Behcet's Disease Current Activity Form as a Patient's Derived Measure

OBJECTIVE: This study measured the reliability of the Behcet's Disease Current Activity Form (BDCAF) questionnaire used as a patient self-report form. METHODS: A study was conducted among 63 patients with Behcet's disease who attended our rheumatology clinic. First, a physician administered a BDCAF questionnaire. Second, the patient completed a self-administered questionnaire at home within 24 hours of the visit. The test-retest reliability was analyzed using kappa tests. Kappa scores of >0.6 indicated good agreement. The BDCAF score was compared with the patient's/clinician's perception of disease activity and the Korean version of Behcet's Disease Quality of Life (BDQOL). RESULTS: The study included 17 males and 46 females. The mean age of participants was 47.7 years and the mean disease duration was 5.3 years at the first assessment. Fifty-three patients (84.1%) returned the questionnaires to us by mail. For test-retest reliability, good agreement was achieved with the items including headache, oral/genital ulceration, erythema, arthritis, and diarrhea with altered/frank blood per rectum; moderate agreement with skin pustules, arthralgia, and eye involvement; fair agreement with nausea/vomiting/abdominal pain, nervous system, and major vessel involvement. Significant associations were observed between BDCAF scores with the patient's/clinician's perception of disease activity and BDQOL (p<0.05). CONCLUSION: The BDCAF appears useful as a patient self-report instrument for assessment of disease status.

Avaliação da inteligência emocional: a relação entre medidas de desempenho e de autorrelato / Assessment of emotional intelligence: the relation of ability-based and self-report measures

Apresenta-se a adaptação e validação do Teste de Vocabulário Emocional (TVE) ao contexto português, uma medida de desempenho de inteligência emocional, explorando as suas qualidades psicométricas e a validade de critério e convergente com uma medida de autorrelato, o Questionário de Competência Emocional - Revisto (QCE-R). O TVE, com 35 itens, desenvolvido por Takšic, Herambasic e Velemir (2003) no contexto croata, mede a capacidade para compreender emoções. A amostra incluiu 682 alunos do 10.º ano, entre 14 e 21 anos (M = 15,5; DP = 0,77) de diferentes cursos científico-humanísticos. Genericamente, o TVE revelou boas qualidades psicométricas, tendo-se correlacionado positivamente com o rendimento académico e evidenciado maior capacidade para o predizer do que o QCE-R, com o qual não estabeleceu qualquer associação...

This study presents the adaptation and validation to the Portuguese context of the Vocabulary Emotions Test (VET), an ability measure of Emotional Intelligence, particularly exploring their psychometrics properties and the criterion and convergent validity with a self-report measure, the Emotional Skills and Competence Questionnaire - Reviewed (ESCQ-R). Consisting of 35 items, the VET was constructed in Croatian settings by Takšic, Herambasic and Velemir (2003), and was developed to measure the ability to understand emotions. This study involved 682 10th graders, with ages between 14 and 21 years (M = 15.5; SD = .77) from several courses. The VET revealed good psychometric properties, showed positive correlations with academic achievement and evidenced better predictive validity than the ESCQ-R, with which no association was found...