1,720,973 research outputs found

    HIV/AIDS impact on childhood mortality and childhood mortality measurement : from the perspective of Kenyan and Malawian DHS data

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    Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 79-84).This study has two goals. The first is to assess the consistency of the childhood mortality trends constructed from the direct and the indirect methods of estimation in high HIV prevalence scttings. The second goal is to assess the direct impact of HIV / AIDS on childhood mortality in Kenya and Malawi for the periods 1999 - 2003 and 2000 - 2004 respectively. It is important to understand the impact of HIV on childhood mortality and childhood mortality measurement to ensure that child health planning and cvaluation are correctly informed

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The 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

    Effect of repeat BCG on all-cause mortality: a double-blind randomised placebe-controlled trial in Malawi

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    Individual level data on vaccine allocation and outcome (dates of death or loss to follow-up) in those actively followed in two areas following the original vaccine trial in 1986-89

    Variations on the Author

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    “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

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    We 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

    Privacy of Study Participants in Open-access Health and Demographic Surveillance System Data: Requirements Analysis for Data Anonymization

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    BACKGROUND: Data anonymization and sharing have become popular topics for individuals, organizations, and countries worldwide. Open-access sharing of anonymized data containing sensitive information about individuals makes the most sense whenever the utility of the data can be preserved and the risk of disclosure can be kept below acceptable levels. In this case, researchers can use the data without access restrictions and limitations. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to highlight the requirements and possible solutions for sharing health surveillance event history data. The challenges lie in the anonymization of multiple event dates and time-varying variables. METHODS: A sequential approach that adds noise to event dates is proposed. This approach maintains the event order and preserves the average time between events. In addition, a nosy neighbor distance-based matching approach to estimate the risk is proposed. Regarding the key variables that change over time, such as educational level or occupation, we make 2 proposals: one based on limiting the intermediate statuses of the individual and the other to achieve k-anonymity in subsets of the data. The proposed approaches were applied to the Karonga health and demographic surveillance system (HDSS) core residency data set, which contains longitudinal data from 1995 to the end of 2016 and includes 280,381 events with time-varying socioeconomic variables and demographic information. RESULTS: An anonymized version of the event history data, including longitudinal information on individuals over time, with high data utility, was created. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed anonymization of event history data comprising static and time-varying variables applied to HDSS data led to acceptable disclosure risk, preserved utility, and being sharable as public use data. It was found that high utility was achieved, even with the highest level of noise added to the core event dates. The details are important to ensure consistency or credibility. Importantly, the sequential noise addition approach presented in this study does not only maintain the event order recorded in the original data but also maintains the time between events. We proposed an approach that preserves the data utility well but limits the number of response categories for the time-varying variables. Furthermore, using distance-based neighborhood matching, we simulated an attack under a nosy neighbor situation and by using a worst-case scenario where attackers have full information on the original data. We showed that the disclosure risk is very low, even when assuming that the attacker’s database and information are optimal. The HDSS and medical science research communities in low- and middle-income country settings will be the primary beneficiaries of the results and methods presented in this paper; however, the results will be useful for anyone working on anonymizing longitudinal event history data with time-varying variables for the purposes of sharing

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We 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

    Author Index

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    Is religion the forgotten variable in maternal and child health? Evidence from Zimbabwe

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    The Apostolic faith, a rapidly growing and increasingly influential force in Zimbabwe, has received attention in the literature due to its potential role in shaping its followers' attitudes and behaviours towards health. Existing literature, however, has only examined small cross-section samples from a few confined survey sites or has failed to adequately control for the many factors that may mediate the effects of religion. This paper examines the effects of the Apostolic faith on the usage of maternal health and child immunization services in Zimbabwe. It is based on a nationally representative sample from the 2009 Multi-Indicator Monitoring Survey and employs the established Andersen model on access to health services. Well controlled multivariate logit regression models derived from these data show that an affiliation with the Apostolic faith is a substantial and significant risk factor in reducing the utilization of both maternal and child health services. Moreover, even when the services were least costly and readily available and when gaps along other social and economic factors were limited, as in the case of Bacillus Calmette-Guerin vaccination and one visit to antenatal care, women and children from Apostolic faith families still fared significantly worse than others in accessing them. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Public, Environmental & Occupational HealthSocial Sciences, BiomedicalSCI(E)[email protected]
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