1,721,942 research outputs found
A systematic review of epidemiological studies on the prevalence of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use by paediatric cancer patients. Presented at ECIM 2008.
No full textBackground: paediatric cancer patients are likely to use complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs) alongside more conventional interventions. A number of individual studies have been carried out to examine prevalence rates of CAM use amongst paediatric cancer patients. These studies have varied findings and are of mixed quality. This meta-analytic review therefore aimed to assess the quality of this literature and to determine what is known about the prevalence of the CAM use in paediatric cancer. Secondary research questions focused on the types of CAM used, trends in CAM use over time, reasons for CAM use, and demographic characteristics associated with CAM use.Method: electronic and manual searches for relevant studies identified 26 English language journal articles of primary research studies investigating the prevalence of CAM usage among paediatric cancer patients in peer-reviewed journals. A quality assessment checklist was rigorously developed based on the strengthening the reporting of observational studies in epidemiology (STROBE) statement in collaboration with Dr. Erik von Elm (lead author of the STROBE statement). Data were extracted and validated by more than one author and analysed using meta-analytic techniques.Results: the prevalence of CAM use by paediatric cancer patients ranged from 40% to 53%. The quality of the studies was mixed and did not correlate with the estimated prevalence of CAM use. ‘Herbals’ was the most popular CAM modality. Paediatric cancer patients use CAM for various reasons. Higher level of education and income were associated with CAM use in North America; the opposite was true for CAM use in Mexico and Turkey.Conclusion: a substantial proportion of paediatric cancer patients use CAM. There is a need to use standardised definitions of the CAM in future studies to generate comparable data. The quality assessment checklist has potential to be a useful quality assessment instrument for other reviews of similar epidemiological studie
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
Influence of management on the behaviour of pet rabbits in Switzerland
No full textIntroduction
Pet rabbits are reported as being kept in housing systems that neither offer adequate space, nor appropriate environmental or social stimuli. The incapacity to cope with these environments would lead to physical and psychological changes, resulting in increased aggression, destruction, or repetitive behaviours. In industrially kept rabbits, a causal connection between inadequate management conditions and physical or psychological changes has been proven. The purpose of this study was to investigate the husbandry and the behaviour of pet rabbits in Switzerland, and to examine how factors like housing conditions, social environment or activities relate to the behaviour of pet rabbits.Methodology
A questionnaire survey was used to collect data about pet rabbit owners and the husbandry, management and behaviour of their rabbits. 280 questionnaires were distributed to pet owners mainly in veterinary practices/clinics and to privately recruited owners in Switzerland. Questionnaire data was analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS).Results
80 questionnaires were suitable for analysis. 98.8% of the pet rabbits were provided with hay, 96% with objects to gnaw. Most housing systems contained enrichment objects besides the basic furniture of water or food bowls. 45% of the pet rabbits were kept inside the house or apartment, 55% outside. House rabbits were kept more frequently as single animals and had less stimulation from the company of other household pets. The mean size of housing systems was smaller for inside rabbits, but was compensated by free runs inside or stays outside. Interactions for inside rabbits were longer and consisted of more play and caress. All respondents of the study rated rabbit behaviour equally. Rabbit attachment behaviours scored rather high (mean = 3.1918, std. deviation = 1.070) and were highly positively correlated with owner attachment. Owner attachment did not vary with the different factors. Aggressive behaviours during manipulations by the owners scored low (mean = 1.6315, std. deviation = 0.46795), these behaviours were not predicted by husbandry or housing conditions. Destructive behaviours (mean = 1.7817, std. deviation = 0.73428) showed weak positive correlations with the rabbits’ social environment.Conclusions
Concerns regarding inadequate management and housing conditions of pet rabbits in Switzerland have not been confirmed. However, behaviour was rated by a self-selecting group of generally highly attached owners, thus the husbandry conditions of this sample may not give a true picture of the husbandry and care of pet rabbits in Switzerland in general. The scores for behaviour were not the result of scientific observations under defined and reproducible conditions. Further studies are necessary to evaluate management and housing condition of pet rabbits in Switzerland and in other countries
Why consumers maintain complementary and alternative medicine use: A qualitative study. Presented at ECIM 2009.
No full textQuestion: Consumers are thought to use CAM because they are attracted to attributes of specific CAM therapies and discouraged by negative experiences of conventional medicine. Research evidence supports this hypothesis, but there remains a need to distinguish between factors and processes involved in the initial uptake of therapies and those involved in their subsequent maintenance. We therefore conducted a qualitative study to explore and describe consumers’ reasons for maintaining or stopping CAM use.Methods: This was a qualitative study. We interviewed 46 CAM consumers and 9 CAM practitioners, in two high-street CAM clinics in the UK. The interviews were analysed thematically using techniques from grounded theory.Results: Consumers described and evaluated their CAM experiences along four dimensions: interpersonal (e.g. interactions with practitioners), physical (e.g. sensations such as touch or pain during treatment), affective (e.g. empowerment) and cognitive (e.g. beliefs about treatment). They evaluated their experiences in relation to their individual needs and expectations; financial considerations could limit maintenance of CAM use. Practitioners emphasised the effectiveness of treatment and themselves as contributing to consumers maintaining treatment, and recognised the role of financial considerations in decisions to stop CAM use.Conclusions: Further work is needed to test and extend our findings in other settings. This study suggests that experiences of conventional medicine are of limited importance after the decision to initiate CAM. Experiences of CAM were foremost in our consumers’ decisions to maintain or stop specific CAM therapies. Maintenance of CAM could occur even if consumers’ experiences were not entirely positive. CAM practitioners may have a vital role to play in ethically supporting consumers’ decisions to maintain CAM use.<br/
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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