Questionnaires instruments

At the 1980-82 study two instruments were placed in each dwelling for two weeks, one in the living room and one in the bedroom. The dwellings were inspected, the gamma radiation was measured and the participants were asked to answer a questionnaire. The inhabitants were asked to live as usual. 

The beliefs about medicines questionnaire (BMQ) -specific (Horne and Weinman 1999, Horne et al. 1999) captures the patients attitudes towards their drug treatment. BMQ is a validated instrument made up by two parts, necessity and concerns, consisting of five assertions each. An indication of the relative importance... 

The methods of survey consisted of questionnaire, spirometry and dust measurements. A major shortcoming of this survey Is Identifiable In the choice of the questionnaire. This instrument differs significantly from that introduced by the British investigators, missing the important qualifier on upper respiratory Infections (question 8 of the MRC questionnaire). The diagnostic question on bysslnosls is formulated In such a manner that the characteristic periodicity of the disorder is reduced to occurrences of sporadic frequency (once a year ). 

There is an abundance of questionnaires, monitoring forms, diaries, and decision matrices available for use with people in the contemplation stage of change. These instruments assist the client in recording as factually and extensively as possible the nature of the behaviour and all of its consequences. For example, the client is asked to record in exactly what circumstances does the behaviour occur when, where, with whom, what thoughts, feelings, moods are present. 

Standardized questionnaires are used to capture HRQL data in a variety of settings. These standardized questionnaires may be self-administered or completed via telephone or personal interview, by observation, or by postal survey. Two basic approaches to HRQL measurement are available generic instruments that provide a summary of health-related quality of fife and specific instruments that focus on problems associated with individual disease states, patient groups, or areas of function. 

To evaluate aspects of HRQL that are specific to a particular disease or condition, specific measures also may be used. Specific measures include only important aspects of HRQL that are relevant to the patients being studied, such as the loss of function patients experience from asthma or the amount of pain they have from arthritis. Disadvantages of using specific measures are that they are not comprehensive and cannot be used to compare across conditions. They also cannot measure unforeseen side effects or conditions. Examples of specific instruments for heart failure are the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire and the Chronic Heart Failure Questionnaire (Guyatt et al., 1989 Rector, Kubo, and Cohn, 1987). 

Similar to HRQL surveys, patient satisfaction instruments are designed to be general or specific instruments. One of the most commonly used instruments is the Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire (PSQ). This survey measures global satisfaction, as well as the specific domains of technical quality, interpersonal manner, communication, financial aspects, time spent with the doctor, and accessibility of care (Fincham and Wertheimer, 1987 Larson and MacKeigan, 1994 MacKeigan and Larson, 1989). 

Most of the problems associated with the questionnaire were due to a lack of explicit hypotheses as to potential long-term effects of the drugs studied. Questions of general interest were included, but specific hypotheses were not assessed with questions. Furthermore, the survey instrument was a questionnaire, not an interview. The questions therefore had to be simple, easily understood, and able to be answered quickly. Such constraints limit the specificity and detail of the information to be collected. 

Of the 78 responses to this study, all facilities returned the survey questionnaire. The distribution of protein sequencing instruments was as follows Applied Biosystems (57/78), Beckman-Porton (13/78), Hewlett-Packard (7/78), and Millipore (1/78). The average age of the instruments was 5.6 3.3 years. 

Mayfield, D., McLeod, G., Hail, R The CAGE questionnaire vahda-tion of a new alcoholism screening instrument. Amer. J. Psychiat. 1974 131 1121-1123... 

The argument in favor of disease-specific questionnaires is twofold. The first consideration is that, if an instrument has to cover a wide range of disorders, many of the questions may be inappropriate or irrelevant for any one specific problem. The second reason is to keep the length of the questionnaire manageable. Thus, there will be fewer, relevant questions to detect real changes within patients or to detect differences among them. 

The study of HRQOL requires a multidimensional approach. Assessments must include components that evaluate, at a minimum, the health concepts of physical functioning, social and role functioning, mental health, and perception of general health. In addition, the full continuum of these concepts must be included, from the most limited to the healthiest. Approaches to capture HRQOL data include the self-administered questionnaire, personal interview, telephone interview, observation, and postal survey. The assessment instruments must possess acceptable reliability, validity, and sensitivity, and the investigators and the participants must accept them. Psychometrics... 

Cook DJ, Guyatt GH, Juniper E, et al. Interviewer versus self-administered questionnaires in developing a disease-specific, health-related quality of life instrument for asthma J Qin Epidemiol 1993 46 529-534. 

Irvine EJ, Zhou Q, Thompson AK. The short inflammatory bowel disease questionnaire A quality of life instrument for community physicians managing inflammatory bowel disease. CERPT investigators. Canadian Crohn s relapse prevention trial. Am J Gastroenterol 1996 91 1571— 1578. 

Several authors (Rasmussen et al, 2001 Knudsen et al, 2002 Voelzke et al, 2003) stated that food questionnaires are refiable instruments to assess a population s iodine intake. However, there are indications that self-estimations concerning iodine intake recorded on a diary card are unreliable when compared with iodine intakes obtained by direct analysis of real diets (Lightowler and Davis, 2002). 

The most commonly used research instruments are questionnaires and interviews. These are often combined with other research tools, for example the use of audio/video tape to record classroom activity (e.g. Thiele Treagust, 1994), or teachers explanations of their own concept maps (e.g. Millar and Nakhleh, 2001), or their descriptions of their written lesson plans (e.g. De Jong, 2000). All these methods for collecting data are very time-consuming and the analysis of data is multifaceted and intricate. For these reasons, most studies only involve a small number of participants. This can be considered a weak feature of such research. On the other hand, many studies have a naturalistic design that contributes to an ecological validity of the data that can be viewed as a strong feature of them. 

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