Part 1:
1. Choose a paper describing the development or validation of a measure of relevance in health disparities research (please give the full citation and/or upload the paper if that's possible).
Answer:
Title: “Development of a Survey Instrument to Measure Connectivity to Evaluate National Public Health Preparedness and Response Performance” (attached below)
2. What was the definition of the construct?
Answer:
The authors generally call the construct “connectivity” and they refer to it as a system’s preparedness against outside attacks as defined by the “human, person-to-person aspect of preparedness,” (330).
3. How did the authors provide evidence on the validity of the measure? Could you think of additional approaches to validating the measure?
Answer:
The measurement that the authors came up with a tool called the “Connectivity Measurement Tool” that they generated from 6 focus groups made up exclusively of first-responders. Experts in the Harvard Center of Public Health Preparedness then generated questions which were subsequently edited by these same first-responders.
To validate this measurement tool, they used a variety of statistical tests. I’m not familiar with all of them, but it seems like their goal was to minimize the amount of variance from the outcome (not sure if they’re talking about variance in the residuals or the outcome itself…) with the MSAS.
I’m honestly not sure how they could have otherwise validated this measurement tool. I believe that they looked at absolute differences in connectivity, based on how they described their statistical analysis, so maybe they could have looked at relative differences instead?
4. How did the authors provide evidence on the reliability of the measure? Could you think of additional approaches to evaluating the reliability of the measure?
Answer:
The main piece of evidence that the authors kept returning to was the amount of variance in connectivity that their measurement tool explained. In addition, they claim that their tool must be valid because it supports their hypotheses about connectivity at the individual-, system-, and organization-levels.
5. Describe the implications of a lack of measurement validity or reliability for future research applications.
Answer:
A lack of measurement validity can be dangerous for future research applications because in those cases there exists the possibility that the measurement tool was only valid for the situation(s) that the author examined and cannot be applied to other situations.
Part 2:
1. Find a paper describing a health disparity (please give the full citation or, even better, upload the paper so everyone else can look at it too)
Answer:
Paper title: “A qualitative study of oral health knowledge among African Americans”
2. Summarize the construct and measurement of the dimension of disparity (e.g., racial inequalities?, SES inequalities?) and the outcome measured (e.g., self-rated health).
Answer:
The outcome measured here was the oral health beliefs, knowledge, and barriers facing African-American DC residents. The construct examined was racial inequalities.
3. What is the evidence for the validity and reliability of the measures?
Answer:
The measures that they used in this study were based on Morgan’s funnel strategy design. I don’t know much about this measure, but I assume that it has been validated given that it comes from a separate paper on a similar topic by the person with the same name as the method in question (“Focus Groups on Qualitative Research,” Morgan).
4. What is the reference category used for the disparity measure (ie, who is the comparison group)? Why does this reference category make sense (or not) for this research question?
Answer:
The reference category used for the disparity measure was non-Hispanic Whites. The authors don’t explain why they chose this group, but I assume that it’s the wealthiest group by race in the area.
5. How is the disparity quantified or measured? Is this an absolute or relative measure or are both provided? Describe which type of measure you would prefer for this research area, or, if both, why.
Answer:
The disparity is quantified by the percentage of people who don’t (and also therefore those who do) know about a specific topic. This is a relative measure because it looks at ratios. The important point that this paper is trying to make is that the African-American population of DC knows less about oral health care compared with non-Hispanic Whites. For this reason, the relative measurement is preferable compared with an absolute position.