive to administer with open and closed ended questions.

Psychometric Assessments

• This is a method used in psychology to understand or formalize personality, emotional, behavioral and cognitive functioning. Some of these types of assessment may require special training as they incorporate a scoring and interpretation element.