Developing the communicative participation item bank: Rasch analysis results from a spasmodic dysphonia sample

Area of Science:

• Speech and Language Pathology
• Psychometrics
• Health Outcomes Measurement

Background:

• Communication disorders significantly impact daily life for many adults.
• Existing instruments may not fully capture the extent of communicative participation limitations.
• A new self-report tool, the Communicative Participation Item Bank, was developed.

Purpose of the Study:

• To perform initial psychometric analyses of the Communicative Participation Item Bank.
• To evaluate the instrument's ability to measure communication disorder interference in adults.
• To establish the reliability and validity of this new measure.

Main Methods:

• 141 candidate items administered to 208 adults with spasmodic dysphonia.
• Participants rated communication interference using a 5-category response format.
• Rasch analyses were conducted using Winsteps software to assess item performance.

Main Results:

• A 4-category response format improved item functioning.
• 8 items were removed for not fitting the Rasch model.
• The remaining 133 items demonstrated strong unidimensionality, explaining 89.3% of variance.

Conclusions:

• The Communicative Participation Item Bank exhibits promising psychometric properties.
• Preliminary findings support its use for assessing communicative participation.
• Additional validation studies in broader communication disorder populations are recommended.