ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To assess the adequacy of the Primary Care Assessment Tool-Child Edition (PCAT-CE) for evaluating the attainment of the key characteristics of primary care services for children and youth. DESIGN: Community-based telephone survey. SETTING: Specific political subdivision in Washington, DC. PARTICIPANTS: Four hundred fifty parents/guardians of offspring 18 years of age or less. MEASURES: Reliability, validity and principal component analysis of 5 scales representing key aspects of the 4 cardinal domains of primary care included in the PCAT-CE. In addition, 2 subdomains (first contact use and extent of affiliation with a primary care source) were included as indices to describe overall patterns of use and affiliation with the particular source of care. RESULTS: Most scales had adequate internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and construct validity. The principal components factor analysis yielded 5 separate factors. These corresponded to the subdomains of first contact accessibility; coordination of care; characteristics of the professional-patient relationship over-time; and comprehensiveness (both services available and indicated services received). CONCLUSIONS: Psychometric assessment supported the integrity and general adequacy of the PCAT-CE for assessing the characteristics and quality of primary care for children and youth. Testing of revised versions in a variety of different settings is underway. A major component of this testing is to explore the possibility of reducing the number of items while retaining sufficient detail about each component of primary care to make judgements about people's experiences with that care.
Subject(s)
Child Health Services , Patient Satisfaction , Primary Health Care , Child , District of Columbia , Factor Analysis, Statistical , Humans , Psychometrics , Quality of Health Care , Reproducibility of ResultsABSTRACT
Two studies were conducted to examine the adequacy of the Visual Reproduction and Logical Memory Subtests of Form II of the Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS-II) as an alternate form for Russell's Revision of the WMS (RWMS). An archival data study on 46 inpatient alcoholics revealed greater pre-/post-treatment differences on Immediate Figural Recall scores for participants tested first on the RWMS, compared with participants tested first on the alternate subtests. In a second study, both forms were administered to 60 noninstitutionalized examinees. Immediate Figural Recall was again higher for subtests from WMS-II; Immediate and Delayed Semantic Recall were higher for RWMS. Data indicate apparent problems in the use of subtests of WMS-II as an alternate form for RWMS.
Subject(s)
Alcoholism/complications , Memory Disorders/diagnosis , Wechsler Scales/standards , Female , Humans , Male , Memory Disorders/etiology , PsychometricsABSTRACT
Reasons for limited equivalence of Form II of the Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS-II) Figural Memory Subtest as an alternate form for the Russell's Revision of the Wechsler Memory Scale (RWMS) Figural Memory Subtest were investigated. Thirty college students rated figural stimuli from RWMS and WMS-II on dimensions related to memory. Raters judged figural stimuli from RWMS to be less memorable, more complex, and more difficult to label verbally. Forms can be made more equivalent by either changes in scoring or the interchanging of stimuli across forms.
