For composite items (e.g. sandwiches) and home-made meals, their component parts were assigned individual food codes.
For composite food items, the local nutritionists estimated food composition based on weighted nutrient values according to frequency of consumption (i.e. the most commonly consumed beef dish eaten in a country would contribute more weight to the overall food composition values for beef).
Results were very similar when we substituted individual affect items for the negative affect composite, with goal success significantly negatively associated with ruminative self-focus in each analysis (all ps <.001).
Providers can rapidly obtain input from workers by means of the results of Web-CAT assessments for individual examinees and the t-test for specific items (or composite scores).
The items underlying composite scores for patient-doctor communication are presented in Table 2, along with their internal consistency (Cronbach's coefficient alpha: 0.81 - 0.92).
While these numbers give satisfactory levels of reliability for both items and the composite scale for doctor patient communication, they do not for the scale on trust and confidence or for two out of the three individual items on trust and confidence.
For composite variables, where contributing items were missing these were replaced with the individual respondent's mean score of the remaining items in the composite set, providing that 50% of the measure was complete.
Statistical methodologies used to shorten scales include simple correlations and adjusted correlations between long and short forms, Cronbach's α per dimension, item total correlation and item remainder correlation for item and composite scores, and factor analysis (see Coste et al [ 26] for review of methods used to shorten scales).
For example, for a four-item composite, if the item-level percent positive responses were 40, 50, 60 and 50%%, the medical office's composite-level percent positive response would be the average of these four percentages, or 50%% positive.
For composite ratings, we analysed results both with and without items CQI-5 and CQI-6 to account for the use of a five-point scale.
