CHART-SF Frequently Asked Questions

At times there may be some difficulty interpreting a CHART question response. The following guidelines are provided to assist you in making decisions regarding which values to assign to apparently ambiguous responses.

The number of each guideline refers to the number of the CHART question. For those CHART questions which are unlikely to have questionable interpretation, no specific guidelines have been provided.

If you come up with responses that don't seem to be adequately addressed by the guidelines and conventions listed below, please contact the CHART designers to discuss your problems and questions. These issues and their responses will be shared with all CHART users in order to insure uniform scoring.

Item 1. If a person has a disability that would typically result in a high level of dependency, and indicates no attendant care is used, probe this a bit further. The respondent may not understand that assistance with dressing, grooming, bowel and bladder care, etc. is to be considered attendant care.

If an individual has various hours of assistance on different days of the week, ask the respondent to give an estimate of the total hours of assistance per week, then divide that number by 7 to come up with a daily estimate.

Item 5. The responses to this question may vary according to season, weather, etc. For example, many people are out daily in the summer, but only one or two days a week in the winter. Ask the respondent to use his/her judgment, based on the climate in which he/she lives, to estimate the average number of days out per week throughout the year. Being out of the house and going somewhere means that the person leaves his/her own 'property'. Being out in the garden or yard does not qualify as 'going somewhere'.

Item 6. Any night spent away from a person's usual sleeping environment is considered a night away from home. Visiting family or friends and spending the night at someone else's house, therefore, is a night away from home.

Item 7. Respondents must be working in jobs for which they are paid in order to get points for this question.

Item 9. Active homemaking, parenting, housekeeping, etc. is exactly what it means. Being at home with the children at night with everyone asleep is not considered 'active' parenting. Helping children with homework, playing or supervising play, however, are active.

In addition, 'active' can imply supervising housework and food preparation. If someone is developing the household menus, arranging for housework to be done, or overseeing other individuals performing those activities, there is active involvement; therefore, count the time spent in these planning/supervising activities. However, don't credit someone with doing (for example) eight hours of yard work, if his/her only 'active' involvement was arranging and instructing the work needing to be done. This 'active' role might, in fact, take an hour, so credit for 1 hour is appropriate.

Item 10. Hours spent in active home maintenance may vary with season and with weather. Use same logic employed in "#5" in estimating hours.

Item 15. In Questions #15-#17, remember to count the number of people contacted, not the actual number of times a person is contacted. For example, someone may talk with a particular business associate on a daily basis - that is considered one contact, not five (typical working days of the week).

Don't worry about getting exact counts of business associates, if a person indicates "lots" or "dozens" of people are contacted. Remember, this category allows for a maximum of 10 contacts.

Be careful that you don't double count people in different categories!

Item 18. Some people may indicate there is not household income from any source. Probe this, because there must be money from somewhere, whether it is from a charitable source, government funds, other family support, or something else.

REMEMBER: A dimension score can be calculated only if ALL the questions in that dimension have been answered. A total CHART SF score can be calculated only if there is a score for each dimension.