IRT can provide two useful measures; difficulty and discrimination, both of which are technical properties of the Item Characteristic Curve (ICC).
Although the findings generated from these shorter interviews were useful, the difficulties of engaging busy health academics (and in some cases clinicians) in a qualitative study were affirmed.
While geocoding of addresses for health data is a commonly employed and useful tool, difficulties remain in specifically mapping the residences of those living in informal settlements [ 29].
Empirical and first line use of fluoroquinolones or the 3rd generation cephalosporin cefovecin remains controversial for treatment of canine pyoderma, though it can be useful when difficulties with oral administration of treatment are experienced or foreseen [ 16, 33, 34].
Second, the most clinically useful criterion was "difficulty breathing".
This could prove especially useful on higher difficulties as you'll know key areas to avoid altogether.
Think-alouds are useful in identifying difficulties in understanding a given task, in understanding instructions, and in producing an appropriate solution.29 After the think-alouds, we explicitly asked participants to comment on the documents to obtain feedback on cultural and linguistic differences (content and format).
Trussel et al. provide a useful account of difficulties in analysing and comparing contraceptive efficacy trials [ 6].
These authors concluded that the severity of functional impairments may be clinically useful in anticipating difficulties that impact long-term outcomes.
In the clinical field, parents' perceptions of their child's daily behaviors are believed to be useful in evaluating difficulties associated with mental health disorders in children [ 1, 2].
It is suggested that the use of biomarkers for persistent chemicals may be useful to mitigate the difficulty of determining exposure, while the use of more prevalent and timely end points, such as carcinogen-DNA adducts or oncogene proteins, may make the latency and rarity problems more tractable.
