What are Claim Evaluation Tools?
The Claim Evaluation Tools is an item bank containing multiple-choice questions that assess an individual’s understanding of and ability to apply Informed Health Choices Key Concepts. The Key Concepts are principles that can help people assess treatment claims and to make informed health choices [Austvoll-Dahlgren 2015].
Who are these questions for?
All the questions in the Claim Evaluation Tools item bank have been developed for children (from the age of 10) as well as for adults. They can used to test peoples’ knowledge in:
- school and other teaching settings
- randomised trials evaluating outcomes of educational interventions
- cross-sectional studies to gauge ability in a population, and thus provide background information to help tailor interventions addressing people’s educational needs.
Flexible and tailorable
Instead of a standard, fixed questionnaire, we have developed the Claim Evaluation Tools as a flexible battery of multiple-choice questions from which teachers, researchers and others can select relevant questions for a specific purpose.
Each multiple-choice question is designed to address one Key Concept. This means that you can create your own test or questionnaire based on which Key Concepts you want to teach or measure.
Use in IHC Primary School and Podcast trials
In a project in Uganda (2012-2017), we created IHC primary school resources and IHC podcast for parents that were designed to teach 12 and 9 Key Concepts respectively (13 Key Concepts in total, as several overlapped). We evaluated the effect of the resources using a test with 26 multiple-choices questions – each Key Concept was evaluated by two questions.
The test also included questions that assess intended behaviours, self-efficacy, and attitudes. In addition, we included four questions that assess literacy, as a covariate in exploratory analyses in the trial of the primary school resources.
Open access
The Claim Evaluation Tools item bank is open access and free for non-commercial use. If you are interested in trying out the multiple-choice questions, please see our manual that will help you to develop your own test or questionnaire in a few easy steps.
Multiple-choice questions in the Claim Evaluation Tools item bank are currently available in several languages, including: Chinese, English, German, Luganda, Norwegian, and Spanish.
For access to translated questions, please download and fill in the ‘Intention to use’ agreement (PDF) and contact us:
Astrid Dahlgren (general inquiries, English and Norwegian versions)
Anke Steckelberg (German version)
Giordano Pérez Gaxiola (Spanish- Latin American version)
We used an absolute (criterion referenced) standard to set passing scores for the test – one for the 12 concepts covered by the IHC primary school resources and one for the nine concepts covered by the IHC podcast. We used a combination of Nedelsky’s and Angoff’s methods to determine the criteria [Davies 2017], which are cut-offs for passing scores. In addition, we determined a second cut-off for scores that indicate mastery of the concepts, using the same methods.
We have developed the item bank based on extensive qualitative and quantitative feedback from methodological experts, health professionals, teachers and members of the public [Austvoll-Dahlgren 2017b].
We have validated the questions using Rasch analysis in several countries, including, China, Germany, Mexico, Norway, Uganda and Croatia [see Austvoll-Dahlgren 2017a and Publications].
Are you interested in translating the multiple-choice questions to other languages or contributing to the ongoing development and validation of evaluation tools?
Here are some protocol examples of what these kinds of studies can look like:
First, download the ‘Intention to use’ agreement (PDF). Then, contact us:
Contact us for general inquiries or to send feedback about the Claim Evaluation Tools.