Project EXPORT Measurement Core
Measurement Core Specific Aims and Recent Highlights
The higher rates of preventable and treatable chronic diseases and
poorer health among minority groups may be due to their poor
participation in research, as well as misguided approaches for
conducting research that may not be appropriate for this culturally
diverse population. The result has been a lack of accurate information
about their health, the root causes of health disparities, and
continued poor health outcomes for racial/ethnic minorities. Without
this information, developing culturally appropriate interventions that
may end health disparities remains a challenge. The Measurement Core of
Project EXPORT is intended to facilitate Project EXPORT programs goals
of meeting this challenge. The specific aims of the core are:
Specific Aim 1:
To assist center investigators with the development of culturally
appropriate health-related measures for African American and English-
and Spanish-speaking Latino patients.
Specific Aim 2: To assist center investigators with the psychometric evaluation of new and existing health-related measures.
Specific Aim 3: To promote the use of state-of-the-art psychometric methods.
The
Measurement Core has been highly effective in meeting its specific aims
and facilitating EXPORT program goals as measured by its key role at
enhancing community outreach, mentoring and training junior faculty to
conduct culturally appropriate research. It has also developed and
conducted innovative research that has identified potential barriers to
conducting research related to ending health disparities.
Accomplishments attributable to the core include organizational
improvement, curricular changes to enhance the conduct of culturally
appropriate research, the development of new approaches to assessing
the readability of surveys, and high productivity of publications
resulting from research efforts targeting minority health disparities.
Recent Measurement Core Highlights
- The
Core has mentored and rendered assistance in scientific and grant
writing to 25 junior faculty members from Drew and UCLA during the
current funding period. It has provided training in the cultural
adaptation of health information, building cross-cultural competency in
clinical practice, the validity of survey items for use among
multi-cultural populations, the use of large data sets to conduct
cross-cultural epidemiologic research, and the psychometric and
statistical analysis of survey and other health-related data.
- The
Core continues to make important national contributions to the field of
cross-cultural survey research and is working on 1) an analysis of the
perceptions of medical school faculty on their institution’s need for
mental health education and research and; 2) the cultural and
linguistic adaptation of the Kidney Disease Quality of Life
Questionnaire (KDOQL).
- In response to the
growing number of qualitative research projects at Drew and UCLA that
use focus group research methods the Core collaborated with the Drew
Biomedical Research Center to sponsor a two-day training workshop on
the use of Atlas.ti qualitative research software.
- To
promote the use of state-of-the-art measurement methods among EXPORT
supported investigators, the EXPORT measurement core has sponsored a
series of measurement seminars at UCLA and Drew.
