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Arch Intern Med. 1999;159:125-128.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

INTRODUCTION

VIRGINIA Apgar can be regarded as the founding parent of modern clinimetrics.¹ The score she constructed² more than 40 years ago was a pioneer attempt to convert an intangible clinical phenomenon into a formally specified measurement.

The object of Apgar's attention—the clinical condition of a newborn baby—was not something tangible, like the length of a leg, the color of a fingernail, or the noise of a heart murmur. A baby's condition is an intangible clinical concept or "construct," somewhat like anxiety or congestive heart failure, that is not directly observed as an individual entity, but that can be perceived, interpreted, and rated from a set of pertinent observed phenomena.

Before Apgar's work, a baby's condition was usually expressed with such ratings as excellent, good, fair, or poor, or with phrases such as mild, moderate, or severe respiratory depression.³ The ratings were assigned by each observer implicitly, without identifying the constituent . . . [Full Text of this Article]

SELECTION OF VARIABLES

WEIGHTING OF VARIABLES

HETEROGENEITY OF VARIABLES

EASE OF USAGE

FACE VALIDITY

SOURCE OF OBSERVATIONS

COMMENT



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