We tested for possible non-response bias in that we compared those participants who took part after the final call (n = 36) with the rest of our sample with regard to the assessments of familiarity with journals.
Rather than self-assessment of familiarity, structural characteristics such as whether the patient and proxy live together or how often they see each other were better associated with proxy agreement with patient scores, at least for the FES.
Faculty members with formal assessment experience self-reported higher levels of familiarity with assessment terms, higher frequencies of assessment activity, increased confidence in conducting assessment, and more positive attitudes toward assessment than faculty members who were novices in assessment.
Faculty members with advanced assessment knowledge self-reported higher levels of familiarity with assessment terms, higher frequencies of assessment activity, increased confidence in conducting assessments, and more positive attitudes toward assessments than novice faculty members.
It remains unclear whether the difference between the reviewer and author's assessments were due to different information available to them for assessment, or whether authors' lack of familiarity with the NOS tool resulted in this finding.
Although the survey explained in detail how the assessment should be conducted, lack of familiarity with the NOS tool by the authors may have negatively affected their performance.
A follow-up to the study by Emenike and colleagues focused more specifically on individual faculty members self-reported degree of familiarity with assessment terms (Raker and Holme, 2014).
This survey identified a number of barriers for health professionals in completing developmental monitoring, including time constraints, inadequate reimbursement, lack of non-physician support staff, lack of further diagnostic and treatment services, insufficient training, and lack of familiarity with assessment tools.
For the analysis of the relationship between the self-reported ratings of familiarity with assessment-program vocabulary items and the rating of the frequency of constructing an assessment program, the correlation coefficients ranged from 0.35 to 0.41.
The dimensionality of familiarity with the assessment terms section of the survey was analyzed, and the outcome suggests a difference in knowledge in assessment-program design, instrumentation, and assessment validation.
