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@va.gov<mailto:Jaime.Alvelo@va.gov>
PD: I'm at the VA Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays
e-mail at home is : aibonito@caribe.net<mailto:aibonito@caribe.net>
Cellular phone on Tuesdays and Thursdays: 787-306-4934<tel:787-306-4934>
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