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).
LeBeau, R., Mischel, E., Resnick, H., Kilpatrick, D., Friedman, M., Craske, M., et al (2014). Dimensional assessment of posttraumatic stress disorder in DSM-5. Psychiatry Research 218(15), 143-147
2. What was the definition of the construct?
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: a new self-report scale for PTSD that is brief and measures recent PTSD symptoms (past seven days).
3. How did the authors provide evidence on the validity of the measure? Could you think of additional approaches to validating the measure?
They reached out to people on the internet that were non-clinical and assessed individuals according to PTSD criteria. Of the larger sample, they kept 318 individuals, the majority of whom were White and female. They also provided trauma categories, including sexual assault, grief and loss, accident, violence, natural disaster, sexual assault, combat or war exposed.
Yes! Sample populations throughout the U.S. that attend mental health clinics primarily for trauma-related disorders. Have a wider range of races/ethnicities, sample intentionally for males and females, and by social class at a minimum as well as number and type of traumatic experiences.
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?
They didn’t necessarily discuss reliability. I imagine they could have resampled the same individuals at different time points.
5. Describe the implications of a lack of measurement validity or reliability for future research applications.
I am using this measure in a study and didn’t realize how they originally came up with this measure. A lot of debate in the PTSD field concerns number and types of exposures, with individuals coming from lower socio-economic backgrounds typically exposed to a higher number of traumatic experiences. The criticism of the current PTSD diagnosis is that it only targets individuals who have endured one trauma. PTSD for individuals that have endured multiple and various types of trauma look dramatically different. It appears that there is a recapitulation of oppression as it relates to the trauma diagnosis and does not capture the experience of individuals from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds as well socioeconomic backgrounds.
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)
Lee, L., Goodkind, S., Shook, J., (2017). Racial/Ethnic disparities in prior mental health service use among incarcerated adolescents. Children and Youth Services Review, 7823-31. Doi: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2017.04.019
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).
They assessed racial and ethnic inequalities in service utilization prior to arrest.
Measures were previous mental health and substance use treatment in the prior 12-months to be arrested.
3. What is the evidence for the validity and reliability of the measures?
The measures were yes/no to specialty service utilization prior to arrest. Each participant was asked if they had utilized these services. Not necessarily a validity or reliability of the measure in the classic sense.
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?
They compared Black and Hispanic to whites as the refrence category. They also analyzed by neighborhood disorder and receiving public assistance, which I thought was interesting. Seems appropriate to compare by these different variables.
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.
They utilized percentages of overall access prior to arrest and they also compared to the referent group, which in this case was white individuals. I get confused when I only see the relative risk, it does not give a sense of the prevalence of mental health symptoms or substance use in a population. But the again, relative risk helps me to understand in comparison to other groups so I believe both are useful.