Faller G Scale

[Eustacio Gadit]

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Design: A cross-sectional design was used to establish the sensitivity and specificity of the FAB scale to predict faller status based on a retrospective self-reported fall history. For the purpose of this study, a faller was classified as an older adult with a history of 2 or more falls in the previous 12 months.

Results: Binary logistic regression analysis indicated that the total FAB scale score could be used to predict faller status (as determined by a retrospective self-reported fall history). In the present sample, the probability of falling increased by 8% with each 1-point decrease in total FAB scale score. Receiver operating characteristic analysis determined that a cut-off score of 25 out of 40 on the FAB scale produced the highest sensitivity (74.6%) and specificity (52.6%) in predicting faller status. Five individual test items on the FAB scale were particularly predictive of faller status and could be combined to form a short version of the scale that may be even more predictive of faller status and require less time to administer.

Conclusions: The FAB scale is a predictive measure of faller status when used with independently functioning older adults. A practitioner can be confident in more than 7 out of 10 cases that an older adult who scores 25 or lower on the FAB scale is at high risk for falls and in need of immediate intervention.

Imported directly from the Black Forest region of Germany, this comprehensive range of building kits, scenery and accessories continues to add colour and life to layouts all over the world in HO, N, TT and Z scales.

Faller (stylised in all caps) is a German toy company founded in Stuttgart in 1946 by brothers Edwin and Hermann Faller. The company later relocated to the brothers' home town of Gtenbach in the Black Forest.[1]

Faller now specializes in making scenery, plastic model kits and other accessories for model railroads but has manufactured a range of toys during its history, such as model airplane kits, the 'Auto Motor Sport' (AMS) slot car racing sets and die-cast model cars. Their modern product line includes railway structures, houses and commercial buildings, bridges, amusement rides and terrain accessories in H0, N, TT and Z scales, as well as the Faller Car System (FCS). Since 1997 Faller also owns the Pola brand, which is now solely devoted to G scale structures.[2]

From the 1960s into the 80s, Faller produced the Auto Motor Sport (AMS) slot cars, based on existing patents, similar to the Aurora Model Motoring system. The Faller controller and the car had a small selenium rectifier on board so two cars could run independently on the same track on the positive or negative half wave AC. The cars were in 1:65 scale but could be used with the 1:87 H0 scale model railways.

Faller has a "Car System" (FCS) in both the H0 and N scale, which consists of battery-powered road vehicles, made by other manufacturers such as Wiking, that have a magnet attached to the front steering. The magnet follows a steel wire hidden under the road surface, resulting in trucks and buses that behave in a realistic fashion without the need for guide rails or a slot in the road. This system is extensively used by the Miniatur Wunderland ('miniature wonderland') model railway attraction in Hamburg, Germany.

Mechanisms are also available to stop vehicles and to switch them from one route to another, as at an intersection. These can be integrated with sensors and working traffic lights to create a realistic operating scene.

Faller has produced amusement park fairground models for over 20 years, with well over a hundred different models. Many have been discontinued as newer models have been introduced. Faller offers models in H0 scale and a limited number of amusement park fairground models in N scale as well.

From the 1Department of Physical Therapy, Mejiro University; present address: Department of Physical Therapy, Kobe International University, Kobe, 2Saitama Rehabilitation Center, 3Department of Occupational Therapy, Mejiro University, and 4Department of Physical Therapy, Ibaraki Prefectural University of Health Sciences, Ibaraki, Japan

Methods: Subjects completed 3 balance performance tests: the Unstable Board Balance Test, Functional Reach Test, and Timed Up and Go. For analysis, subjects were classified as fallers or non-fallers based on the history of falls over the previous year, and performance outcomes were compared between the 2 groups. Subjects classified as fallers were then matched 1:1 with non-fallers (for sex, age, body weight and height), and the optimal cut-off score and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) for each test were calculated.

The aim of this study was to determine the ability of an Unstable Board Balance Test to discriminate fall history in high-functioning community-dwelling elderly people. Subjects underwent an Unstable Board Balance Test, a Functional Reach Test (FRT), Timed Up and Go (TUG) measurement, and body height and body weight measurement. The age of subjects was determined and they were asked whether they had fallen within the past year. FRT and TUG did not differ significantly between fallers and non-fallers, but the Unstable Board Balance Test did show a significant difference between groups. We found that, in high-functioning elderly subjects, the Unstable Board Balance Test was able to detect elderly people with a fall history more accurately than either FRT or TUG.

It is estimated that one out of every 3 elderly individuals over the age of 65 years will experience one or more falls per year (1), resulting in health impairment of varying degrees of severity (2). In Japan, fall-related injuries are the fourth leading cause for elderly individuals requiring nursing care (3). As we consider the ageing of the general population globally (4), prevention of falls and fall-related injuries among the elderly population has become increasingly important.

This was a case-control study, with the following measures obtained for analysis: demographic and personal information (age, body height, body weight, history of falls over the past year) and balance performance outcomes (Unstable Board Balance Test score, the FRT and the TUG). The BBS was not included due to its previously reported ceiling effect for healthy, active, elderly individuals (13, 15). The measurement method for each balance performance test is described below.

where x is the degree of tilt of the board in the ML plane and n the number of samples (sampling frequency, 100 Hz). Because the given stability index reflects the change in the inclination of the unstable board per unit time, a larger value indicates a greater degree of fluctuation in ML balance control.

Functional reach test (FRT). The subject was instructed to stand sideways along a wall, to which a measuring tape was affixed, with the arm closest to the wall at 90 of shoulder flexion. In this standardized standing position, the location of the tip of the third finger along the tape measure was recorded. Subjects were then instructed to reach as far forward as possible, without taking a step, and the location of the tip of the third finger was recorded at the furthest distance reached to. The distance between the 2 marks was recorded as the functional reach distance (cm). Each subject completed 2 trials, with the maximum FRT distance obtained using in the analysis. The criterion validity, predictive validity, test-retest reliability, and inter-rater reliability for the FRT, for younger and older adults, has been described previously (18, 19).

This study has a few limitations that need to be acknowledged. First, because of the case-control design of the study, the predictive capacity of the MLSI for falls could not be evaluated, and thus, prospective studies are needed in this respect. Furthermore, the study group was rather homogeneous with regard to physical characteristics, age, and function, and therefore, it is unclear to which extent elderly individuals with different demographic and personal characteristics could complete the task. The usefulness of the assessment for individuals with different levels of functioning remains to be determined (29), thereby refining the MLSI for accurate detection of the risk of falling among elderly individuals.

The Unstable Board Balance Test was useful in discriminating between fallers and non-fallers, which was not possible using the FRT and TUG. Based on our results, we suggest that the Unstable Board Balance Test could be useful for early detection of elderly individuals at risk of falling, and allowing timely fall prevention programmes to be implemented.

\nThe purpose of this study was to better understand the beliefs of child custody evaluators and related professionals regarding allegations of domestic abuse made by parents during the divorce process. The study had several major goals:\n\n

\n
1. to investigate the extent to which child custody evaluators and other professionals who make court recommendations believe that false allegations of domestic violence are common\n
2. to explore the relationship between these beliefs and (a) training on domestic violence and (b) decisions about custody, supervised visitation, and mediation\n
3. to examine whether beliefs about false allegations of domestic violence are related to beliefs that false allegations of child abuse are common, that abuse of parents should not be a criterion in custody/visitation decisions, and that parents often alienate their children from the other parent\n
4. to examine the relationships between beliefs about false allegations and core beliefs in patriarchal norms, social dominance, and basic justice in the world\n\n\nThe study also sought to conduct in-depth interviews with domestic abuse survivors who experienced negative custody-visitation outcomes to help interpret the quantitative findings, uncover new areas of concern and learn of recommendations the survivors had for changing the custody determination process.\n","collectionNotes":"","studyDesign":"Part 1 (Custody Evaluator Beliefs Dataset)\n\nThe original plan for the study involved the participation of custody evaluators, family court judges, and domestic violence advocates in the United States.\nResearchers added a sample of legal aid attorneys because of their frequent involvement in battered women's custody cases. Private attorneys were\nalso added for comparison purposes. There were 1,246 professionals who responded to either a\nweb-based or mailed survey, and 1,187 had enough responses to be included in analyses. Multiple procedures were used for recruiting the different professional groups.\n\nCustody evaluators\n\nFor the custody evaluators, the researchers used both e-mail and mailed invitations.\nResearchers sent 4,017 e-mail invitations in 35 separate waves from May 31, 2009 through March 29, 2010, and 1,665 invitation letters to people for whom they did not have e-mail addresses.\nResearchers sent an initial letter with a link to the web survey, followed by a copy of the survey in the mail 7-10 days later and then a postcard reminder 10 days later.\n\nJudges, Legal Aid and Private Attorneys, and Domestic violence program workers\n\nJudges, legal aid and private attorneys, and domestic violence program workers were recruited via email generated from multiple organizational lists. No reminder emails were sent and no letters or surveys were sent through the mail to judges, attorneys, or domestic violence workers.\nPart 2 (Qualitative Transcripts of Survivors' Interviews)\n\nIn-person, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 24 domestic abuse survivor-mothers in order to improve understanding of some of the negative outcomes from family court decisions. Survivors were recruited from domestic violence programs, supervised visitation/exchange centers, and legal aid programs in communities in four states.\nInterviews took between 45 and 120 minutes to complete, and most were approximately 90 minutes.\n","description":"This study sought to further understanding of the beliefs of child custody evaluators and related professionals regarding allegations of domestic abuse made by parents during the divorce process. Researchers administered a survey of beliefs, practices, background, and training experiences to custody evaluators. For comparison purposes, judges, legal aid attorneys, private attorneys, and domestic violence program workers were also surveyed. Additionally, researchers used in-depth qualitative interviews of domestic abuse survivors to help interpret quantitative findings, to understand the complexities of their experiences, and to generate hypotheses for future research. The study had two major parts. Part 1 (Custody Evaluator Beliefs Dataset) was a survey of professionals, who had experience with custody cases (child custody evaluators, judges, attorneys, and domestic violence program workers). The dataset includes 1,246 cases and 162 variables. Part 2 (Qualitative Transcripts of Survivors' Interviews) involved qualitative, semi-structured interviews with domestic abuse survivors who experienced negative outcomes in family court. Part 2 contains interviews with 24 with domestic abuse survivors.","jsonld":"\"funder\":[\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"name\":\"United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. National Institute of Justice\"],\"identifier\":\" \",\"creator\":[\"affiliation\":[\"University of Michigan\"],\"@type\":\"Person\",\"name\":\"Saunders, Daniel\",\"affiliation\":[\"University of Michigan\"],\"@type\":\"Person\",\"name\":\"Faller, Kathleen\",\"affiliation\":[\"University of Michigan\"],\"@type\":\"Person\",\"name\":\"Tolman, Richard\"],\"keywords\":[\"abuse\",\"abuse allegations\",\"case management\",\"child custody\",\"courts\",\"divorce\",\"domestic violence\"],\"citation\":\"Saunders, Daniel, Faller, Kathleen, and Tolman, Richard. Custody Evaluators\\u2019 Beliefs about Domestic Abuse Allegations, 2009-2010 [United States]. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2015-09-30. \",\"@type\":\"Dataset\",\"description\":\"This study sought to further understanding of the beliefs of child custody evaluators and related professionals regarding allegations of domestic abuse made by parents during the divorce process. Researchers administered a survey of beliefs, practices, background, and training experiences to custody evaluators. For comparison purposes, judges, legal aid attorneys, private attorneys, and domestic violence program workers were also surveyed. Additionally, researchers used in-depth qualitative interviews of domestic abuse survivors to help interpret quantitative findings, to understand the complexities of their experiences, and to generate hypotheses for future research. The study had two major parts. Part 1 (Custody Evaluator Beliefs Dataset) was a survey of professionals, who had experience with custody cases (child custody evaluators, judges, attorneys, and domestic violence program workers). The dataset includes 1,246 cases and 162 variables. Part 2 (Qualitative Transcripts of Survivors' Interviews) involved qualitative, semi-structured interviews with domestic abuse survivors who experienced negative outcomes in family court. Part 2 contains interviews with 24 with domestic abuse survivors.\",\"dateModified\":\"Wed Sep 30 12:27:24 EDT 2015\",\"spatialCoverage\":\"United States\",\"distribution\":[],\"@context\":\" \",\"version\":\"V1\",\"url\":\" \",\"datePublished\":\"Wed Sep 30 12:22:47 EDT 2015\",\"license\":\" \",\"dateCreated\":\"2015-09-30 12:27:24.0\",\"temporalCoverage\":[\"2009-05 -- 2010-03 (Part 1 (Custody Evaluator Beliefs Dataset))\"],\"name\":\"Custody Evaluators' Beliefs about Domestic Abuse Allegations, 2009-2010 [United States]\",\"publisher\":\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"name\":\"Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor]\",\"alternateName\":\"ICPSR\",\"url\":\" \"","analysisUnit":["Individuals"],"source":"","title":"Custody Evaluators' Beliefs about Domestic Abuse Allegations, 2009-2010 [United States]","sampProc":"Part 1 (Custody Evaluator Beliefs Dataset)\n\nMultiple procedures were used to recruit the different professional groups, and these differed somewhat across the groups. The original plan involved the participation of 445 custody evaluators, 70 family court judges and 70 domestic violence advocates in the united States. A sample of legal aid attorneys was added because of their frequent involvement in battered women's custody cases. Private attorneys were also added for comparison purposes.\n\nCustody evaluators\n\nResearchers relied on indirect methods for generating lists for invitations, as follows:\n
   \n
   1. locating members of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) who were psychologists, since they are likely to conduct custody evaluations\n
   2. carrying out web searches for evaluators\n
   3. using a list previously compiled by another researcher conducting a similar survey based primarily on web searches, with telephone confirmation that the people conducted evaluations\n
   4. making e-mail and telephone contact with the directors of court-based custody evaluation units\n\n\nResearchers used both e-mail and mailed invitations.\nResearchers sent 4,017 e-mail invitations in 35 separate waves from May 31, 2009 through March 29, 2010.\nResearchers sent 1,665 invitation letters to people for whom they did not have e-mail addresses.\n\nJudges\n\nSeveral lists and organizational listservs were used for recruiting judges.\n
      \n
      1. The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) sent an e-mail invitation to its 15-member Family Violence Committee with a request to forward the invitation to their colleagues\n
      2. The NCJFCJ Family Violence Department sent an e-mail invitation to 522 judges who had received training through their National Judicial Institute on Domestic Violence\n
      3. Web searches for evaluators produced 98 judges, some of whom responded to researcher e-mails by saying they did not have family law cases\n
      4. Members of AFCC received requests\n
      5. State judicial education program directors in Texas, Georgia, and Michigan sent e-mails\n
      6. The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) posted an invitation for several months on its home web page\n
      7. The Juvenile and Family Law Department of NCJFCJ sent an e-mail invitation to 1,443 of its members\n\nLegal aid and private attorneys\n\nResearchers developed invitation lists from web searches and the membership list of AFCC and sent 895 invitation e-mails from these lists. In addition, the state training coordinators for legal aid attorneys in Ohio and Michigan sent an e-mail invitation to legal aid attorneys on their listservs. Finally, NCADV posted an invitation on its website for several months. Twelve private attorneys and one legal aid attorney responded to the NCADV invitation.\nA total of 366 attorneys responded to all of the invitations.\n\nDomestic violence program workers\n\nMost of the domestic violence program workers were recruited from an invitation posted on the website of NCADV from December 2009 until May 2010 and through a notice in the monthly NCADV e-mail newsletter sent to approximately 11,000 individuals. These domestic violence workers included advocates, counselors, crisis workers, and other front-line workers; attorneys who worked at domestic\nviolence programs; the directors of local programs; and state coalition directors and resource coordinators.\n\nPart 2 (Qualitative Transcripts of Survivors' Interviews)\n\nSurvivors were recruited from domestic violence programs, supervised visitation/exchange centers, and legal aid programs in four states. These communities were selected partly because of their relatively high rates of non-custodial survivor-mothers in caseloads at visitation/exchange centers. In one state, one domestic violence program made one successful referral. In a second state, two supervised visitation programs and three domestic violence programs successfully referred 14 women. In a third state, one supervised visitation program and three legal aid programs referred eight women; and in the fourth state, one supervised visitation program and one domestic violence program referred two women who were eligible. One interview was not used in the analysis because the recording device malfunctioned in the middle of the interview and the interviewer also relied heavily on an interpreter. Other women were referred but were ineligible for the study because they had not experienced negative outcomes from custody evaluations or procedures.\n","timeMeth":["Cross-sectional"],"kindOfData":["survey data"],"keyword":["abuse","abuse allegations","case management","child custody","courts","divorce","domestic violence"],"isReplacedBy":"","publishStatus":"PUBLISHED","creator":["personName":"Saunders, Daniel","display":"Daniel Saunders, University of Michigan","personEmail":"","personOrcid":"","personId":"3y3Ws","personLastName":"Saunders","personOrgName":["University of Michigan"],"personFirstName":"Daniel","affiliationsDisplay":"University of Michigan","personName":"Faller, Kathleen","display":"Kathleen Faller, University of Michigan","personEmail":"","personOrcid":"","personId":"qIZcj","personLastName":"Faller","personOrgName":["University of Michigan"],"personFirstName":"Kathleen","affiliationsDisplay":"University of Michigan","personName":"Tolman, Richard","display":"Richard Tolman, University of Michigan","personEmail":"","personOrcid":"","personId":"iXsms","personLastName":"Tolman","personOrgName":["University of Michigan"],"personFirstName":"Richard","affiliationsDisplay":"University of Michigan"],"commonScales":"Belief in hierarchies/non-equality: Social Dominance Orientation (SDO)\nModern Sexism Scale (MSS)\nBelief in a Just World (BJW) Scale","collectionMode":["face-to-face interview","mail questionnaire","web-based survey"],"citation":"\n Saunders, Daniel, Faller, Kathleen, and Tolman, Richard. Custody Evaluators\u2019 Beliefs about Domestic Abuse Allegations, 2009-2010 [United States]. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2015-09-30. \n","created":"2015-09-30","alternative":"","weights":"\nPart 1 (Custody Evaluator Beliefs Dataset)\n\n\nNot applicable\n\n\nPart 2 (Qualitative Transcripts of Survivors' Interviews)\n\n\nNot applicable\n","versionMismatch":false,"distributor":["Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research"],"collectionChanges":["2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:
         • Saunders, Daniel, Kathleen Faller, and Richard Tolman. Custody Evaluators' Beliefs about Domestic Abuse Allegations, 2009-2010 [United States]. ICPSR30962-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2015-09-30. ","2015-09-30 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:
           • Created variable labels and/or value labels.
           • Standardized missing values.
           • Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes."],"variableDescription":"Part 1 (Custody Evaluator Beliefs Dataset)\nMeasures of Independent Variables\nOpinions about family violence, custody, and visitation\n\nThe items in this section focused primarily on four types of beliefs that\n
             \n
             1. alleged domestic violence survivors and offenders make false allegations of abuse\n
             2. survivors and offenders alienate children from the other parent\n
             3. exposure of children to domestic violence is not relevant to custody decisions\n
             4. the reluctance or resistance of battered women to co-parenting will hurt the children\n\n\nFive subscales were formed based on the results of principal component factor analysis\n
                \n
                1. Domestic Violence (DV) Survivors Make False DV Allegations\n
                2. DV Survivors Alienate Child\n
                3. DV Offenders Make False DV and Child Abuse Allegations\n
                4. DV Survivors' Resistance to Co-Parenting Hurts Child\n
                5. DV Not Relevant in Custody-Visitation Decisions\n\n\nThe following measures were administered only to the custody evaluators because they were the group of primary interest in the study, with the main hypotheses applying to them.\n
                   \n
                   1. Belief in hierarchies/non-equality: Social Dominance Orientation (SDO)\n
                   2. Modern Sexism Scale (MSS)\n
                   3. Belief in a Just World (BJW) Scale\n\n\nBackground and practice measures\n\n\nA series of questions asked about the approximate number of custody evaluations completed or cases involved with in their entire careers and in the past year. Evaluators\nwere asked in what setting they practiced, whether private practice, court, public mental health clinic, psychiatric hospital, or other setting. All professionals were asked in what state they\npractice the most, their gender, age, educational level, and type of advanced degree, if any.\n\nScreening and Assessing for DV\n\nEvaluators were asked three questions about screening and assessment and all respondents were asked the approximate number of times they used various sources to acquire knowledge about domestic violence, including workshops, lectures, consultation, articles, books, and other sources.\n\nAreas of knowledge acquired\n\nRespondents were asked to check whether or not they had acquired knowledge in seven areas\n
                      \n
                      1. prevalence of domestic violence\n
                      2. causes of domestic violence\n
                      3. types of perpetrators\n
                      4. post-separation violence\n
                      5. screening for domestic violence\n
                      6. assessing dangerousness in domestic violence cases\n
                      7. children's exposure to domestic violence\n\nKnowledge of victims\n\nResearchers used a simple checklist for respondents to indicate that they had personally known a victim/survivor of domestic violence.\n\nMeasures of Dependent (Outcome) Variables\n\nOutcome was measured in two ways: with reports of practitioners' histories of making recommendations for custody and visitation and with their responses to a case vignette.\n\nWeighting of Dependent Variables\n\nSome evaluators commented that it was difficult to make estimates in the Practice History section, and therefore\n\"can't estimate\" was given as an option and treated as a missing value. To reduce the number\nof variables for analysis and to increase variance, a single weighted scale of custody outcomes\nwas created. Weights were assigned to the options, with 7 assigned to sole legal and physical\ncustody given to the perpetrator and -7 to sole legal and physical custody given to the victim.\nEvaluators were then asked to estimate the percentage of times they recommended\ndifferent forms of visitation: with no supervision, with supervision by a friend or relative, and\nwith supervision by a professional or paraprofessional. Weights were assigned to the\nvisitation options to create a scale of \"least safe supervision\": 3 was given if \"no supervision of\nvisits\" was chosen, -2 was given to visits supervised by friends and relatives, and -3 was given to\nvisits supervised by professionals or paraprofessionals.\n\n\nThe five items on custody arrangements in the vignette responses were formed into a weighted scale. To create\na scale of \"father custody,\" sole legal and physical custody to the father was presumed to be\nthe most negative outcome for the father and assigned a weight of 5; sole legal and physical\ncustody to the mother was presumed to be the most positive outcome for the mother and\nassigned a weight of -5. Intermediate weights were: 2 for joint legal custody with primary\nphysical custody to the mother, 3 for joint legal and physical custody, and 4 for joint legal\ncustody with primary physical custody to the father. The weights were multiplied by the\nlikelihood score for each item.\n\n\nThe same weights used for the practice history responses were used with vignette\nresponses: 3 was given to no supervision of visits, -2 to visits supervised by friends and\nrelatives, and -3 to visits supervised by professionals or paraprofessionals.\n\nPractice history\n\nRespondents were asked to estimate the percentage of their child\ncustody cases that involved allegations of domestic violence and the percentage of these cases\nthey estimated involved false allegations by each parent. They were also asked to estimate\nthe percentage of cases with violence by each parent or both. Evaluators were then asked how often they supported the allegations of domestic\nviolence and, when they found support, to what extent did domestic violence \"typically impact\nyour evaluation or recommendations\".\n\n\nThe main outcome measures in this section were items regarding custody arrangements\nand visitation. Respondents were asked to \"estimate the percentage of times that you recommend, or would have in that position, the\nfollowing custody arrangements.\" Seven options followed, composed of various combinations\nof legal and physical custody to each parent. The options were:\n
                         \n
                         1. Sole legal and physical custody with victim of domestic violence\n
                         2. Sole legal and physical custody with perpetrator of domestic violence\n
                         3. Joint