The purpose of this study was to develop an easy-to-use and psychometrically sound outcome instrument that is task-oriented and patient-centred. One hundred fifteen patients with a variety of hand impairments completed a rating scale of perceived manual ability (i.e., the Manual Ability Measure). The first 70 patients also completed two other questionnaires about physical health and psychological well-being. Rasch Analyses were conducted to transform the ordinal ratings into linear measures; Rasch statistics were used to evaluate its measurement properties at both scale and item levels. Eighty-three original items were reduced to 16 common tasks; Rasch reliabilities were good; the easy-to-difficult item hierarchy makes sense clinically. Moderate correlations were found between manual ability, physical function and general sense of well-being. The results of this preliminary study suggest that the MAM is a promising outcome measure that has adequate psychometric properties and can be used to complement other objective clinical measurements.

This paper introduces a simple and reliable method for measuring the long-term load changes of ground anchors. The method operates in a similar fashion to that of the tell-tale load cell in principle. However, in contrast to the tell-tale load cell, the proposed method is highly durable and inexpensive. It only requires the components used in a typical anchor assembly and consists of only one extra strand as the reference strand, which is not engaged by the anchorage. For this method, when the anchor-load changes, the anchorage moves and a relative deformation between the reference strand and anchorage is generated. Based on the measured relative deformation and the effective free-strand length, the change in anchor load can be approximately calculated. The suitability of this method was confirmed by stressing tests performed on field anchors. Although its accuracy may not be as high as that of electrical load cells, it is still satisfactory for evaluating the long-term stability of anchored slopes.

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