Outline for Session 12: Critically Appraising Studies about Assessment Reliability

· Validity

· Sensitivity

· Feasibility

· Sample Characteristics

The objective of this week's class is to learn more about appraising assessment instruments for practice. Assessment can be conducted to determine current problems or to predict the likelihood of future problems. There are a variety of ways to assess the reliability of measures and test their validity, and so appraisal needs to be geared to the purpose of the assessment instrument or protocol being studied. We will review the discussion article and talk about what questions should be asked given the type of assessment it discusses.  I would rather you get an intuitive understanding of these things than to have you learn a whole passel of statistics that you might encounter only once or twice in your future reading!