Finding quality or common measurements

[ZTG1992]

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Hello,

Hopefully this is an appropriate place to ask this question. I am working on collecting measurements for my thesis, but I am having some difficulty in sifting through the plethora of measurements and was hoping to find some general advice.

For example, I want to incorporate a measurement of depressive symptoms, but I am somewhat overwhelmed by the sheer number of inventories. I could use some general advice to determine what measurements are considered acceptable. I am not necessarily looking for recommendations for specific inventories (although I'd accept them), more so advice on navigating the options and determining if a scale is considered high quality.

I have discussed this with my adviser, but my thesis is out of his realm of knowledge, so his opinion on clinical measurements is nonexistent. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! I also have a book of measurements, "Practitioners guide to empirically based measures of depression", though it has an excessive number of inventories.

 

[WisNeuro]

In the studies that you are using to justify your thesis study, what are they using? You need to use that or something similar to it in yours. In terms of depression inventories, there are only lik e handful that are used in research, shouldn't take you too long in a lit review.

 

[MCParent]

Yup, just read the literature you cite in your reviews, and figure out what you want to measure and what does that. Eg are you just sampling college students and you want something simple that is not going to squish most people near the bottom of the distribution (so, maybe more like a measure of distress than depression); do you want to sample patients and actually categorize them, in which case you should be looking for the measure that has the best concordance with actual depression diagnosis, etc. Are there specific features of depression that you want, etc.? And then start reading.

 

[deleted343839]

I have discussed this with my adviser, but my thesis is out of his realm of knowledge

Can you consult another faculty member who is more knowledgeable about the topic?