30.06.2013 Views

Sick and Tired: Understanding and Managing Sleep Difficulties in ...

Sick and Tired: Understanding and Managing Sleep Difficulties in ...

Sick and Tired: Understanding and Managing Sleep Difficulties in ...

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

heart disease (Epste<strong>in</strong> et al., 1999; Salaffi, Sarzi-Putt<strong>in</strong>i, Girolimetti et al., 2009).<br />

Evidence has supported the unidimensionality of the eight subscales, with each scale<br />

reveal<strong>in</strong>g a Cronbach‟s alpha score above 0.7 (Kos<strong>in</strong>ski, Keller, Hatoum, Kong, &<br />

Ware, 1999; Moorer, Suurmeije, Foets, & Molenaar, 2001) <strong>and</strong> <strong>in</strong>ter item correlations<br />

above 0.4 (Leung et al., 2010). Some ceil<strong>in</strong>g <strong>and</strong> floor effects have been found <strong>in</strong> the<br />

utilisation of the SF36 <strong>in</strong> cl<strong>in</strong>ical populations (McHorney, Ware, Lu, & Sherbourne,<br />

1994) <strong>and</strong> the measurement characteristics of the role limitations due to emotional <strong>and</strong><br />

physical function<strong>in</strong>g scales have come under question <strong>in</strong> patients with arthritis (Ruta,<br />

Hurst, K<strong>in</strong>d, Hunter, & Stubb<strong>in</strong>gs, 1998). Despite these limitations the SF-36 has been<br />

recommended for use as an assessment measure <strong>in</strong> studies with people with FMS<br />

(Salaffi, Sarzi-Putt<strong>in</strong>i, Ciapetti et al., 2009). In addition, the SF-36 was also chosen for<br />

use <strong>in</strong> this study as it <strong>in</strong>cludes scales focus<strong>in</strong>g specifically on levels of pa<strong>in</strong> <strong>and</strong> fatigue<br />

(the two ma<strong>in</strong> symptoms <strong>in</strong> FMS), <strong>in</strong> addition to factors explor<strong>in</strong>g general health quality<br />

of life.<br />

Age, length of illness, negative affect, cop<strong>in</strong>g <strong>and</strong> sleep quality sub-scales were<br />

considered to be <strong>in</strong>dependent variables <strong>and</strong> constructs (subscales) of health related<br />

quality of life, the dependent variables.<br />

Data Analysis<br />

Data was entered <strong>in</strong>to SPSS Version 16.0 (SPSS for W<strong>in</strong>dows, 2006) <strong>and</strong> the<br />

questionnaire measures were scored accord<strong>in</strong>g to their <strong>in</strong>structions. The median <strong>and</strong><br />

<strong>in</strong>ter-quartile range were calculated to describe the distribution of the ord<strong>in</strong>al data for<br />

the questionnaire variables (Howitt & Cramer, 2005). Underly<strong>in</strong>g the analysis of the<br />

data, presented <strong>in</strong> this thesis, is the pr<strong>in</strong>ciple that data from the questionnaire scales used<br />

<strong>in</strong> this thesis was ord<strong>in</strong>al, there be<strong>in</strong>g no evidence that there are equal <strong>in</strong>tervals between<br />

the po<strong>in</strong>ts on the given scales. Rasch analysis can be a useful tool to explore the<br />

<strong>in</strong>tervals between po<strong>in</strong>ts on a scale to determ<strong>in</strong>e if they are equal <strong>and</strong> provid<strong>in</strong>g<br />

evidence for treat<strong>in</strong>g the data as ratio level data. However, due to its complexity, Rasch<br />

analysis has not always been conducted on every st<strong>and</strong>ardized measure, <strong>and</strong> with<strong>in</strong><br />

every population under <strong>in</strong>vestigation (particularly this has not been applied to the<br />

measures used with<strong>in</strong> this thesis <strong>in</strong> the FMS population).<br />

58

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!