The doing, being, becoming, and belonging (DB3) scale: Development and initial content validity in an Australian context.
Danielle Hitch, Genevieve Pepin
A new 42-item scale for measuring a patient's sense of occupational being was rated as relevant and understandable by 44 occupational therapy academics and 17 consumers.
It has not yet been tested for reliability or sensitivity to change.
Key findings
1All but two items on the scale met the relevance threshold when rated by the academic panel, and all items met the threshold when rated by the consumer panel.
2Every item on the scale was rated as understandable by all consumer participants.
3The authors position the scale as a complement to existing person-centred outcome measures rather than a replacement, and note it should be used alongside interviews and other assessments.
Still to come
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Only 17 consumers completed the survey, and all were recruited from the western suburbs of Melbourne, so the consumer perspective is narrow. The two authors are the developers of the scale and the underlying paradigm, which the paper acknowledges as a source of potential blind spots. Only content validity has been established. Reliability, sensitivity to change, construct validity, and applicability across diverse populations and cultural contexts have not yet been tested. The scale was developed in an Australian and New Zealand context, and the authors note it has not been validated in other cultural or service settings. Academic participants raised concerns that the items reflect a Western individualistic framing and that the distinctions between doing, being, and becoming may be hard for consumers to interpret.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat this as a validated outcome measure ready for routine clinical use. The study only established that experts and consumers found the items relevant and understandable. The scale has not yet been tested for consistency of scoring, sensitivity to change, or whether it truly captures the concept it is meant to measure.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →