Karon Cook, Ph.D.

Karon Cook earned a B.S. in Life Sciences and a Masters in Educational Counseling from the University of Texas, Permian Basin. She holds the Masters of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. Dr. Cook completed her Ph.D. at the University of Texas, Austin in Educational Psychology with a concentration in quantitative methods. She completed post-doctoral training in Health Services Research at the Veteran’s Administration and Baylor College of Medicine.

Research

Dr. Cook’s methodological research targets issues related to item response theory (IRT) and its applications with particular emphasis on computer adaptive testing. Much of this work evaluates the practical impact of methodological variations on the measurement of patient reported outcome measures. Dr. Cook’s work has concentrated on rehabilitation populations including persons with Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis, and traumatic brain injury and has included outcomes such as depression, fatigue, pain, and impact of spasticity.

Full Vita (PDF) Updated 6/07

Teaching

Dr. Cook has taught statistics and psychometrics and guest lectured on a range of health outcomes topics including scale development, research methodology, item response theory, and computer adaptive testing.

Selected Publications

Cook KF, Taylor WP, Dodd BG, Teal CR, McHorney CA. Evidenced-based practice for equating health status items: sample size and IRT model. J Appl Meas. 2007;8(2):175-89.

Cook, KF, Teal, CR, Engebretson, JC, Hart, KA, Mahoney, JS, Robinson-Whelen, S, Sherwood, AM. Development and validation of Patient Reported Impact of Spasticity Measure (PRISM). Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development. 2007;44 (3), 363-372. (View more information about PRISM)

Cook KF, Teal CR, Bjorner JB, Cella D, Chang C-H, Crane PK, Gibbons L, Hays RD, McHorney CA, Ocepek-Welikson K, Raczek AE, Teresi JA, Reeve BB. IRT Health Outcomes Data Analysis Project: An Overview and Summary. Quality of Life Research. 2007; Mar 10.

Hart DL, Cook KF, Mioduski JE, Teal CR, Crane PK. Simulated computerized adaptive test for patients with shoulder impairments was efficient and produced valid measures of function. J Clin Epidemiol. 2006;59(3):290-8.

Cook KF, Roddey TS, O’Malley K. Dynamic assessment of health outcomes: time to let the CAT out of the bag? Health Serv Res. 2005;40(5 Pt 2):1694-711.

O’Malley KJ, Cook KF, Price MD, Wildes KR, Hurdle JF, Ashton CA. Measuring diagnoses: ICD code accuracy. Health Serv Res. 2005;40(5 Pt 2):1620-39.

Snow AL, Cook K, Lin P, Morgan RO, Magaziner J. Proxies and other external raters: methodological considerations. Health Serv Res. 2005;40(5 Pt 2):1676-93.

Fleming A, Cook K, Nelson ND, Lai EC. Proxy reports in Parkinson's disease: caregiver and patient self-reports of quality of life and physical activity. Mov Disord. 2005;20(11):1462-8.

Roddey TS, Cook KF, O’Malley KJ, Gartsman GM. The relationship among strength and mobility measures and self-report outcome scores in persons after rotator cuff repair surgery: impairment measures are not enough. J Shoulder Elbow Surg. 2005;14(1 Suppl S):95S-98S.

Cook KF, Roddey TS, O’Malley KJ, Gartsman GM. Development of a Flexilevel Scale for use with computer-adaptive testing for assessing shoulder function. J Shoulder Elbow Surg. 2005;14(1 Suppl S):90S-94S.