1,721,029 research outputs found
Deconstructing symptoms: developing an ethnomethodological understanding of ‘patient delay’ in lung cancer diagnosis
No full textThe influence of social processes on the timing of cancer diagnosis: a research agenda
Get PDFThis paper sets out to review the influence of social processes on the timing of the diagnosis of cancer and to explore the potential for promoting earlier diagnosis by addressing social factors that influence symptom recognition and the diagnostic process. Social processes refer to the means by which culture and social organisation may impact on timely cancer diagnosis. The paper calls for concerted action around an important and developing research agenda that may prove highly valuable in the quest to secure prompt diagnosis for cancer and through it improved outcomes for individuals. <br/
Identifying prostrate cancer in the community: difficulties in communicating the implications of PSA testing
No full textAsymptomatic prostate cancer can be detected following a ProstateSpecific Antigen (PSA) blood test with biopsy for those with raisedPSA results. Population screening for prostate cancer is not currentlyavailable because treatments for localised disease carry risks and haveuncertain benefits. A change in NHS policy will shortly removerestrictions on PSA testing if men consent to receive informationabout the implications of testing.Methods: as part of a feasibility study for a randomised trial of treatmentfor localised prostate cancer (ProtecT Study), men aged 50–69were informed about prostate cancer and treatments and invited tohave a PSA test. Semi-structured interviews elicited men’s reasons forconsenting to PSA testing and study participation, and responses toinformation about treatments and outcomes. Interviews wereaudio-taped and transcribed verbatim. The constant comparativemethod was used to identify salient themes.Results: 21 men were interviewed, 5 before and 16 after receiving araised PSA result. Participants were mostly aware that there wasuncertainty surrounding treatment for localised prostate cancer.Advantages of ‘catching it early’ were commonly presented as a reasonfor PSA testing. PSA testing was compared with routine cervical andbreast cancer screening and an involvement in ‘preventative medicine’commonly endorsed. There was a general expectation that test resultswould be negative and thus give reassurance, and participants tendedto avoid consideration of treatments until an abnormal result wasreceived.Conclusion: new NHS policy to informmen about the implications ofPSA testing may be thwarted by the existence of a ‘catching cancer earlyenables treatment’ discourse allied with an expectation of negativeresults and high levels of compliance with prevention services. Seriousquestions are raised about whether it is possible to engage potentialrecipients in the consideration of the implications of PSA testin
Capturing users' experiences of participating in cancer trials
No full textRandomized controlled trials are accepted to be the research design of choice to evaluate the effectiveness of health care interventions and are commonly used to evaluate cancer treatments. There are concerns, however, that levels of recruitment to trials are often much lower than anticipated, particularly in cancer trials. Several research methods have been used to collect aspects of users' experiences of participating in cancer trials. Perhaps the most common method has been through measures of outcome and the impact of treatments on quality of life (QoL), using standardized schedules to capture physical, social and psychological health. In some areas of cancer, individual patient testimonies illuminate particular issues or narratives. Another body of research has grown around issues of user involvement in trials, including surveys of recruitment and participation, as well as investigations of patient preferences and experiences of participation. We searched MEDLINE and the Cochrane Trials Library from 1995 to 2001 for relevant publications. In this article, we review the literature in these areas and examine whether users' experiences of participating in cancer trials can be used to assist in the design or conduct of trials
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
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