1,720,990 research outputs found
An offline mobile data capture module for health and demographic surveillance system (HDSS) studies
No full textA research report submitted to the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Science
In Epidemiology (Research database management)
Johannesburg, May 2016Considering the amount of data generated by the International Network for Demographic Evaluation of Populations and Their Health (INDEPTH), affiliated Health and Demographic Surveillance Systems (HDSS), and the complexity of their dynamic cohorts, introducing Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and mobile technologies for data collection may significantly improve data quality and ease data processing and data management. So far, the level of use of mobile devices in public health research data collection and its determinants are not clearly known. We assessed the level of use of mobile devices for research data collection.
We conducted a cross-sectional survey in 29 HDSS sites out of 51, in Africa and Asia, to assess the current use of electronic/mobile devices for their core follow-up as well as the embedded studies. This survey revealed that the use of mobile devices was very (8 sites out of 29) low in the core HDSS follow-up. Meanwhile, a third of sites (34%) used mobile data collection for embedded studies. Motivations for using mobile data collection were data quality improvement and timeliness. On the other hand, devices’ initial cost and unreliable internet connectivity were the major barriers to the use of mobile data collection. For those using paper-based data collection methods, Microsoft Access and Epidata were the two leading platforms for data entry whereas Research Electronic Data Capture (REDcap) was the most used electronic data capture system.
INDEPTH network is currently supporting the implementation of Open Health and Demographic System (OpenHDS) in HDSSs. This support can improve the rate of utilisation of mobile devices in HDSS data collection.
Electronic Data Capture (EDC) systems can potentially improve and facilitate data management in epidemiological studies. However, some of these systems lack mobile application or module
needed for field-based research. The second component of our work was to implement an open source mobile application, CTLS (Clinical Trials and Longitudinal Studies), that can be used with REDCap for electronic data capture. The application should be able to collect data offline and asynchronously upload onto REDCap database server or repository. We use REDCap in accordance with the findings of the survey: it was the most used EDC system. Such an offline mobile data capture feature will aid in overcoming the lack of mobile application and poor internet connectivity on the field, and improving the rate of utilisation of mobile data collection in remote settings. Our module has been tested using the entry and exit forms of the Nairobi Urban Health and Demographic Surveillance System in Kenya. It has been proved to be effective in fetching metadata from REDCap server, entering data offline and loading them to a remote database in an asynchronous fashion upon establishing internet connexion.MT201
Low prevalence of high blood pressure in pregnant women in Burkina Faso: a cross-sectional study
No full textBACKGROUND: High blood pressure (HBP) during pregnancy causes maternal and fetal mortality. Studies regarding its prevalence and associated factors in frontline level health care settings are scarce. We thus aimed to evaluate the prevalence of HBP and its associated factors among pregnant women at the first level of the health care system in Burkina Faso. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted in six health facilities between December 2018 and March 2019. HBP was defined as systolic blood pressure ≥ 140 mmHg and/or diastolic blood pressure ≥ 90 mmHg. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was performed to identify factors associated with HBP. RESULTS: A total of 1027 pregnant women were included. The overall prevalence of HBP was 1.4% (14/1027; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.7–2.3), with 1.6% (7/590; 95% CI 0.8–3.3) in rural and 1.2% (7/437; 95% CI 0.6- 2.5) in semi-urban areas. The prevalence was 0.7% (3/440; 95% CI 0.2–2.1) among women in the first, 1.5% (7/452; 95% CI 0.7–3.2) in the second and 3% (4/135; 95% CI 1.1–7.7) in the third trimester. In the multivariable analysis, pregnancy trimester, maternal age, household income, occupation, parity, and residential area were not associated with HBP during pregnancy. CONCLUSION: The prevalence of HBP among pregnant women at the first level of health system care is significantly lower compared to prevalence’s from hospital studies. Public health surveillance, primary prevention activities, early screening, and treatment of HDP should be reinforced in all health facilities to reduce the burden of adverse pregnancy outcomes in Burkina Faso
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe 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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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