Date of Award
Summer 1993
Document Type
Dissertation - Restricted
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Education
Abstract
The functional status of individuals receiving health care services is of increasing interest in the changing health care industry of the 1990s. Accurate assessment of impaired, disabled, and handicapped individuals is critical to determine their functional abilities and deficits. The Milwaukee Evaluation of Daily Living Skills (MEDLS) was developed to provide a behavioral measure of the abilities of persons with long-term mental illness to do basic and complex activities of daily living. Classical methods of test development were used to develop the instrument as it was published in 1988. Since that time, techniques of modern test theory, specifically Rasch analysis, have been increasingly used in the development of functional assessments in rehabilitation. The purpose of the project described here was to apply Rasch analysis to a revised version of the MEDLS in order to examine its validity and reliability. Comparisons to traditional test development procedures were made as well.