This fourth edition presents everything nurses and health researchers need to know about designing, testing, selecting and evaluating instruments and methods for measuring in nursing. Thoroughly updated, this fourth edition now contains only the latest, most cutting-edge measurement instruments that have direct applicability for nurses and health researchers in a variety of roles, including students, clinicians, educators, researchers, administrators and consultants.

Using clear and accessible language, the authors explain in detail, and illustrated by example, how to conduct sound measurement practices that have been adequately tested for reliability and validity. This edition is enriched with topics on the leading edge of nursing and health care research, such as measurement in the digital world, biomedical instrumentation, new clinical data collection methods, and methods for measuring quality of care.

Key features:

• Provides new and emerging strategies for testing the validity of specific measures
• Discusses computer-based testing: the use of Internet research and data collection
• Investigates methods for measuring physiological variables using biomedical instrumentation
• Includes information on measurement practices in clinical research, focusing on clinical data collection methods, such as clinimetrics
• Identifies the challenges of measuring quality of care and how to address them

Carolyn F. Waltz, PhD, RN, FAAN, is Professor and Director of International Activities at the University of Maryland School of Nursing. She received her BSN and MS degrees in nursing from the University of Maryland and her doctorate in education with specialization in research, evaluation, and measurement from the University of Delaware. Dr. Waltz is an internationally recognized expert in the development of outcomes evaluation in clinical and educational settings. She has published extensively including award winning books and articles on research, measurement, nursing outcomes, program development and evaluation. She has provided numerous outcomes evaluations, consultants, presentations, and workshops to varied health care audiences nationally and internationally and is widely acknowledged as a pioneer in outcomes evaluation and research.

Ora Lea Strickland, PhD, RN, FAAN, is Professor in the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She earned a doctoral degree in child development and family relations from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro; a masters degree in maternal and child health nursing from Boston University, Massachusetts; and a bachelors degree in nursing from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Greensboro. She is the founder and senior editor of the Journal of Nursing Measurement. As an internationally known specialist in nursing research, measurement, evaluation, maternal and child health and parenting, Dr. Strickland has published widely in professional journals and books, and is called upon as a consultant by health care agencies, universities, government agencies, and community organizations. She has presented more than 200 lectures, speeches, and workshops, and her research has been featured in newspapers and magazines, as well as on radio and television.

Elizabeth R. Lenz, PhD, RN, FAAN is Dean and Professor, College of Nursing, Ohio State University. Prior to assuming the deanship in September, 2001, she held faculty and academic administrative positions at Columbia University, The Pennsylvania State University, the University of Maryland, Georgetown University and Boston College. She is known for her work in doctoral nursing education and in nursing research career has focused on the family as the context for health and illness. Recent research concerns the outcomes and quality of nurse practitioner practice. She is former member, Editorial Board, Nursing Outlook, and between 1999 and 2001 served as an editor of Scholarly Inquiry for Nursing Practice.