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We explored individuals' relationships with an assistance dog from an attachment-theory perspective. We used both inductive and deductive thematic methods to analyze semi-structured interviews with 25 participants who had lost an assistance dog to retirement or death. Analyses revealed attachment processes of safe haven, secure base, and separation anxiety. Although attachment dynamics were an important feature of these relationships, caregiving was equally important. When confronted with the loss of their dog, almost all participants experienced intense grief. Most grief responses were consistent with the loss of a caregiving relationship. Findings suggest that grief is a natural response to the loss of a beloved companion who fulfilled fundamental needs for attachment and caregiving.

Purpose: To estimate the misclassification rate of self-reported visual disabilities in a hospital-based population with known visual impairment., Methods: Subjects (N=570) were recruited among patients aged 50 years and more and classified to three categories of visual impairment level. The questionnaire was administered to consenting patients through a telephone interview. Data collected from questionnaires and medical records were compared regarding severity of visual impairment. Sensitivity and specificity were determined for each question. Predictive ability and misclassification rates were computed for various prevalences., Results: Questions related to near and far distance visual acuity with glasses have both a good sensitivity (82.6% and 81.8%) and a good specificity (85.6% and 88.9%) for the presence of severe visual impairment., Conclusion: The findings allow the determination of the misclassification rate and predictive ability. This could be useful to estimate the prevalence of visual impairment from health surveys.

This article reports on the Canadian-French translation of the Psychosocial Impact of Assistive Devices Scale (PIADS), a 26-item questionnaire that measures the quality of life (QoL) impacts of using assistive technologies from the person with disability's point of view. Following standard procedures, the study included forward and backward translations, committee reviewing, pre-testing with bilingual lay people, and psychometric evaluation of the translated questionnaire with subjects with mobility impairment (n = 83) and visual impairment (n = 37). The use of translators translating in their mother tongue and the participation of one author of the questionnaire contributed to the quality of the translation. We found that words that had equivalence in English and French did not necessarily cover the same areas of meaning. The subscales (n = 3) and total scale of the French PIADS achieved good test-retest stability (ICC of 0.77-0.90) and internal consistency (0.75-0.94). Concurrent validity with the source PIADS also produced acceptable coefficients (0.77-0.83). At the item level, non-significant t test (p > 0.10) results supported the premise that the scores were not different across languages, except for two items. The results are robust enough to recommend the use of the Canadian-French questionnaire for the investigation of the QoL impacts of assistive technologies for persons with disability.