Distinct trajectories of neuropsychiatric symptoms in the 12 months following traumatic brain injury (TBI): a TRACK-TBI study.

Background: Neuropsychiatric symptoms are common after traumatic brain injury (TBI) and often resolve within 3 months post-injury. However, the degree to which individual patients follow this course is unknown. We characterized trajectories of neuropsychiatric symptoms over 12 months post-TBI.

Item Response Modeling of Clinical Instruments With Filter Questions: Disentangling Symptom Presence and Severity.

Clinical instruments that use a filter/follow-up response format often produce data with excess zeros, especially when administered to nonclinical samples. When the unidimensional graded response model (GRM) is then fit to these data, parameter estimates and scale scores tend to suggest that the instrument measures individual differences only among individuals with severe levels of the psychopathology. In such scenarios, alternative item response models that explicitly account for excess zeros may be more appropriate.

Data-driven characterization of traumatic brain injury severity from clinical, neuroimaging, and blood-based indicators.

The conventional clinical approach to characterizing traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) as mild, moderate, or severe using the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) total score has well-known limitations, prompting calls for more sophisticated strategies to characterize TBI. Here, we use item response theory (IRT) to develop a novel method for quantifying TBI severity that incorporates neuroimaging and blood-based biomarkers along with clinical measures. Within the multicenter Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in TBI (TRACK-TBI) study sample (N = 2545), we show that a set of 23 clinical, head computed tomography (CT), and blood-based biomarker variables familiar to clinicians and researchers index a common latent continuum of TBI severity.

Does Response Format Matter? The Psychometric Effects of Filter Questions on Self-Reported Symptom Frequencies.

The presence-severity response format uses a filter question to ask about the presence of a symptom, followed by a question about the severity of that symptom. Only an affirmative response to the filter question triggers the follow-up question. Despite its widespread use, little research has compared the psychometric properties of the presence-severity response format to those of the traditional single-item response format.

Linking Rivermead Post Concussion Symptoms Questionnaire (RPQ) and Sport Concussion Assessment Tool (SCAT) scores with item response theory.

Objective: Despite the public health burden of traumatic brain injury (TBI) across broader society, most TBI studies have been isolated to a distinct subpopulation. The TBI research literature is fragmented further because often studies of distinct populations have used different assessment procedures and instruments. Addressing calls to harmonize the literature will require tools to link data collected from different instruments that measure the same construct, such as civilian mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) and sports concussion symptom inventories.

Symptom Presence and Symptom Severity as Unique Indicators of Psychopathology: An Application of Multidimensional Zero-Inflated and Hurdle Graded Response Models.

Questionnaires inquiring about psychopathology symptoms often produce data with excess zeros or the equivalent (e.g., none, never, and not at all).

Improving the Precision of the Glasgow Outcome Scale-Extended Using Item Response Theory: A TRACK-TBI Study.

The Glasgow Outcome Scale-Extended (GOSE) is a functional outcome measure intended to place individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) into one of eight broad levels of injury-related disability. This simplicity is not always optimal, particularly when more granular assessment of individuals' injury recovery is desired. The GOSE, however, is customarily assessed using a multi-question interview that contains richer information than is reflected in the GOSE score.

A multidimensional zero-inflated graded response model for ordinal symptom data.

Zero responses and their equivalents-for example, never, none, not at all-are commonly observed on measures of psychopathology inquiring about symptom frequencies, particularly when these measures are administered to community samples. Measurement researchers typically accommodate multivariate zero inflation by including a class of respondents who endorse zero for all symptoms. While this latent class approach accounts for test-level zero inflation (i.

Parental Enrollment Decision-Making for a Neonatal Clinical Trial.

Objective: To describe the parental experience of recruitment and assess differences between parents who participated and those who declined to enroll in a neonatal clinical trial.

Study Design: This was a survey conducted at 12 US neonatal intensive care units of parents of infants who enrolled in the High-dose Erythropoietin for Asphyxia and encephaLopathy (HEAL) trial or who were eligible but declined enrollment. Questions assessed 6 factors of the parental experience of recruitment: (1) interactions with research staff; (2) the consent experience; (3) perceptions of the study; (4) decisional conflict; (5) reasons for/against participation; and (6) timing of making the enrollment decision.

Functional Status Examination Yields Higher Measurement Precision than the Glasgow Outcome Scale-Extended after Moderate-to-Severe Traumatic Brain Injury.

A limited evidence base supports the Functional Status Examination (FSE) as superior to the more commonly used Glasgow Outcome Scale-Extended (GOSE) for precisely characterizing injury-related functional limitations. The aim of this study was to use modern psychometric tools to test the hypothesis that the FSE is more precise than the GOSE in characterizing individual differences in functional limitations after moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). Secondarily, we sought to confirm that the type of interviewee (patient, significant other) does not affect the test performance of the FSE.

A Preliminary Psychometric Analysis of the Difficulties with Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) Among Autistic Adolescents and Adults: Factor Structure, Reliability, and Validity.

Emotion dysregulation is common among autistic people, yet few measures have received psychometric evaluation in this population. We examined the factor structure, reliability, and validity of a commonly-used measure of emotion dysregulation, the Difficulties with Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), in a sample of 156 autistic adolescents and adults. Data were drawn from the NIH National Database for Autism Research (NDAR) and an author's existing dataset.

Differential Item Functioning Based on Autism Features, IQ, and Age on the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders (SCARED) Among Youth on the Autism Spectrum.

Anxiety commonly occurs among youth on the autism spectrum, yet measurement of anxiety in this population is complicated by a number of factors, including potentially overlapping symptomatology, the child's intellectual functioning, and changes in anxiety across development. Moreover, few studies have examined the psychometric properties of anxiety measures in this population, and no study to date has tested whether there are systematic differences in the measurement of anxiety, or differential item functioning (DIF), across the high degree of heterogeneity and the developmental course of autism. To test this possibility, data were combined across multiple studies using the National Database for Autism Research, an NIH-funded data repository.

Parental Factors Associated With the Decision to Participate in a Neonatal Clinical Trial.

Importance: It remains poorly understood how parents decide whether to enroll a child in a neonatal clinical trial. This is particularly true for parents from racial or ethnic minority populations. Understanding factors associated with enrollment decisions may improve recruitment processes for families, increase enrollment rates, and decrease disparities in research participation.

Changes in Electroencephalogram Coherence in Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder After a Social Skills Intervention.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental condition that affects social communication and behavior. There is consensus that neurological differences are present in ASD. Further, theories emphasize the mixture of hypo- and hyper-connectivity as a neuropathologies in ASD [O'Reilly, Lewis, & Elsabbagh, 2017]; however, there is a paucity of studies specifically testing neurological underpinnings as predictors of success on social skills interventions.

Preliminary Validation of an Abbreviated Acute Concussion Symptom Checklist Using Item Response Theory.

Background: Symptom assessment is a critical component of concussion diagnosis and management, with item selection primarily driven by clinical judgment or expert consensus. We recently demonstrated that concussion symptoms assessed by the Sport Concussion Assessment Tool (SCAT) are essentially unidimensional, implying that overall symptom severity may be accurately estimated with relatively few questions. Briefer, evidence-based forms for symptom assessment would provide clinicians flexibility.

Leveraging item accuracy and reaction time to improve measurement of child executive function ability.

Traditionally, executive function (EF) tasks have been scored using either accuracy or reaction time (RT) metrics. The current study, which includes 1,015 first-grade children from the Family Life Project, demonstrates a new scoring approach for the Hearts and Flowers (HF) task that uses both item-level accuracy and RT data to estimate latent EF ability. Our primary aim was to compare scores derived from this approach to standard scores often reported in the HF literature.

The use of PROMIS patient-reported outcomes (PROs) to inform light chain (AL) amyloid disease severity at diagnosis.

We sought to evaluate how PROMIS patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures correlated with disease characteristics in systemic light chain (AL) amyloidosis patients at diagnosis. Newly diagnosed AL patients were recruited at two centres ( = 61). Patients completed the PROMIS Global Health v1.

Assessing the Psychometric Proprieties of the Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help Scale-Short Form (ATSPPH-SF) Among Latino Adults.

The Latino population continues to underutilize mental health services at an alarming rate. The Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help Scale-Short Form (ATSPPH-SF) is one of the most commonly used instruments to assess help-seeking attitudes. The current study sought to evaluate the factor structure and test for the presence of differential item functioning on the ATSPPH-SF with a sample of Latino adult individuals across nativity status (U.

Functional Status Examination Yields Higher Measurement Precision of Functional Limitations after Traumatic Injury than the Glasgow Outcome Scale-Extended: A Preliminary Study.

The Glasgow Outcome Scale-Extended (GOSE) is one of the most widely used measures of functional limitations after traumatic brain injury (TBI), and is the primary outcome measure used in clinical trials of acute TBI treatment. However, the GOSE appears insensitive to the full spectrum of TBI-related functional limitations, which may limit its potential to capture treatment effects or correlate with other variables that impact outcome. The Functional Status Examination (FSE) was designed to improve on the assessment of injury-related functional limitations using a standardized assessment and wider possible score range.

A Psychometric Analysis of the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents Among Youth With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Caregiver-Adolescent Agreement, Factor Structure, and Validity.

Social anxiety is common among adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). An ongoing challenge for both research and clinical practice in ASD is the assessment of anxious symptomatology. Despite its widespread use in samples of youth with ASD, the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (SAS-A) has not received psychometric evaluation within this population; thus, the validity of its use in research and clinical practice for ASD remains unclear.

Diagnosing the GOSE: Structural and Psychometric Properties Using Item Response Theory, a TRACK-TBI Pilot Study.

The Glasgow Outcome Scale-Extended (GOSE) was designed to assess global outcome after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Since its introduction, several empirically founded criticisms of the GOSE have been raised, including poor reliability; an insensitivity to small, but potentially meaningful, changes; a tendency to produce ceiling effects; inconsistent associations with neurocognitive, psychological, and quality-of-life measures; and an inability to assess the multi-dimensional nature of TBI outcome. The current project took a diagnostic approach to identifying the underlying causes of reported limitations by exploring the internal construct validity of the GOSE at 3 and 6 months post-injury using item response theory (IRT) techniques.

Determining a transitional scoring link between PROMIS® pediatric and adult physical health measures.

Purpose: Having independent versions of the PROMIS® scales (for Pediatric and Adults) is problematic as scores cannot be evaluated longitudinally as individuals move from childhood into adulthood. The primary aim of this research project is to use item response theory (IRT) to develop a transitional scoring link (or "crosswalk") between the PROMIS adult and pediatric physical health measures.

Setting: Sample 1 was collected at 6 rehabilitation hospitals in the U.