Titolo della tesi: VALIDATION OF OUTCOME MEASURES IN REHABILITATION
Introduction: Measuring health status and evaluating health interventions are essential for mensuring high-quality services and promoting optimal health outcomes across various rehabilitation fields. A range of outcome measures is available, including clinician-reported, patient-reported, observer-reported, and performance-based assessments. These measures are crucial in rehabilitation practice and should align with the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) framework, which encompasses Body Functions and Structures, Activity and Participation, as well as Personal and Environmental Factors. Rehabilitation often benefits from targeted metrics that highlight functional and structural nuances specific to diverse conditions.
Material and Methods: Despite international initiatives, there remains a significant gap in standardized, comparable measures, leading to the use of tools with inadequate or unknown psychometric qualities. This inconsistency raises ethical concerns and reflects inefficient resource utilization. To address this, researchers have developed various Core Sets tailored to different conditions, particularly useful for individuals in both early post-acute and long-term rehabilitation phases. International efforts are underway to establish evidence-based guidelines for assessing clinical status across a range of health conditions, which are crucial for rehabilitation professionals.
Results: For clinicians, especially those in rehabilitation fields, gaining expertise in evaluating the psychometric properties of outcome measures is essential for selecting valid tools. This skill has gained prominence due to the growing body of research aimed at defining reliable criteria for appropriate tool selection and application. However, many assessment instruments lack thorough validation, limiting their applicability across various conditions and populations. Rehabilitation professionals benefit from rigorous assessments that replace empirical approaches with scientifically validated methods, thereby enhancing the reliability of rehabilitation outcomes.
Conclusion: Despite positive developments and extensive research support, improving assessment quality in rehabilitation remains challenging. This PhD thesis aims to provide Italian rehabilitation professionals with culturally adapted versions of key outcome measures, supporting high-quality rehabilitation and advancing standardized care for individuals with diverse health conditions.