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 6/2009

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

Cella D, Yount S, Rothrock N, Gershon R, Cook K, et al. The Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS): progress of an NIH Roadmap cooperative group during its first two years. Med Care. May 2007;45(5 Suppl 1):S3-S11.

Cook KF, Taylor PW, Dodd BG, Teal CR, McHorney CA. Evidence-based practice for equating health status items: sample size and IRT model. J Appl Meas. 2007;8(2):175-189.

Cook KF, Teal CR, Bjorner JB, et al. IRT health outcomes data analysis project: an overview and summary. Qual Life Res. 2007;16 Suppl 1:121-132.

Cook KF, Teal CR, Engebretson JC, et al. Development and validation of Patient Reported Impact of Spasticity Measure (PRISM). J Rehabil Res Dev. 2007;44(3):363-372.

Cook KF, Choi SW, Crane PK, Deyo RA, Johnson KL, Amtmann D. Letting the CAT out of the bag: comparing computer adaptive tests and an 11-item short form of the Roland-Morris Disability Questionnaire. Spine. 2008;33(12):1378-1383.

Chen SK, Cook KF. simpolycat: an SAS program for conducting CAT simulation based on polytomous IRT models. Behav Res Methods. 2009;41(2):499-506.

Cook KF, Kallen M, Amtmann D. Having a fit: impact of number of items and non-normality on tests of IRT’s unidimensionality assumption. Qual Life Res. 2009;18:447-460.

Lai JS, Cook K, Stone A, Beaumont J, Cella D. Classical test theory and item response theory/Rasch model to assess differences between patient-reported fatigue using 7-day and 4-week recall periods. J Clin Epidemiol. 2009.

Veazey C, Cook KF, Stanley M, Lai EC, Kunik ME. Telephone-Administered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Case Study of Anxiety and Depression in Parkinson's Disease. J Clin Psychol Med Settings. 2009.

Chen W-H, Lai J-S, Cook KF. Linking pain Items from two studies onto a common scale using Item Response Theory.  Journal of Pain and Symptom Management. in press.