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Measurement in Rehabilitation — Lies, damned lies and statistics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2015

Hugh G. Dickson
Hugh G. Dickson*
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales
*
Conjoint Professor of Aged Care and Rehabilitation, School of Community Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052, Australia. Email: Hugh.Dickson@swsahs.nsw.gov.au
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Abstract

Measurement in Rehabilitation Medicine commences with clear definitions of the terms used and clear ideas about the nature of the entity being measured. In this lecture, issues such as goal based measurement, the difficulties of comparison, weighting systems, different types of scales, and the mathematical problems they present are discussed. Scales discussed include the American Medical Association Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, and the Functional Independence Measure (FIM). Caution is necessary when drawing conclusions from statistics generated from ordinal scales, especially when comparisons are being made. The Australasian Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine supports the use of standard measures and has developed an Australian Standard Data Set for Rehabilitation Medicine. The functional measure used in this data set is the FIM.

Type
Articles
Information
The Australian Journal of Rehabilitation Counselling , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , 1999 , pp. 62 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

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References

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