An overview of psychometric assessment

The assessment of a number of behavioral and psychosocial domains may be important in baseline and outcome evaluations of CFS patients. These domains include mood disturbance, functional status, sleep disturbance, global well- being (i.e., psychiatric status), pain, behavioral coping, social support, locus of control, illness behavior and illness attribution. This article describes a variety of pen-and-paper measures designed to assess these behavioral dimensions and summarizes their psychometric properties and applicability to CFS populations.