Commonly used major comprehensive language test in German speaking countries.

Test to assess for confusion and other cognitive impairments.

Summary of a study, which may be published alone or as an introduction to a full scientific paper.

Observational test used to determine upper limb function.

Term used in healthcare to refer to daily self-care activities within an individual’s place of residence, outdoor environments, or both.

Exam which incorporates five sub-domain scores for cognition: orientation/attention, memory, verbal fluency, language and visuo-spatial.

Usually refers to attempts to control (adjust) for baseline imbalances between groups in important patient characteristics. Sometimes used to refer to adjustments of P value to take account of multiple testing.

The process used to prevent advance knowledge of group assignment in a RCT. The allocation process should be impervious to any influence by the individual making the allocation, by being administered by someone who is not responsible for recruiting participants.

A lack of awareness of impairment, not knowing that a deficit or illness exists, in memory or other function

Loss or impairment of the ability to use and comprehend language usually resulting from brain damage

The degree to which the results of an observation, study or review are likely to hold true in a particular clinical practice setting.

Difficulty in initiating and executing the voluntary movement needed to produce speech when there is no weakness of speech muscles. It may cause difficulty producing the correct speech or changes in the rhythm or rate of speaking.

Sub-section of individuals within a study who receive one particular intervention, for example placebo arm

A detailed process which aims to define the nature and impact of an impairment, and devise a treatment plan.

Statistical relationship between two or more events, characteristics or other variables. The relationship may or may not be causal.

The Barthel Index consists of 10 items that measure a person’s daily functioning, specifically the activities of daily living and mobility. The items include feeding, moving from wheelchair to bed and return, grooming, transferring to and from a toilet, bathing, walking on level surface, going up and down stairs, dressing, continence of bowels and bladder.

The initial set of measurements at the beginning of a study (after run-in period where applicable), with which subsequent results are compared.

List of basic activities that need to be performed independently in order for an individual to take care of himself/herself.

A multiple-choice self-report inventory, used for measuring the severity of depression.

A study that investigates the effects of an intervention by measuring particular characteristics of a population both before and after taking the intervention, and assessing any change that occurs.

A widely used clinical test of a person’s functional balance.

Systematic (as opposed to random) deviation of the results of a study from the ‘true’ results that is caused by the way the study is designed or conducted.

Keeping some or all study participants, caregivers, researchers or outcome assessors unaware about the interventions to which the participants have been allocated in a study. See single, double and triple blinding and allocation concealment.

Test used to evaluate adults suspected of having aphasia

A confrontation naming test used to measure word retrieval performance in aphasic patients

Test used to evaluate the gross manual dexterity of individuals with a physical impairment.

Physical therapy that emphasises the synergic pattern of movement which develops during recovery from hemiplegia. This approach encourages development of flexor and extensor synergies during early recovery, with the intention that synergic activation of muscles will, with training, transition into voluntary activation of movements.

Test used to detect the presence of unilateral spatial neglect in the near extra-personal space in patients with stroke.

Questionnaire used to measure the subjective burden of caregivers in five domains: general strain, isolation, disappointment, emotional involvement, and environment.

Someone other than a health professional who is involved in caring for a person with a medical condition.

Is a brief, easily administered instrument which can identify strain in informal care providers. It is divided into five categories. It is a 13-question tool that measures strain related to care provision.

Disease of the blood vessels supplying the brain, which may result in brain dysfunction including Stroke.

Test used to assess the functional state of the affected upper extremity.

The extent to which an intervention produces an overall health benefit in routine clinical practice.

A type of randomized controlled trial (RCT), in which groups or clusters of individuals rather than individuals themselves are randomized.

The Cochrane Library consists of a regularly updated collection of evidence-based medicine databases including the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (reviews of randomised controlled trials prepared by the Cochrane Collaboration).

A retrospective or prospective follow-up study. Groups of individuals to be followed up are defined on the basis of presence or absence of exposure to a suspected risk factor or intervention. A cohort study can be comparative, in which case two or more groups are selected on the basis of differences in their exposure to the intervention of interest.

Co-existence of more than one disease or an additional disease (other than that being studied or treated) in an individual.

Similarity of the groups in characteristics likely to affect the study results (such as health status or age).

A range of plausible values for the population mean (or another population parameter such as an estimation of risk increase/decrease), calculated from data. A confidence interval with (conventionally) a 95% confidence level has a 95% chance of capturing the population mean. This means that, if the experiment were repeated many times, 95% of the confidence intervals would contain the true population mean.

In a study, confounding occurs when the effect of an intervention on an outcome is distorted as a result of an association between the population or intervention or outcome and another factor (the ‘confounding variable’) that can influence the outcome independently of the intervention under study.

Techniques that aim to reach an agreement on a particular issue. Consensus methods may be used when there is a lack of strong evidence on a particular topic.

Data with a potentially infinite number of possible values along a continuum. Height, weight and blood pressure are examples of continuous variables.

On or relating to the opposite side of the body.

Describing the half of a patient’s brain or body away from the site of a lesion.

A group of patients recruited into a study that receives no treatment, a treatment of known effect, or a placebo (dummy treatment) - in order to provide a comparison for a group receiving an experimental treatment, such as a new drug.

A type of economic evaluation where both costs and benefits of healthcare treatment are measured in the same monetary units. If benefits exceed costs, the evaluation would recommend providing the treatment.

A type of economic evaluation where various health outcomes are reported in addition to cost for each intervention, but there is no overall measure of health gain.

An economic study design in which consequences of different interventions are measured using a single outcome, usually in ‘natural’ units (For example, life-years gained, deaths avoided, heart attacks avoided, cases detected). Alternative interventions are then compared in terms of cost per unit of effectiveness.

An explicit mathematical framework, which is used to represent clinical decision problems and incorporate evidence from a variety of sources in order to estimate the costs and health outcomes.

A form of cost-effectiveness analysis in which the units of effectiveness are quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs).

The Bayesian equivalent of a confidence interval.

A type of clinical trial comparing two or more interventions in which the participants, upon completion of the course of one treatment are switched to another. For example, for a comparison of treatments A and B, half the participants are randomly allocated to receive them in the order, A, B and half to receive them in the order B, A. A problem with this design is that the effects of the first treatment may carry over into the period when the second is given.

A method of random effects meta-analysis (see below).

Double vision.

Costs and perhaps benefits incurred today have a higher value than costs and benefits occurring in the future. Discounting health benefits reflects individual preference for benefits to be experienced in the present rather than the future. Discounting costs reflects individual preference for costs to be experienced in the future rather than the present.

An intervention is said to be dominated if there is an alternative intervention that is both less costly and more effective.

Quality of life measure.

Movement which decreases the angle between the dorsum (superior surface) of the foot and the leg, so that the toes are brought closer to the shin.

Also, Double masked. Neither the participants in a trial nor the investigators (outcome assessors) are aware of which intervention the participants are given. The purpose of blinding the participants (recipients and providers of care) is to prevent performance bias. The purpose of blinding the investigators (outcome assessors, who might also be the care providers) is to protect against detection bias. See also blinding, single blind, triple blind, and allocation concealment.

A participant who withdraws from a trial before the end.

Difficulty in articulating words.

An acquired neurological speech impairment that affects respiration, production of speech sounds, articulation and intonation of speech.

Difficulty in swallowing.

Difficulty in planning and executing movement

A service for people after stroke which allows transfer of care from an inpatient environment to a primary care setting to continue rehabilitation, at the same level of intensity and expertise that they would have received in the inpatient setting.

Comparative analysis of alternative health strategies (interventions or programmes) in terms of both their costs and consequences.

A graded test which assesses functional abilities in stroke patients, including the activities necessary to enable a person to live independently at home.

1. A generic term for the estimate of effect for a study.
2. A dimensionless measure of effect that is typically used for continuous data when different scales (for example for measuring pain) are used to measure an outcome and is usually defined as the difference in means between the intervention and control groups divided by the standard deviation of the control or both groups. See standardised mean difference. )

See ‘Clinical effectiveness’.

See ‘Clinical efficacy’.

A standardised instrument used to measure a health outcome. It provides a single index value for health status.

A developmental disorder of the foot in which walking is done on the toes and outer side of the sole

Procedure which allows discrimination learning to occur with few or no responses to the negative stimulus.

Information on which a decision or guidance is based. Evidence is obtained from a range of sources including randomised controlled trials, observational studies, expert opinion (of clinical professionals and/or patients).

Criteria that define who is not eligible to participate in a clinical study.

Explicit standards used to decide which studies should be excluded from consideration as potential sources of evidence.

If Option A is both more clinically effective than Option B and has a lower cost per unit of effect, when both are compared with a do-nothing alternative then Option A is said to have extended dominance over Option B. Option A is therefore more efficient and should be preferred, other things remaining equal.

In data analysis, predicting the value of a parameter outside the range of observed values.

The ascertainment of outcomes of an intervention at one or more stated times after the intervention has ended.

A fixed effect model of meta-analysis is based on a mathematical assumption that every study is evaluating a common treatment effect. That means the effect of treatment, allowing for the play of chance, was the same in all studies.

Measure of instrumental activities of daily living for use with patients recovering from stroke. This index covers a broad range of activities associated with everyday life.

Test used to assess proximal control and dexterity.

Stroke-specific, performance-based, impairment index; designed to assess motor functioning, balance, sensation and joint functioning in hemiplegic, post-stroke patients.

A functional walking test that evaluates ambulation ability. This 6-point scale assesses ambulation status by determining how much human support the patient requires when walking, regardless of whether or not they use a personal assistive device

Assesses functional mobility and gait in patients undergoing physical therapy.

This assessment assists with measuring and recording the functional communication of adults with speech, language, and cognitive communication disorders. It assesses functional communication in four areas: social communication; communication of basic needs; reading, writing, and number concepts; and daily planning.

Scale used to measure the functional abilities of patients undergoing rehabilitation.

The extent to which the results of a study based on measurement in a particular patient population and/or a specific context hold true for another population and/or in a different context. In this instance, this is the degree to which the guideline recommendation is applicable across both geographical and contextual settings. For instance, guidelines that suggest substituting one form of labour for another should acknowledge that these costs might vary across the country.

This is suitable as a screening test for depressive symptoms in the elderly; ideal for evaluating the clinical severity of depression.

Patient-completed two-part questionnaire designed to determine and quantify perceived health problems. Part one covers 6 areas (sleep, mobility, energy, pain, emotional reactions, social isolation); and part two covers specific aspects of daily life (employment, household chores, social life, relationships, sex life, hobbies, holidays).

A system developed by the GRADE Working Group to address the shortcomings of present grading systems in healthcare. The GRADE system uses a common, sensible and transparent approach to grading the quality of evidence. The results of applying the GRADE system to clinical trial data are displayed in a table known as a GRADE profile.

Also known as comfortable gait speed, it is defined as a person’s usual or comfortable, self-selected pace.

The strength applied by the hand to pull on or suspend from objects and is a specific part of hand strength.

Adverse effects of an intervention.

The study of the allocation of scarce resources among alternative healthcare treatments. Health economists are concerned with both increasing the average level of health in the population and improving the distribution of health.

A combination of an individual’s physical, mental and social well-being; not merely the absence of disease.

Inability of a person to process and perceive stimuli on one side of the body or environment that is not due to a lack of sensation – a deficit in attention to and awareness of one side of space is observed.

Blindness in one half of the visual field of one or both eyes.

See Hemiagnosia

Weakness on one side of the body.

Pertaining to hemiparesis or a patient affected with hemiparesis.

Total paralysis of the arm, leg, and trunk on one side of the body.

See Hemiagnosia

The term is used in meta-analyses and systematic reviews when the results or estimates of effects of treatment from separate studies seem to be very different – in terms of the size of treatment effects or even to the extent that some indicate beneficial and others suggest adverse treatment effects. Such results may occur as a result of differences between studies in terms of the patient populations, outcome measures, definition of variables or duration of follow-up.

Results are imprecise when studies include relatively few patients and few events and thus have wide confidence intervals around the estimate of effect.

Explicit criteria used to decide which studies should be considered as potential sources of evidence.

The analysis of additional costs and additional clinical outcomes with different interventions.

The mean cost per patient associated with an intervention minus the mean cost per patient associated with a comparator intervention.

The difference in the mean costs in the population of interest divided by the differences in the mean outcomes in the population of interest for one treatment compared with another.

The available evidence is different to the review question being addressed, in terms of PICO (population, intervention, comparison and outcome).

List of activities which allows an individual to live independently in a community: housework, meal preparation, taking medications, managing money, shopping for groceries or clothing, telephone use and if applicable, the use of technology.

An intention-to-treat analysis is one in which all the participants in a trial are analysed according to the intervention to which they were allocated, whether they received it or not. Intention-to-treat analyses are favoured in assessments of effectiveness as they mirror the non-compliance and treatment changes that are likely to occur when the intervention is used in practice and because of the risk of attrition bias when participants are excluded from the analysis.

A measure of results that indicates progress toward desired end results but is not itself a final outcome.

Between the phalanges.

Healthcare action intended to benefit the patient, for example, drug treatment, surgical procedure, psychological therapy.

A method of aggregating two or more random variables to minimize the variance of the sum. Each random variable in the sum is weighted in inverse proportion to its variance. We could assume that variance is inversely proportional to importance, i.e. the less variance in the study, the more weight it should contribute. The Inverse Variance method in RevMan (see below), calculates study weights directly based on this assumption.

On or relating to the same side (of the body)

The force used when attempting to extend the elbow against resistance. Isometric implies no actual movement is made.

The force used when attempting to bend the arm at the elbow against resistance. Isometric implies no actual movement is made.

Test used to measure auditory and visual reaction time and stability, simultaneously, not separately.

Test designed to provide a short, objective test of hand functions commonly used in activities of daily living (ADLs). The target patient population includes adults with neurological conditions involving hand disabilities. The test was developed to be used by health professionals working in restoration of hand function.

Measurement of the person’s ability to flex the quadriceps muscles which straighten the leg.

Sit-and-reach test used to test flexibility.

The total number of days a participant stays in hospital.

Mean average years of life gained per person as a result of the intervention compared with an alternative intervention.

The likelihood ratio combines information about the sensitivity and specificity. It tells you how much a positive or negative result changes the likelihood that a patient would have the disease. The likelihood ratio of a positive test result (LR+) is sensitivity divided by 1-specificity.

Quick measure to detect the presence of unilateral spatial neglect.

Standard assessment of unilateral visual neglect.

Refers to the extent to which individuals believe that they can control events that affects them.

Residential care in a home that may include skilled nursing care and help with everyday activities. This includes nursing homes and residential homes.

Loss of contact with some participants, so that researchers cannot complete data collection as planned. Loss to follow-up is a common cause of missing data, especially in long-term studies and can cause bias when subjects lost from a cohort have different health response distributions from subjects who remain in follow-up

A method to analyse odds ratios that has been extended to analyse risk ratios and risk differences. It assumes a fixed effect and combines studies using a method similar to inverse variance approaches to determine the weight given to each study.

A method for estimating long-term costs and effects for recurrent or chronic conditions, based on health states and the probability of transition between them within a given time period (cycle).

Also known as fast gait speed, it is defined as the speed a person’s fast as safely possible, self-selected pace.

Test used to assess object-naming ability, but is in addition graded in difficulty to allow for individual differences. This means that it may be able to detect any word-finding difficulty even in those with an extensive naming vocabulary.

the use of psychometrically robust tools to record the extent of a problem, whether it is impairment, activity or participation based and can be generic or disease specific.

The average value, calculated by adding all the observations and dividing by the number of observations.

The numerical value separating the higher half of a sample, a population, or a probability distribution, from the lower half. The median of a finite list of numbers can be found by arranging all the observations from lowest value to highest value and picking the middle one. If there is an even number of observations, then there is no single middle value; the median is then usually defined to be the mean of the two middle values.

Scale for assessing muscle weakness/strength.

Test used to evaluate hemispatial dominance in Stroke Patients.

A statistical technique for combining (pooling) the results of a number of studies that address the same question and report on the same outcomes to produce a summary result. The aim is to derive more precise and clear information from a large data pool. It is generally more reliably likely to confirm or refute a hypothesis than the individual trials.

For continuous outcomes, the MID is defined as “the smallest difference in score in the outcome of interest that informed patients or informed proxies perceive as important, either beneficial or harmful, and that would lead the patient or clinician to consider a change in the management (refs). An effect estimate larger than the MID is considered to be “clinically important”. For dichotomous outcomes the MID is the smallest decrease or increase is the incidence of an outcome that would be considered to show a clear appreciable benefit or harm from an intervention this can be considered in relative terms (using the risk ratio) but preferably should be based on absolute risk differences.

Systematic strategies for strengthening long-term retention and retrieval of information.

This scale measures resistance during passive soft-tissue stretching.

A commonly used scale for measuring the degree of disability or dependence in the daily activities of people who have suffered a stroke.

Staff-completed index of limb movement aiming to measure general motor impairment. Three movements for each limb are assessed based on the Medical Research Council strength grades and weighted, zero for no movement, nine for palpable movement, fourteen for movement seen, nineteen for full range against gravity, twenty-five for movement against resistance and twenty-two for normal power.

Inability to orient towards and attend to stimuli, including body parts, on the side of the body affected by the stroke.

Structural and functional changes to the brain and nervous system as a result of input from the environment.

Related to the structure and function of the brain specific to psychological processes and behaviours.

Usually refers to the un-affected limb

Self-report scale designed primarily for use in the stroke population for functional assessment.

Retrospective or prospective study in which the investigator observes the natural course of events with or without control groups; for example, cohort studies and case–control studies.

The loss of other health care programmes displaced by investment in or introduction of another intervention. This may be best measured by the health benefits that could have been achieved had the money been spent on the next best alternative healthcare intervention.

A device that supports or corrects the function of a limb or the torso.

Specialty within the medical field concerned with the design, manufacture and application of orthoses. An orthosis (plural: orthoses) is an orthopaedic device that supports or corrects the function of a limb or the torso.

Measure of the possible results that may stem from exposure to a preventive or therapeutic intervention. Outcome measures may be intermediate endpoints or they can be final endpoints. See ‘Intermediate outcome’.

Palmar grip torque is a measurement of the ability to hold larger and heavier objects such as cans and bottles between the palm of the hand and the four fingers.

A way to systematically test, used to map and quantify the visual field, especially at the extreme periphery of the visual field. The name comes from the method of testing the perimeter of the visual field.

The strength applied by the hand to pinch an object so that the fingers are on one side of the object, and the thumb is on the other. Typically, an object lifted in a pinch grip does not touch the palm.

An inactive and physically identical medication or procedure used as a comparator in controlled clinical trials.

The ability to demonstrate an association when one exists. Power is related to sample size; the larger the sample size, the greater the power and the lower the risk that a possible association could be missed.

For diagnostic tests. The proportion of people with the target disorder in the population at risk at a specific time point or time interval. Prevalence may depend on how a disorder is diagnosed.

Healthcare delivered to patients outside hospitals. Primary care covers a range of services provided by general practitioners, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, opticians and other healthcare professionals.

The outcome of greatest importance, usually the one in a study that the power calculation is based on.

Medical device used in correcting eye abnormalities.

A probable course or outcome of a disease. Prognostic factors are patient or disease characteristics that influence the course. Good prognosis is associated with low rate of undesirable outcomes; poor prognosis is associated with a high rate of undesirable outcomes.

Individual’s sense of the relative position of neighbouring parts of the body.

A study in which people are entered into the research and then followed up over a period of time with future events recorded as they happen. This contrasts with studies that are retrospective.

Related to the theory and technique of educational measurement and psychological measurement, which includes the measurement of knowledge, abilities, attitudes, and personality traits.

Also known as reporting bias. A bias caused by only a subset of all the relevant data being available. The publication of research can depend on the nature and direction of the study results. Studies in which an intervention is not found to be effective are sometimes not published. Because of this, systematic reviews that fail to include unpublished studies may overestimate the true effect of an intervention. In addition, a published report might present a biased set of results (for example only outcomes or sub-groups where a statistically significant difference was found.

The probability that an observed difference could have occurred by chance, assuming that there is in fact no underlying difference between the means of the observations. If the probability is less than 1 in 20, the P value is less than 0.05; a result with a P value of less than 0.05 is conventionally considered to be ‘statistically significant’.

Refers to loss of vision affecting a quarter of the field of vision. It can be associated with a lesion of an optic radiation.

See ‘Health-related quality of life’.

An index of survival that is adjusted to account for the patient’s quality of life during this time. QALYs have the advantage of incorporating changes in both quantity (longevity/mortality) and quality (morbidity, psychological, functional, social and other factors) of life. Used to measure benefits in cost-utility analysis. The QALYs gained are the mean QALYs associated with one treatment minus the mean QALYs associated with an alternative treatment.

A trial using a quasi-random method of allocating participants to different forms of care. There is a greater risk of selection bias in quasi-random trials where allocation is not adequately concealed compared with randomised controlled trials with adequate allocation concealment.

An abridged version of NICE guidance, which presents the key priorities for implementation and summarises the recommendations for the core clinical audience.

The random effects model assumes that the true treatment effects in the individual studies may be different from each other. That means there is no single number to estimate in the meta-analysis, but a distribution of numbers. The most common random effects model also assumes that these different true effects are normally distributed. The meta-analysis therefore estimates the mean and standard deviation of the different effects.

Allocation of participants in a research study to two or more alternative groups using a chance procedure, such as computer-generated random numbers. This approach is used in an attempt to ensure there is an even distribution of participants with different characteristics between groups and thus reduce sources of bias.

A comparative study in which participants are randomly allocated to intervention and control groups and followed up to examine differences in outcomes between the groups.

See ‘Randomised controlled trial’.

The number of times more likely or less likely an event is to happen in one group compared with another (calculated as the risk of the event in group A/the risk of the event in group B).

See publication bias.

The likely impact in terms of finance, workforce or other NHS resources.

A retrospective study deals with the present/ past and does not involve studying future events. This contrasts with studies that are prospective.

In guideline development, this term refers to the questions about treatment and care that are formulated to guide the development of evidence-based recommendations.

Neuropsychological assessment in which examinees are asked to reproduce a complicated line drawing, first by copying and then from memory.

Scale developed to assess activities of daily living in stroke patients.

Measure of disability related to bodily mobility. It demonstrates the patient’s ability to move her or his own body.

Preliminary assessment of one’s level of visual perceptual ability prior to therapy. The results may be used to plan an appropriate therapy programme.

A process of identifying people with particular impairments. People can then be offered information, further assessment and appropriate treatment. Screening may be performed as a precursor to more detailed assessment.

The methods used to identify studies including hand-searching relevant journals, searching electronic databases, contacting drug companies, other forms of personal contact and checking reference lists.

An outcome used to evaluate additional effects of the intervention deemed a priori as being less important than the primary outcomes.

A systematic bias in selecting participants for study groups, so that the groups have differences in prognosis and/or therapeutic sensitivities at baseline. Randomisation (with concealed allocation) of patients protects against this bias.

Multi-purpose, short-form health survey with thirty-six questions. It yields an eight-scale profile of functional health and well-being scores as well as psychometrically-based physical and mental health summary measures and a preference-based health utility index.

In medicine and psychology, this refers to either of two related but slightly dissimilar concepts whereby certain findings or differences, even if measurable or statistically confirmed, either may or may not have additional significance, either by (1) being of a magnitude that conveys practical relevance (a usage that conflates practical and clinical significance interchangeably), or (2) more technically and restrictively, addresses whether an intervention or treatment may or may not fully correct the finding.

A result is deemed statistically significant if the probability of the result occurring by chance is less than 1 in 20 (p <0.05).

Also, single masked. The investigator is aware of the treatment/intervention the participant is getting, but the participant is unaware. See also blinding, double blind, triple blind.

Muscular hyper tonicity with increased tendon reflexes

See Hemiagnosia

Those with an interest in the use of the guideline. Stakeholders include manufacturers, sponsors, healthcare professionals, and patient and carer groups.

The difference between two means divided by an estimate of the within-group standard deviation. When an outcome (such as pain) is measured in a variety of ways across studies (using different scales) it may not be possible directly to compare or combine study results in a systematic review. By expressing the effects as a standardised value the results can be combined since they have no units. Standardised mean differences are sometimes referred to as a d index.

The probability that the null hypothesis will be rejected if it is indeed false. In studies of the effectiveness of healthcare interventions, power is a measure of the certainty of avoiding a false negative conclusion that an intervention is not effective when in truth it is effective. The power of a study is determined by how large it is (the number of participants), the number of events (for example strokes) or the degree of variation in a continuous outcome (such as weight), how small an effect one believes is important (i.e. the smallest difference in outcomes between the intervention and the control groups that is considered to be important), and how certain one wants to be of avoiding a false positive conclusion (i.e. the cut-off that is used for statistical significance).

Measurement of the strength used to open the hand, stretching all the fingers.

Questionnaire used to measure self-efficacy judgements in specific domains of functioning relevant to individuals following stroke.

Stroke-specific, self-report, health status measure, designed to assess multidimensional stroke outcomes, including strength, hand function, activities of daily living/instrumental activities of daily living, mobility, communication, emotion, memory and thinking, and participation.

An environment in which multidisciplinary stroke teams deliver stroke care in a dedicated ward which has a bed area, dining area, gym, and access to assessment kitchens.

A stroke service designed to deliver stroke rehabilitation either in hospital or in the community.

A service designed to deliver a range of activities including assessment in casualty, delivery of acute care, follow-up of outpatient review, community services.

An environment in which multidisciplinary stroke teams deliver stroke care in a dedicated ward which has a bed area, dining area, gym, and access to assessment kitchens.

Spatial memory task thought to be sensitive to frontal and parietal damage.

Research that summarises the evidence on a clearly formulated question according to a pre-defined protocol using systematic and explicit methods to identify, select and appraise relevant studies, and to extract, collate and report their findings. It may or may not use statistical meta-analysis.

Visual field test used to analyse a patient’s visual field.

Measure of cognitive function that specifically assesses auditory information processing speed and flexibility, as well as calculation ability.

The time span over which costs and health outcomes are considered in a decision analysis or economic evaluation.

Non-invasive method that uses electromagnetic induction to induce weak electric currents using a rapidly changing magnetic field allowing the functioning and interconnections of the brain to be studied.

Assigning a participant to a particular arm of the trial.

See Hemiagnosia

Analysis which separately explores each variable in a data set.

A measure of the strength of an individual’s preference for a specific health state in relation to alternative health states. The utility scale assigns numerical values on a scale from 0 (death) to 1 (optimal or ‘perfect’ health). Health states can be considered worse than death and thus have a negative value.

Scale used to measure the internal mood state in neurologically impaired patients.

Primary clinical instrument used to measure adult and adolescent intelligence; it consists of six verbal and five performance subtests. The verbal tests are: Information, Comprehension, Arithmetic, Digit Span, Similarities, and Vocabulary. The Performance subtests were: Picture Arrangement, Picture Completion, Block Design, Object Assembly, and Digit Symbol. Verbal, performance and full scale Intelligence Quotient scores were also obtained.

Test designed to measure different memory functions in a person.

Instrument used to assess the language function of adults, able to discern the presence, degree, and type of aphasia.

Computer assisted reaction training, which measures alertness.

Test used to quantify upper extremity motor ability through timed and functional tasks.

Test used to assess neglect.

Assessment used for depression that entails asking patients the Yale Single Question: ‘Do you frequently feel sad or depressed?’

German language-free intelligence test, that uses number connection tests to assess participants.