How Psychometrically Sound Is the Transplant Evaluation Rating Scale for Bone Marrow Tansplant Recipients

This paper explores the psychometrics and clinical utility of the Transplant Evaluation Rating Scale (TERS) for bone marrow transplant recipients. On a sample of 345, the TERS exhibits good inter-rater reliability and internal consistency, better than the Psychosocial Levels System (PLS), its precursor, and thus psychometrically justifies the TERS revisions. Addressing a noted gap in the literature, this paper empirically evaluates the TERS weighting system and concludes that it provides no additional predictive utility relative to simply summing unweighted item scores. Finally, this paper's descriptive scale norms for the TERS provide guidance for clinical interpretation of TERS scores.