Deconstructing therapy outcome measurement with Rasch analysis of a measure of general clinical distress: the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised

Rasch analysis was used to illustrate the usefulness of item-level analyses for evaluating a common therapy outcome measure of general clinical distress, the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R; Derogatis, 1994). Using complementary therapy research samples, the instrument's 5-point rating scale was found to exceed clients' ability to make reliable discriminations and could be improved by collapsing it into a 3-point version (combining scale points 1 with 2 and 3 with 4). This revision, in addition to removing 3 misfitting items, increased person separation from 4.90 to 5.07 and item separation from 7.76 to 8.52 (resulting in alphas of .96 and .99, respectively). Some SCL-90-R subscales had low internal consistency reliabilities; SCL-90-R items can be used to define one factor of general clinical distress that is generally stable across both samples, with two small residual factors

Using Microanalytical Simulation Methods in Educational Evaluation: An Exploratory Study

Scientifically based research used to inform evidence based school reform efforts has been required by the federal government in order to receive grant funding since the reenactment of No Child Left Behind (2002). Educational evaluators are thus faced with the challenge to use rigorous research designs to establish causal relationships. However, access to student-level longitudinal or comparison group data is often scarce, which significantly restricts researchers’ choice of research design. Although most state departments of education have school- and district-level data available to the public, the individual student-level data that are often needed to perform appropriate statistical analyses are unavailable. This exploratory study demonstrates the process of and provides evidence that microanalytical simulation methods, conducted using Microsoft Excel, may be a useful research tool in the field of education if adequate school-level modeling information is available. These simulation methods may assist in providing greater opportunities to execute more rigorous methodological designs

Filling in the missing pieces: a comparative Rasch analysis of inpatient and outpatient SCL90R data

In our Rasch analysis of the Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL90R) using an American outpatient sample (n=298), Elliott et al. (2006) noted among other things that there was a sampling gap in the upper extreme range of the measured underlying client distress dimension. In this paper we remedy this gap by replicating our earlier results with a Scottish inpatient sample (n= 135). When analyzed separately, a three-point rating scale again appeared to provide a better trade-off between reliability and simplicity than the standard 5-point scale. The inpatient sample showed comparable person separation to the outpatient sample (5.13 vs. 5.31), but as expected because of greater participant homogeneity, item separation was substantially lower (4.76 vs. 8.89), indicating less discrimination among items, but equivalent discrimination among persons. Interestingly, when we collapsed the rating scale into only two points ('not at all' vs. all other ratings), there was very little loss of information. Ironically, this suggests that the SCL90R could be used as a 'checklist' after all, in which symptoms are rated either present or absent

Routledge Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis Methods

The disintegration and questioning of global governance structures and a re-orientation toward national politics combined with the spread of technological innovations such as big data, social media, and phenomena like fake news, populism, or questions of global health policies make it necessary for the introduction of new methods of inquiry and the adaptation of established methods in Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). This accessible handbook offers concise chapters from expert international contributors covering a diverse range of new and established FPA methods. Embracing methodological pluralism and a belief in the value of an open discussion about methods’ assumptions and diverging positions, it provides new, state-of-the-art research approaches, as well as introductions to a range of established methods. Each chapter follows the same approach, introducing the method and its development, discussing strengths, requirements, limitations, and potential pitfalls while illustrating the method’s application using examples from empirical research. Embracing methodological pluralism and problem-oriented research that engages with real-world questions, the authors examine quantitative and qualitative traditions, rationalist and interpretivist perspectives, as well as different substantive backgrounds. The book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students in global politics, foreign policy, and methods-related classes across the social sciences