Customer Reviews

Measurement Tools in Clinical Ethics

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This book is a rare find for those of us who teach research methods and instrument construction. In addition, this volume is also helpful for practitioners. It is a compilation of psychometric instruments that explicitly measure ethical concepts related to health care. This book represents a gold mine of variable resources. These instruments are extremely difficult and time consuming to find in the literature.

The authors include 31 instruments that are placed into the following categories:

Patient Preference
Patient Comprehension
Decisional Capacity
Advance Directives
Withdrawal of Life Support
Aggressiveness of Care
Moral Sensitivity
Ethical Practice Environment
Recipient Selection
General Issues for Health Professional

The authors include a summary of the psychometric qualities of each instrument -- validity, reliability and discussion of sampling to establish the norms. This is what one would expect from the authors. Unexpectedly, they include a critique of each instrument. I found these sections quite fascinating and well-done. One normally sees such critiques limited to the MENTAL MEASUREMENT YEARBOOK.

My research students are given an assignment in which they are required to review the reliability and validity of an instrument. I have ordered a copy of MEASUREMENT INSTRUMENTS IN CLINICAL ETHICS for our academic library and requested that the book be placed on closed reserve with other books that also house psychometric instruments.

Those who are reading this review are also likely to require the same assignment. At the time of this writing I have the following books on closed reserve:

Aman, M. G. (1991). Assessing Psychopathological and Behavioral Problems in Persons with Mental Retardation: A review of Available Instruments. National Institute of Mental Health.

Bearden. W, Netemeyer, R.G. & Mobley, M.F. (1993). Handbook of Marketing Scales. Sage.

Corcoran, K & Fischer, J. (2000). Measures for Clinical Practice: Volume 1 Couples, Families and Children, NY: Free Press.

Corcoran, K & Fischer, J. (2000). Measures for Clinical Practice: Volume 2 Adults, NY: Free Press.

Davis, CM et al (1988) Sexuality-Related Measures Graphic Publishing.
Fredman & Sherman. (1987). Handbook for Measurement for Marriage and Family Therapy, Brunner/Mazel.

Holman, A. M. (1983). Family Assessment: Tools for Understanding and Intervention. Sage.

L'Abate & Bagarozzi. (1993). Sourcebook of Marriage and Family Evaluation, Brunner Mazel.

Magsea & Moses.(1986). Outcome Measures for Child Welfare Services, Child Welfare League.

McDowell, I. & Newell, C. (1996). Measuring Health: A Guide to Rating Scales and Questionnaires. New York: Oxford University Press.

Miller, D. (2002). Handbook of Research Design and Social Measurement, [5th ed] Sage.

Nezu, A. M., Ronan, G.F., Meadows, E.A. & McClure, K.S. (2000). Practitioner's Guide to Empirically Based Measures of Depression. NY: Kluwer Acdemic/Plenum Publishers.

Robinson, Shaver & Wrightsman. (1991). Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Attitudes. Volume I Academic Press.

Sajatovic, M. & Ramirez, L. F. (2001). Rating Scales in Mental Health. Hudson, OH: Lexi-Comp Inc.

Shaw & Wright. (1967). Scales for the Measurement of Attitudes, NY: McGraw-Hill. Spreen & Strauss. (2001). A Compendium of Neuropsychological Tests, Oxford University Press.

Touliatos & Perlmutter (1990). Handbook of Family Measurement Techniques, Sage.

This book provides many valuable tools for researchers interested in learning more about patient perspectives on issues like advanced directives, patient capacity for decision-making, etc. There are fewer tools for actually measuring ethical decision-making of health care providers. A description of each tool and information regarding reliability and validity testing are provided (when available) which can be very useful to researchers selecting instruments for use in patient-focused research studies in ethics and health care.