Date:         Thu, 31 Mar 2005 08:01:52 -0700
Reply-To:     William Dudley <william.dudley@nurs.utah.edu>
Sender:       "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         William Dudley <william.dudley@nurs.utah.edu>
Subject:      Combining measures
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

I am working on a project in which we have used the CESD as a measure of
depression.
For a variety of reasons the investigators are thinking of switching to
the depression scale of the Profile of Mood States (POMS).
In previous work with the population in which we used both the POMS and
the CESD we found that the CESD had slightly better
psychometric properties and was slightly more sensitive to the
intervention than the POMS.
However the CESD is leading to some unforseen administrative problems
and we are considering using the POMS.
This will, of course, lead to problems as we try to analyze outcomes
down the road.
I anticipate that we could convert the CESD and POMS to standard scores
and combine them, but I'd rather not.

I wonder if others out there have faced similar problems and have had
success melding two
different measures and treating them as the same indicator following a
similar shift in data collection .


Thanks

Bill


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        William N. Dudley, PhD
        Emma Eccels Jones Nursing Research Center

        University of Utah

        College of Nursing

       10 South 2000 East

        Salt Lake City, UT 84122-5880

   http://www.nurs.utah.edu/faculty/william_dudley.htm

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