Reliability And Validity Test Of The Curative Effect Assessment Scale For Cervical Spondylosis

Backgrounds:Cervical Spondylosis is a common disease. With the pace of life becomes faster and faster, the incidence of Cervical Spondylosis is increasing year by year, and the age of onset becomes lower. It accounts for 10%-15% of all adult. 80% of the patients are over 40 years old. Cervical Spondylosis has posed more and more serious threat to people's health, and affected people's quality of life.Cervical Spondylosis has many types, and its symptom is complicated. It's very difficult to give a comprehensive assessment to its therapeutic effect. Mostly, to evaluate the clinical effect is based on clinical improvement and the patient's own feeling, at present. The comparability and the scientificity of this way of evaluation are not very good. There has not been a standard and quantification criterion, so it is difficult to determine the actual effect of the various therapies. In this magisterial thesis, the reliability and validity of the curative effect assessment scale for Cervical Spondylosis will be analyzed.Objective:According to the developing principle and making flow of scale, the reliability and validity of the curative effect assessment scale for Cervical Spondylosis was analyzed by clinical observation and research and clinical data collecting. If the curative effect assessment scale for Cervical Spondylosis had good validity and reliability, it would more widespread be used in the clinical curative effect assessment.Methods:Study objects:The scale investigates healthy people and Cervical Spondylosis patients who met inclusion criteria. The selection criteria of all the study objects were based on diagnostic criteria, inclusion criteria and exclusion criterion.Study site:The investigations were made in Guangzhou. The Cervical Spondylosis came from the outpatients and inpatients in Guangdong Provincial TCM Hospital and the healthy people came from the community in Guangzhou.Scale appraisal programs:According to the developing principle and making flow of scale, we assessed the study objects by the curative effect assessment scale for Cervical Spondylosis. All the information collected was statistic analyzed by SPSS 13.0. Scale inspection includes reliability inspection and validity inspection. A reliability inspection includes test-retest reliability, split-half reliability and internal consistency. A validity inspection includes the content validity, the dimension correlation and used the factor analysis method to inspect the construct validity of the scale. The discriminate validity of the scale was tested by T-test.Results:The reliability of the curative effect assessment scale for Cervical Spondylosis:the test-retest reliability of the scale was 0.842, and every domain was above 0.8.The split-half reliability of the scale was 0.848, the domain of neck and back was 0.943, the domain of upper limb was 0.799, and the domain of head was 0.931. Because the domain of daily life had just two items, it is not necessary to calculate its split-half reliability.The Cronbach's a of the neck and back domain was 0.939, the upper limb domain was 0.845, the head domain was 0.939, and the daily life domain was 0.722. The Cronbach's a of the whole scale was 0.800.The validity of the curative effect assessment scale for Cervical Spondylosis:using multiple linear regression to analyze the scores of each domain and the score of the whole scale. The result showed that the scores of each domain all contribute to the scale. Factor analysis was used to inspect the construct validity of the scale. Four factors were abstracted, and the factors were consistent with the domains which were set down when the scale were designed. The result showed that there was a close logical relationship between the factors and the domains.The responsibility of the curative effect assessment scale for Cervical Spondylosis:comparing the scores of Cervical Spondylosis patients and healthy people by using t test. The result showed that the four domains of the scale between the two groups of people had significant differences (p<0.01) which meant that the scale was able to make a distinction between Cervical Spondylosis patients and healthy people. The Cervical Spondylosis patients were treated by acupuncture and moxibustion, and evaluated by the curative effect assessment scale for Cervical Spondylosis before and after the treatment. The results of evaluation were compared by t test. The result showed that there was a significant difference between two evaluation results in the scores of each domain and the scores of the whole scale.Conclusion:The analysis of reliability showed that the curative effect assessment scale for Cervical Spondylosis had good reliability. Four domains of the scale and the whole scale were not only able to make a distinction between Cervical Spondylosis patients and healthy people, but also able to show the change of Cervical Spondylosis patients'quality of life, that was to say, the curative effect assessment scale for Cervical Spondylosis had good responsibility. The analysis of validity above indicated that the scale had good validity.