Please post to the forum by 1pm on the day of class
Hi everyone, homework this week has three parts (the first two parts are pretty straightforward though). You will find part 2 substantially easier after you read the Harper reading for this week:
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).
Validation of a financial toxicity screening tool.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5298039/
2. What was the definition of the construct?
The COmprehensive Score for financial Toxicity (COST) patient‐reported outcome measure (PROM) was previously developed by de Souza et al4 to assess financial toxicity in patients with cancer.
3. How did the authors provide evidence on the validity of the measure? Could you think of additional approaches to validating the measure?
The internal consistency of the COST measure, or the degree to which individual items that comprise the scale measure the same latent variable, was assessed by the Cronbach α. Values > .90 were considered excellent. The test reliability was measured by the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) using a 1‐way random effects model. Convergent validity was assessed by calculating the Pearson correlation between the COST and the Brief‐POMS measures. Divergent validity was assessed using correlations between the Marlowe‐Crowne Social Desirability Scale (MCSDS)22 and the COST measure. The MCSDS is a widely used measure of self‐reported social desirability.
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?
Evidence for reliability seen above. could do external validation with external data.
5. Describe the implications of a lack of measurement validity or reliability for future research applications.
unable to know if results reproducible if these measurements are not obained.
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)
cancer disparities based on racial/ethnic in survival.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29035642
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).
The percentage contribution of factors to overall racial/ethnic survival disparities was estimated from a sequence of multivariable Cox proportional hazards models.
3. What is the evidence for the validity and reliability of the measures?
mediation analysis using multivariable analysis
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?
NH whites for each tumor type, yes.
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.
this is a mediation analysis understanding which covariate introduces the largest effect in change of measure of association between tumor specific mortality and race/ethnicity. they use a HR, which is the appropriate measure.