The high ceiling effects in the two role functioning scales (RP 79%; RE 77.3%) could be explained, at least partly, by the dichotomous format of the items comprising these scales.
The final draft of the K-REC instrument was distributed to three senior academics with expertise in research methods and EBP and two entry-level physiotherapy students at the University of South Australia to review the clarity and formatting of the items and instructions.
The answering formats of the performance items are: 1) never, sometimes, often, and always, or 2) not a problem, a small problem, and a big problem.
The panel were asked to comment on the terminology used, response format, order of the items, length of the questionnaire and the readability.
Because the low end of the scale indicates a neutral response, the response format of these items can be considered as strictly unipolar according to the response format typology of Russel and Carroll [45].
The format of the ACORNS items was: "A species of X [plants or animals] lacks Y. How would biologists explain how a species of X [with or without] Y evolved from an ancestral X species [without or with] Y?" (X = Snail/Rose/Penguin/Elm and Y = poison/thorns/flight/winged seeds).
The format of the 87 items resembles the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID; [ 22, 23]).
No major change was made in the questionnaire's format, the content of the items or the wording, but the French translation of the self-image's domain response set ('strongly disagree'somewhathat disagree'do'don't agree or disagree'somewhathagreeree'; and 'strongly agree') was modified to improve children's comprehension.
