Quality Assessment Toolbox
The National Coalition for Health Professional Education in Genetics (NCHPEG) and the University of Maryland are the lead partners in creating the ATCG Quality Assessment Toolbox. The Toolbox is a set of 3 tools to help patients, health-care providers, and individuals who are using or developing educational materials assess the quality and completeness of information about rare, single-gene disorders. We hope that these tools will help individuals think critically about the information they are receiving and will guide the creation of high-quality materials. The 3 tools are:
- The Content Scale helps to determine whether a brochure contains complete information. Is the information provided enough to help the reader make informed decisions?
- The Quality Scale helps to determine if the information presented is of good quality. The basic questions to answer about any information are: Who said it? When did they say it? How do they know?
- The Usability Scale helps determine whether the information is presented in a way that a reader can understand and use.
The ATCG-RN project developed these scales with the input of families, health professionals, geneticists, and health educators. Our goal was to identify critical characteristics to help individuals unfamiliar with the subject judge whether or not the information is trustworthy and complete enough on which to base decisions about medical care and treatment. All three scales have been reviewed by a wide variety of people with experience in rare, single gene disorders. We are currently piloting the tools with people who have a health care background and those who do not. The most recent version of the Toolbox is available on Genetic Alliance's website here: http://trustortrash.org.
