Measuring perceived meaningfulness in day centres for persons with mental illness.
BACKGROUND
As support in leading a meaningful and active life, a person with mental illness is often given the opportunity to attend a day centre. However, few studies have investigated the meaningfulness perceived by the person visiting a day centre. For such a purpose, a self-report instrument was developed.


OBJECTIVE
To explore whether perceived meaningfulness, as expressed in the recently developed instrument Evaluation of Perceived Meaning in Day Centers (EPM-DC), could be viewed as one dimension and also to investigate the psychometric properties of this instrument.


METHODS
Persons with mental illness attending five day centres in Sweden participated and completed the questionnaire. The data were analysed by Rasch analysis.


RESULTS
The study showed that the concept captured in the instrument could be viewed as unidimensional and the result gave preliminary evidence for sound psychometric properties.


CONCLUSIONS
The results indicate promising signs of validity and reliability, but the suitability of self-reporting may be questioned.
Department of Community Medicine and Rehabilitation and Ageing and Living Conditions Programme, Umeå University, Sweden. ingeborg.nilsson@umu.se
Ingeborg
I
Nilsson
Elisabeth
E
Argentzell
Mikael
M
Sandlund
Christel
C
Leufstadius
Mona
M
Eklund
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003631:Day Care, Medical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009788:Occupational Therapy; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D057566:Self Report; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013548:Sweden; D055815:Young Adult