Background: Responsiveness is not new to the areas of psychometrics. Responsiveness refers to the ability of an instrument to distinguish clinically important changes as the result of an intervention (Guyatt, Walter, & Norman, 1987; Kirshner & Guyatt, 1985). Responsiveness is not without controversy some researchers argue that is not a unique property, but rather a function of validity (Lindeboom, Sprangers, & Zwinderman, 2005). Initially responsiveness appeared in the quality of life literature but has now been reported in many areas of intervention research. Including depression (Williams, et al., 2016), Spinal cord injury (Kalsi-Ryan et al., 2015), stroke (Hsueh, Chen, Chou, Wang, & Hsieh, 2013), traumatic brain injury (Mossberg & Fortini, 2012), cardiac rehabilitation (Puthoff & Saskowski, 2013), and pain (Walton, Levesque, Payne, & Schick, 2014), to name a few.
Whether you are a researcher or a consumer of research, understanding the psychometric property of responsiveness can provide an additional way to view evidence. While the gold standard for building strong evidence for interventions is statistical significance, there may be a place for clinically significant differences. While statistically significant differences and clinically significant differences are clearly different, each has a role in measuring how an intervention can be viewed. Responsiveness remains a largely overlooked psychometric property and currently not included in systematic review methodology for examining instrument strength. Similarly, it is not typically used as an integral part of the clinical decision-making process. Therefore, it is important for researchers to investigate whether responsiveness should be taken in account.

Objectives:The purpose of this presentation is to: Explore the concept of responsiveness historically and practically as it relates to instrument development and; determine if/how responsiveness can contribute to evidence-based practice methodology and practice.