Development of MAIS and MUSS QUESTIONNAIRES (Farsi version). The MAIS and MUSS, developed at the Indiana University School of Medicine, are parent report scales which allow the examiner to evaluate a child's skills in meaningful, real-world situations. Each scale utilizes 10 probes. The MAIS gathers auditory behavioral information, whereas the MUSS investigates speech production behaviors. Ten areas are to be probed in MAIS and MUSS in each list and then give the specific questions that are to be asked by the clinician. In many instances, additional queries are also given, which might help the parent answer more accurately and fully. It is important for the clinician to write the parents' response in its entirety, rather than simply marking an "X" on one of the five (5) possible responses. This is important for two reasons. First, we wish to be able to antidotally compare the child's progress over time, and the examples and reports given by the parents help us do that. In addition, the ability to evaluate interexaminer reliability requires that enough information be written down so that an independent examiner could also answer the questions, based on the parent's written responses. In this study, we tried to develop a Farsi version of these QUESTIONNAIRES (Farsi-MUSS and Farsi-MAIS) to help prepare appropriate medical and rehabilitative approaches.

Background: QUESTIONNAIRES are well accepted for outcome measurements, but they must be reliable, valid, internally consistent, and sensitive to clinical changes. In this study Levine outcome questionnaire for carpal tunnel syndrome are translated to Farsi and its properties are evaluated. Methods: The “Levin” outcome questionnaire was utilized in 35 cases of bilateral idiopathic carpal tunnel syndrome. These cases, from a one year period, were tested by this questionnaire prospectively and 6 months post surgery. Reliability, validity, internal consistency and sensitivity to clinical change were evaluated for this translated questionnaire and were compared with clinical and electrodiagnostic assessments. Results: Thirty five women with 46.6±9.8 years of age who had a mean duration of symptoms of 4.1±4 years were assessed. Reliability, sensitivity to clinical change and internal consistency for “symptom severity” score were respectively 0.853, 2.35, 0.94. The same parameters for “functional severity” score were 0.86, 1.7, and 0.96 respectively. Scores of the QUESTIONNAIRES correlated with objective findings and electrodiagnosis. Phalen test also had positive correlation with electrodiagnosis. There fore in both QUESTIONNAIRES the reliability was good, sensitivity and internal consistency were excellent. Conclusions: The translated QUESTIONNAIRES are valid, reliable, sensitive to clinical change and internally consistent. Its use is recommended for researchers who like to use a validated tool with reasonable precision for carpal tunnel surgery.

Objective: Different people might respond to a question differently. But do they value the same when they choose a response category to respond to a given question. For instance when they choose ‘excellent’ do they have the same evaluation in their mind. This study aimed to investigate people’s evaluation of different response categories usually used in health-related QUESTIONNAIRES measuring attitudes.Methods: A population-based study was conducted in Tehran, Iran. A representative sample of adults aged 18 to 65 years were entered into the study and were asked to respond to a questionnaire. The questionnaire contained different visual analogue scales (from 0 to 10 with 0 being at lowest and 10 at highest extreme) in order to evaluate different verbal response categories measuring attitudes.Results: In all 1109 respondents completed the questionnaire. The mean age of participants was 34.36 (SD=11.82) years and they were relatively well educated (mean formal education = 11.99, SD = 3.93 years). The analysis of the data indicated that in most instances the participants showed almost similar evaluation when responding to items measuring attitudes. The mean point equivalent numeric figure for ‘Strongly agree’ was 9.57 (SD = 0.94) while for ‘Agree’ it was 7.89 (SD = 1.45) and for ‘Strongly disagree’ it was 0.37 (SD = 0.76). There were no significant differences in people’s evaluation with regards to age, gender, education, marital and employment status.Conclusion: Overall, the findings showed that people had almost similar evaluation of response categories when responding to attitude-related items. The findings suggest since people perceive similar meaning for verbal response categories it is safe to ask people to rate different response categories.

Background: Research is the basis of decision-making in nursing care. Research in nursing as other sciences is conducted with different designs and instruments. Each research tool has its specific characteristics.Purpose: The aim of this study was to assess psychometric properties of QUESTIONNAIRES in published nursing articles.Methods: In this study, the articles published in Journal of Advanced Nursing in 2001 were analyzed.Results: Findings showed that in only 12 of 339 articles, QUESTIONNAIRES were designed according to instrument development process and psychometric properties. Authors of most articles did not provide any guidance or comment regarding the process. Conclusion: Testing validity and reliability of QUESTIONNAIRES requires experience. Nurses should involve experts to include the process of psychometric properties in devising their QUESTIONNAIRES. In addition, more space is needed to publish newly developed instruments.

Background & objectives: Content validity is the first type of validity that has to be ensured during the design of a tool. Its prerequisite for other validities and its close relationship with the tool reliability place it in a vital position in the questionnaire design. However, since it has not been paid enough attention in national publications therefore in this paper we will explain the different steps in preparing an appropriate content for QUESTIONNAIRES and also their assessment.Methods: The steps of the content validation process for designing valid and reliable QUESTIONNAIRES have been explained in this paper: development (domain identification, items generation and instrument construction), Judgment – quantification (determining the inter rater agreement among experts, determining the clarity and relevancy of each of the questions along with the clarity, relevancy and comprehensiveness of the tool as a whole) have been explained.Conclusions: The benefits of performing the content validation in questionnaire development are not increasing the possibility of accessing desirable content validity indexes (relevancy, clarity, and comprehensiveness) only, but also improving the Reliability indexes of tool and decreasing need for resources (financial and temporal) are the other benefits of this approach. Although subjective nature of experts’ responses is the problematic issue in this process but the more quantitative steps of the content validation has reduced considerable part of previous worries about this process. These issues explain why content validation has become a suitable process for questionnaire.