1,720,959 research outputs found
Childhood functional constipation : Parents' everyday life experiences
No full textBackground: Functional constipation is the most common chronic disorder in childhood with a great impact on family life. Treatment focuses on the behavioural nature of the disorder with toilet training and laxatives, with the goal of daily stool passage without difficulties. Management of care is predominantly carried out at home by parents, making them key partners in the paediatric care. Aim: The overall aim of this thesis was to explore and understand childhood functional constipation through the experiences of parents. Design and method: This thesis comprise two studies based on a phenomenological research method and design with an inductive reflective lifeworld approach using qualitative individual interviews to gather data. A theoretical framework was used in the analysis to further elucidate the findings. Findings: Shame was the essential finding, providing the reason parents acted in certain ways and the result of the same actions. Study I showed that everyday life was put on hold due to the time and effort invested in the adaptations demanded by the constipation. This left the parents feeling lonely, guilty, and fighting frustrating battles as they tried to gain control by being always one step ahead. Study II showed that giving constipation treatment resulted in parents questioning their parental identity. Treatment needed to be affirmed, as doubt and second thoughts sometimes made parents give treatment against their own will as well as defying their child’s will, bordering on feelings of being abusive. The findings were interpreted in the light of theories of illness beliefs and good parenting beliefs, suggesting belief systems are the path into the parents’ feelings of shame. Re-evaluating the beliefs might diminish failure to adhere to treatment regimens. Conclusions: This project shows that functional constipation is like other childhood chronic illnesses in respect of its importance and impact on everyday family life. Shame is a prominent feature of functional constipation experiences. However, the shame felt might be mitigated by targeting and re-evaluating the belief systems that form the lifeworld of the parents and family
Childhood Functional Constipation : Clinical outcomes and lived experiences of Children and their Families
No full textBackground This thesis investigates the multifaceted experiences and outcomes associated with childhood functional constipation, a condition that significantly affects children’s health and family life. Drawing on one quantitative and three qualitative studies, the research provides an increased understanding of how children and families navigate the challenges of diagnosis, treatment, and daily life with a child suffering from functional constipation. Aim The overall aim was to inform a more child- and family-centred perspective to functional constipation care by exploring the experiences of parents and children, and to evaluate a clinical treatment programme. Methods Study I is a retrospective cohort review of medical records with pre-post intervention measurements. Children participating in a structured bowel management programme in a secondary outpatient clinic between 2015 and 2022 were recruited. Clinical variables were compared between the recovered and the unrecovered groups to identify predisposing characteristics and predictive factors for recovery. Studies II and III have a qualitative design, presents interviews with parents about their experiences of having a child with constipation and of giving treatment at home. The same data set of 15 parents were used for both studies. The Reflective Lifeworld Research approach originating from phenomenology was used during analysis. Study IV, also qualitative, presents interviews with 20 children aged between 6 and 14 about their experiences of having constipation and receiving treatment. Reflexive thematic analysis was used during analysis. Findings The first study demonstrates significant improvements in bowel function and symptom relief among children following the intervention. Structured care helped 44% of therapy-resistant children to reach cure or self-management abilities within six months. The study underscores the value of integrating clinical protocols with family education and support. The second study reveals how childhood constipation disrupts family routines, emotional well-being, and social interactions as treatment support requires considerable attention and strength. Parents report feelings of frustration, helplessness, and isolation, often compounded by limited support from healthcare professionals. The findings highlight the need for more empathetic child and family-centred care strategies. The third study uncovers the emotional and practical challenges involved in managing medication routines, feelings of abuse and inadequacy, while trying to maintain adherence. The study emphasises the importance of clear communication and sustained support to empower parents in their caregiving roles because they might question their parental identity. The fourth study presents the child’s perspectives on functional constipation with associated treatments. It presents a close and realistic narrative of procrastination of toilet visits, fear of exposure of leakage in social situations, rectal enemas as both awful and relieving, and hope, while striving for control. Conclusions Together these studies offer a holistic understanding of childhood functional constipation, bridging the gap between clinical outcomes and family experiences. Families deal with physical symptoms, psychological defences, fear of social judgment, and struggles with treatment. This thesis offers actionable insights for children, parents, clinicians, and researchers to improve the quality of constipation care for children and their caregivers
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
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
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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