Search Results

The reliability and validity of children’s and adolescents’ self-reported health

Katherine B. Bevans and Christopher B. Forrest

in Economic Evaluation in Child Health

This chapter argues that obtaining children's direct reports of wellbeing, symptoms, strengths, and needs using developmentally appropriate strategies is an essential component of thorough and ... More

This chapter argues that obtaining children's direct reports of wellbeing, symptoms, strengths, and needs using developmentally appropriate strategies is an essential component of thorough and accurate health status assessment. Failure to do so devalues children's perspectives on their own health and results in the loss of essential information. Evidence is reviewed that demonstrates that children are reliable and accurate reporters of their health status when assessment methodologies are sensitive to their cognitive competencies and to their understanding of health and illness. Topics discussed include general cognitive competencies, children's understanding of health and illness concepts, assessment instruments, proxy measures of child health status, and the reliability and validity of children's self-reports of quality of life. The chapter ends with recommendations for health status assessment in children at various developmental levels.Less

Archaeological Science and the Neolithic: The Power and Perils of Proxy Measures

Paul Halstead

in Early Farmers: The View from Archaeology and Science

Increasingly diverse applications of ‘archaeological science’ are providing more or less direct evidence for aspects of Neolithic life that, until recently, archaeologists explored using very remote ... More

Increasingly diverse applications of ‘archaeological science’ are providing more or less direct evidence for aspects of Neolithic life that, until recently, archaeologists explored using very remote proxy measures (for example, settlement locations as evidence for land use). Nonetheless, many applications of new (and old) analytical techniques continue to conflate the variables of which they are direct measures with others for which they are more or less remote and unreliable proxies. This chapter explores examples of such proxy measures and their unstated underpinning assumptions about human cultural behaviour and, sometimes, the natural world. Closer attention to such assumptions will improve not only the reliability of applications of archaeological science to the Neolithic, but also their reach and resolution.Less

Environmental Variability and Primate Behavioural Flexibility

Simon M. Reader and Katharine MacDonald

in Animal Innovation

This chapter examines the notions that behavioural flexibility can be a useful comparative concept, that innovation frequency is an appropriate measure of behavioural flexibility, and that the ... More

This chapter examines the notions that behavioural flexibility can be a useful comparative concept, that innovation frequency is an appropriate measure of behavioural flexibility, and that the reported frequency of novel behaviour is a valid indicator of the ‘innovativeness’ of a species or population. It suggests that innovation can be used to gauge species differences in behavioural flexibility, and demonstrate that innovation frequency correlates with relative brain size in primates. In the past, hypotheses regarding the ecological causes and consequences of enhanced behavioural flexibility have tended to use brain size as a proxy measure. It discusses the utility of brain size measures for these purposes, and notes how innovation frequency may provide a more direct measure of behavioural flexibility. The chapter explores the links between innovation and brain evolution, problems and solutions for comparative methods, and discusses what further data would be helpful for testing these ideas. The chapter further examines the evolutionary causes and consequences of innovative capacities and enhanced brain size in primates.Less

Strategies for Measuring Program Impact

in Changing Lives: Delinquency Prevention as Crime-Control Policy

This chapter reviews a number of measures and their attributes that have been used as outcome measures of delinquency prevention. It takes a critical look at the traditional types of research designs ... More

This chapter reviews a number of measures and their attributes that have been used as outcome measures of delinquency prevention. It takes a critical look at the traditional types of research designs used to assess the impacts of interventions to see how well they do in delinquency prevention settings. The chapter also examines various strategies and techniques for summarizing and categorizing the existing research literature, and restating the results—an undertaking that has become a growth industry within the prevention field, producing an alphabet soup of conflicting claims and results. The usual proxy measures for crime or delinquency are arrests, referrals, convictions, or placements. More complete but also much more expensive measures that are sometimes used are based on self-reports or on the reports of observers (such as teachers) of behaviors that include criminal or delinquent acts, fighting, and drug use.Less