Health Measurement Scales: A Practical Guide to Their Development and Use

Health Measurement Scales is the ultimate guide to appraising, developing, and validating measurement scales that are used in the health sciences. Written in a clear and practical style, this guide enables clinicians and researchers to both develop scales to measure subjective states and non-tangible health outcomes, as well as evaluate and differentiate among existing tools.

Topics presented in the order that scales are constructed: how the individual items are developed, biases that can affect responses, various response options, how to select the best items in the set, how to combine them into a scale; and finally how to determine the reliability and validity of the scale.

Fully updated to reflect recent developments in the field and the latest survey methods. The new edition contains updated information on generalizability theory and item response theory, and integration of qualitative research methods into scale design and testing. Including guidelines, appendices and checklists, this useful book is a must-read for any practitioner dealing with any kind of subjective measurement.

David L. Streiner, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada; and Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Geoffrey R. Norman, Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, John Cairney, School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia

David Streiner, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist by training. He is currently an emeritus professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences and the Department of Clinical Epidemiology at McMaster University and a professor at the University of Toronto. He is the author of nine books, 51 chapters, and over 400 articles. He was elected to the Canadian Academy of Health Services in 2022.

Geoff Norman, PhD, is an Emeritus Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University. He is the author of 30 books and book chapters in education, measurement and statistics, and over 300 journal articles. He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 2007. He received an honorary doctorate from Erasmus University, Rotterdam in 2010. He was appointed to the Community of Distinction of McMaster University in 2018.