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Clinimetrics

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Synonyms

Causal and effect indicators

Definition

Clinimetrics refers to the assessment of clinical and personal phenomena of importance to patient care, through the application of quantitative measures such as indices, scales, and inventories. The aim of clinimetrics is to ensure the human and clinical relevance of a measurement system, as well as its scientific quality.

Description

The term clinimetrics was first coined by Feinstein (1982) to describe a new approach to ensuring the clinical validity of measures which quantify patient experiences. The introduction of this new paradigm reflected a degree of discontent with the psychometric methods traditionally used in the development of multi-item health measurement scales, in which the scores from a number of items are combined into a single summary score. Psychometric strategies rely on statistical techniques and generally aim to develop a measure which is mathematically valid and reliable, which usually means that a degree of item...

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References

  • Fayers, P. M., Hand, D. J., Bjordal, K., & Groenvold, M. (1997). Causal indicators in quality of life research. Quality of Life Research, 6, 393–406.

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  • Feinstein, A. R. (1982). The Jones criteria and the challenge of clinimetrics. Circulation, 66, 1–5.

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  • Feinstein, A. R. (1999). Multi-item “instruments” vs Virginia Apgar’s principles of clinimetrics. Archives of Internal Medicine, 159(2), 125–128.

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  • Juniper, E. F., Guyatt, G., Streiner, D. L., & King, D. R. (1997). Clinical impact versus factor analysis for quality of life questionnaire construction. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 50, 233–238.

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  • Marx, R. G., Bombardierm, C., Hogg-Johnson, S., & Wright, J. G. (1999). Clinimetric and psychometric strategies for development of a health measurement scale. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 52, 105–111.

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  • Wright, J. G., & Feinstein, A. R. (1992). A comparative contrast of clinimetric and psychometric methods for constructing indexes and rating scales. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 45, 1201–1218.

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Correspondence to Dominic Upton .

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© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Upton, D. (2014). Clinimetrics. In: Michalos, A.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0753-5_411

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