1,721,112 research outputs found
There Is No Place Like Home: The Impact of Public Home‐Based Care on the Mental Health and Well‐Being of Older People
Full text linkDespite a significant policy shift from institutional to home-based care for older adults, evidence on the effectiveness of policies incentivizing home care is limited. This study provides novel evidence on the causal effect of public home-based care on the mental health and well-being of older people. To address endogenous selection, we implement a novel instrumental variable approach that exploits eligibility rules for long-term care as defined in national legislations. We link longitudinal data from the Survey of Health, Aging & Retirement in Europe (SHARE, 2004–2017) to national LTC eligibility rules in France, Germany, Spain and Belgium (disaggregated for Wallonia and Flanders regions) and examine how exogenous variation in the use of long-term care caused by varying eligibility rules impacts depressive symptoms (EURO-D scale), quality of life (CASP scale) and loneliness (R-UCLA scale). We find that receiving formal home-based care significantly reduces depressive symptom scores by 2.6 points (large effect size measured by Cohen's d) and the risk of depression by 13 percentage points. The use of home-based formal care also increases quality of life as measured by the CASP scale, particularly by increasing feelings of control over life. We show that one potential mechanism involves the impact of home-based care on loneliness: we estimate that receiving formal home-based care reduces the risk of loneliness by 6.7 percentage points. Our results provide evidence that an increase in home-based care coverage is justified in terms of improved mental health and well-being outcomes for older people
Who should be eligible for long-term care in older age? Policy trade-offs and implications for coverage, equity and wellbeing
No full textThis chapter examines the challenges in measuring long-term care needs to determine eligibility and the impact of eligibility rules on access to care and wellbeing, focusing on European countries with established long-term care systems. Eligibility rules are crucial for identifying individuals with the greatest need and ensuring equitable resource distribution, yet defining these rules is challenging due to the lack of a universal approach to measuring health and social needs. Consequently, some individuals with functional or cognitive limitations may be inadequately supported or face high out-of-pocket costs, leading to reliance on informal care or unmet needs. This can reduce their independence and increase the risk of costly hospitalizations. The chapter advocates for expanding eligibility rules to improve coverage, equity, and efficiency, highlighting their role in increasing access to care, reducing poverty due to care costs, and enhancing wellbeing
Agricultural trade policies and child nutrition in low- and middle-income countries: a cross-national analysis
Full text linkBackground: There has been growing interest in understanding the role of agricultural trade policies in diet and
nutrition. This cross-country study examines associations between government policies on agricultural trade prices
and child nutrition outcomes, particularly undernutrition.
Methods: This study links panel data on government distortions to agricultural incentives to data from 212,258
children aged 6 to 35 months participating in Demographic and Health Surveys from 22 countries between 1991
and 2010. Country fixed-effects regression models were used to examine the association between within-country
changes in nominal rates of assistance to tradable agriculture (government price distortions as a percentage of
original prices) and child nutritional outcomes (height-for-age, weight-for-age, and weight-for-height Z-scores)
while controlling for a range of time-varying country covariates.
Results: Five-year average nominal rates of assistance to tradable agriculture ranged from − 72.0 to 45.5% with a
mean of − 5.0% and standard deviation of 18.9 percentage points. A 10-percentage point increase in five-year average
rates of assistance to tradable agriculture was associated with improved height-for-age (0.02, 95% CI,0.00–0.05) and
weight-for-age (0.05, 95% CI: 0.02–0.09) Z-scores. Improvements in nutritional status were greatest among children who
had at least one parent earning wages in agriculture, and effects decreased as a country’s proportion of tradable
agriculture increased, particularly for weight-for-age Z-scores.
Conclusions: Government assistance to tradable agriculture, such as through reduced taxation, was associated with
small but significant improvements in child nutritional status, especially for children with a parent earning wages in
agriculture when the share of tradable agriculture was not high
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Reduciendo el exceso de mortalidad en personas con trastornos mentales: un análisis documentario de políticas sobre la reforma de salud mental peruana
Full text linkIntroducción: Las personas con trastornos mentales mueren hasta 30 años antes que la población general. Este estudio exploró hasta qué punto se reconoce este exceso de mortalidad como un tema relevante en la reforma de salud mental peruana.
Método: Usando documentos de políticas, se analizó mediante análisis de contenido el rol de los actores, ideas, contextos políticos y características de los problemas siguiendo el marco de Shiffman y Smith (2007).
Hallazgos: Se analizaron 25 documentos (políticas gubernamentales, artículos científicos, informes de sociedad civil). Los actores principales fueron los decisores de políticas y los investigadores, quienes indicaban que el exceso de mortalidad era un problema importante de abordar. 2014-2018 apareció como un contexto político favorable, cuando se publicaron la mayoría de documentos en los que se expresaba el tema. Sin embargo, los documentos principalmente declaraban la relevancia y necesidad de reducir el exceso de mortalidad, pero no mencionaban estrategias explícitas para hacerlo.
Conclusiones: El exceso de mortalidad ha ido ganando lugar en la agenda de la reforma de salud mental, en el que algunos determinantes propuestos por Shiffman y Smith's (2007) ayudaron a su posicionamiento, pero algunos otros aún serían necesarios para expandir este posicionamiento.Aim: People with mental disorders (PMD) die up to 30 years earlier than the general population. This policy report explored the extent in which excess mortality of PMD was recognised as a relevant issue in the Peruvian Mental Health Reform (MHR) agenda, by analysing the role of actors, ideas, political contexts, and issue characteristics proposed by the Shiffman and Smith’s (2007) framework.
Findings: A total of 25 documents were analysed, including government policies, research articles and civil society’s reports. Main actors were policymakers and researchers, who portrayed the idea that excess mortality was an important problem to address; and 2014-2018 appeared as a favourable Political context, when most documents stating the issue were published. Nonetheless, excess mortality’s characteristics were not entirely considered, since documents mainly declared its relevance and the need to reduce it; but did not explicitly mention strategies to do so.
Recommendations: 1) Expand the agenda setting of excess mortality, by involving professional associations and users-led organisations; framing it in a way that resonates with political leaders; and explicitly present interventions to reduce it. 2) Define which effective interventions to reduce excess mortality will be implemented, by updating legislation to incorporate the goal of reducing excess mortality and tailoring effective interventions to the local context. 3) Strengthen the role of research to set excess mortality into MHR agendas, through conducting local research to inform policy guidelines; building research-capacities in policy communities; enhancing partnerships among policymakers and researchers; and positioning excess mortality into global funders’ priorities.
Conclusions: The study found that excess mortality has been gaining position into the Peruvian MHR agenda; in which some determinants proposed by Shiffman and Smith’s (2007) helped its positioning, and some others would still be needed to expand the agenda setting.Reino Unido. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine & King’s College Londo
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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