%0 Journal Article %J Rehabilitation Psychology %D 2009 %T Development of an item bank for the assessment of depression in persons with mental illnesses and physical diseases using Rasch analysis %A Forkmann, T. %A Boecker, M. %A Norra, C. %A Eberle, N. %A Kircher, T. %A Schauerte, P. %A Mischke, K. %A Westhofen, M. %A Gauggel, S. %A Wirtz, M. %K Adaptation, Psychological %K Adult %K Aged %K Depressive Disorder/*diagnosis/psychology %K Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted %K Female %K Heart Diseases/*psychology %K Humans %K Male %K Mental Disorders/*psychology %K Middle Aged %K Models, Statistical %K Otorhinolaryngologic Diseases/*psychology %K Personality Assessment/statistics & numerical data %K Personality Inventory/*statistics & numerical data %K Psychometrics/statistics & numerical data %K Questionnaires %K Reproducibility of Results %K Sick Role %X OBJECTIVE: The calibration of item banks provides the basis for computerized adaptive testing that ensures high diagnostic precision and minimizes participants' test burden. The present study aimed at developing a new item bank that allows for assessing depression in persons with mental and persons with somatic diseases. METHOD: The sample consisted of 161 participants treated for a depressive syndrome, and 206 participants with somatic illnesses (103 cardiologic, 103 otorhinolaryngologic; overall mean age = 44.1 years, SD =14.0; 44.7% women) to allow for validation of the item bank in both groups. Persons answered a pool of 182 depression items on a 5-point Likert scale. RESULTS: Evaluation of Rasch model fit (infit < 1.3), differential item functioning, dimensionality, local independence, item spread, item and person separation (>2.0), and reliability (>.80) resulted in a bank of 79 items with good psychometric properties. CONCLUSIONS: The bank provides items with a wide range of content coverage and may serve as a sound basis for computerized adaptive testing applications. It might also be useful for researchers who wish to develop new fixed-length scales for the assessment of depression in specific rehabilitation settings. %B Rehabilitation Psychology %7 2009/05/28 %V 54 %P 186-97 %8 May %@ 0090-5550 (Print)0090-5550 (Linking) %G eng %M 19469609 %0 Journal Article %J Quality of Life Research %D 1997 %T Health status assessment for the twenty-first century: item response theory, item banking and computer adaptive testing %A Revicki, D. A. %A Cella, D. F. %K *Health Status %K *HIV Infections/diagnosis %K *Quality of Life %K Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted %K Disease Progression %K Humans %K Psychometrics/*methods %X Health status assessment is frequently used to evaluate the combined impact of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease and its treatment on functioning and well-being from the patient's perspective. No single health status measure can efficiently cover the range of problems in functioning and well-being experienced across HIV disease stages. Item response theory (IRT), item banking and computer adaptive testing (CAT) provide a solution to measuring health-related quality of life (HRQoL) across different stages of HIV disease. IRT allows us to examine the response characteristics of individual items and the relationship between responses to individual items and the responses to each other item in a domain. With information on the response characteristics of a large number of items covering a HRQoL domain (e.g. physical function, and psychological well-being), and information on the interrelationships between all pairs of these items and the total scale, we can construct more efficient scales. Item banks consist of large sets of questions representing various levels of a HRQoL domain that can be used to develop brief, efficient scales for measuring the domain. CAT is the application of IRT and item banks to the tailored assessment of HRQoL domains specific to individual patients. Given the results of IRT analyses and computer-assisted test administration, more efficient and brief scales can be used to measure multiple domains of HRQoL for clinical trials and longitudinal observational studies. %B Quality of Life Research %7 1997/08/01 %V 6 %P 595-600 %8 Aug %@ 0962-9343 (Print) %G eng %M 9330558