Hello:
I've been refer to this list by Dr. Merce Crosas by way of Dr. Gary King. I've been involved in a "freebie" project of as an offshoot of a project that was funded by the Alzheimer Association to create a scale to measure "caregiver burden". My former social work chief and a colleague involved in giving support group therapy to caregivers of veterans with Alzheimer approached me to adapt and validate to Spanish the Marwit Meuser Caregiver Grief Inventory (Short Form) back in 2008. I had experience in doing so with a 312 item battery for screening psychosocial problems called the MPSI by Walter Hudson so I agreed (late 1990's early 2000's).
The project went real slow as our sample came in gradually through volunteers in the VA caregiver support groups and we also experienced a one year research suspension at our hospital. Finally in 2013 we had finished collecting the data and proceeded to analyze it. I'm not fully in academia but have been a PT lecturer at a local university school of social work and my research has been sporadic so I wasn't up to date in the issues of dealing with missing data until an expert psychometrician who has published a bit on the topic questioned my approach to handling of the missing data. I had done the traditional scale average to substitute missing data points. He said multiple imputation was the approach to be used. So I read a bit and agreed. That was in June 2014. This meant re-doing all my prior analysis and the bad news is that we did not have the software at the VA.
I found out the software was free but there was a rigorous protocol in the VA for installing new software: it must be reviewed by an expert group at the national level. So the process started with R; followed by Amelia II; followed by Zelig and then Lavaan (did also test one called FACTOR). The process of review and approval has taken 5 months so now we are ready to roll.
As this is a "freebie" for the social work profession we don't have a programmer and I've had to read the manuals and do the work myself (I did know well SPSS Mainframe and SPSSPC but the version we had did not do multiple imputing and the purchase price of their programs were not in our 0 budget). So I've learn to run a bit of R; managed to run Amelia II and create my 5 multiple data frames of our scale.
The scale has 18 items with responses in a 5 point Likert scale format ( 1 through 5). We have the Spanish version responses of 100 subjects of an approved R&D project. Short term goal is to get the 5 data frames integrated into one data frame using Zelig. After that we will run lavaan to see if the dimensions of the Spanish version are the same as the English version of the instrument....
I've downloaded the Zelig Manual but couldn't find the specifics on how the program integrates 5 data sets into one under R. I've written to the author of the Manual and Dr. Merce and it seems that they are hopeful that a technical programmer may have a simple solution to this issue. Please be aware that we cannot export the data outside of the VA and the work must be done at my PC so maybe some examples of programming statements may suffice.
Any help will be appreciated. I can promise you a free lunch and a tour of Piñones beach area if you come down to PR when things get too cold up there.
Jaime Alvelo, DSW
VA Caribbean Healthcare System
R&D Service (151)
10 Casia Street
San Juan, PR 00921-3201
787-641-7582 Ext 10175
Main Building-Basement-Office A55
Jaime.Alvelo(a)va.gov<mailto:Jaime.Alvelo@va.gov>
PD: I'm at the VA Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays
e-mail at home is : aibonito(a)caribe.net<mailto:aibonito@caribe.net>
Cellular phone on Tuesdays and Thursdays: 787-306-4934<tel:787-306-4934>
