1,721,315 research outputs found
Applied cost benefit analysis in health care: An empirical application in spinal surgery
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Systematic review of resource utilization in the hospital management of deliberate self-harm
Full text linkBACKGROUND: Deliberate self-harm (DSH) is a significant public health problem, representing a major burden in terms of morbidity to the individual and health-service utilization. While clinical guidelines suggest good practice for the short-term hospital management of DSH, there remains considerable variability in the way that services are provided. METHOD: A systematic review of the literature was undertaken to examine the current evidence on hospital resource use and costs involved in the short-term hospital management of adults following DSH and to elucidate the factors that influence these differences, in terms of clinical characteristics and service provision. RESULTS: Twenty-one papers reporting on 17 studies met the inclusion criteria for review. Clinical characteristics associated with an increase in resource use included overdose with tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) compared with selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) (weighted ratio 2.6:1) and co-ingestion of alcohol with SSRIs. Variations in service provision, including medical admissions policy and provision of a specialist liaison service, affected resource utilization independently of the clinical needs of patients. CONCLUSIONS: Overdoses of TCAs incur substantially greater hospital costs than overdoses of SSRIs. Variations in the medical seriousness of DSH, and in the structure of service provision, affect the resources used in its short-term hospital management, with little evidence about the impact these differences have on clinical outcome. Research is needed to evaluate the impact of different styles of service provision on outcome, and to incorporate these factors into the trial design of future cost-effectiveness studies of interventions following DSH.<br/
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
Six year follow-up of a clinical sample of self-harm patients
No full textBackground: mortality from suicide and other causes is significantly increased in patients who engage in self-harm, but their long-term morbidity and quality of life are poorly defined. As the majority of self-harm patients are under the age of 35 years, understanding their longer term health outcomes is important if we are to adequately manage their care. The aim of this study was to investigate the long-term mortality, morbidity and quality of life of such patients.Method: a representative cohort of patients who had presented to hospital following an episode of self-harm was traced after 6 years. Mortality and repetition of self-harm were primary outcome measures. Psychiatric morbidity and indices of quality of life, and social functioning were also obtained.Results: 143/150 (95.3%) patients were traced after a mean of 6.2 years. Eight (5.6%) had died during follow-up, significantly more than general population estimates (p ? 0.001), four of these (2.8%) by probable suicide. Further self-harm occurred in 58/101 (57.4%) participants; 70/97 (72.2%) fulfilled criteria for at least one psychiatric disorder, and 51.3% screened positive for harmful use of alcohol. Measures of health status (EQ-5D and SF36-II) were significantly lower (p < 0.001) than in the general population.Limitations: due to the nature of this population group the attrition rate at 6 years is high; although this is the most complete such study to date.Conclusion: despite positive outcomes in some patients, overall levels of mortality, morbidity, and harmful use of alcohol are high, whilst quality of life is reported as low. This has significant implications for the long-term management of this group.<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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