1,720,981 research outputs found
Reliability and Sensitivity to Change Assessed for a Summary Measure of Lower Body Function: Results from the Women’s Health and Aging Study
No full textA summary performance measure comprised of a hierarchical balance task, a 4-meter walk, and five repetitive chair stands is increasingly being used as a predictor of independent living for older persons. The reliability and sensitivity to change of this summary performance measure have not been investigated, however. Because a measure can be reliable while being unresponsive to change, this study presents information on both the reliability and sensitivity to change for the summary performance measure. This is a 3-year prospective cohort study of 1,002 moderately to severely disabled older women. Short- and long-term reliability was assessed by intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC). Sensitivity to change was assessed by slope differences for three age categories (65-74, 75-84, and >or=85) over six 6-month follow-up periods. Sensitivity to change was also assessed by summary performance change scores for those who did and did not suffer from one of four medical events [myocardial infarction (MI), stroke, hip fracture, or congestive heart failure (CHF)] at follow-up. The summary performance measure showed excellent reliability. Intraclass correlation coefficients ranged from 0.88 to 0.92 for measures made 1 week apart. The 6-month average intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.77 (range 0.72-0.79). The summary performance measure was also highly responsive to change. Subjects who suffered an incident MI, stroke, hip fracture, or CHF at follow-up were significantly more likely to have poorer summary performance change scores (-2.25) compared with those who did not have one of these medical events (-0.24). Additionally, subjects who suffered one of these events improved their summary performance scores in the following assessment period by 0.72. With increasing utilization of the summary performance measure by researchers and clinicians it is important that the measurement properties of this instrument are known. Our results show that the summary performance measure has excellent reliability and is highly sensitive to change
Summarizing Amount of Difficulty in ADLs: A Refined Characterization of Disability. Results from the Women’s Health and Aging Study
No full textActivities of Daily Living (ADLs) rating scales often classify older persons as independent or dependent in self-care activities. However, with this type of classification system little information is available on people who, while not dependent, do report some difficulty in performing self-care activities. This 3-year prospective cohort study presents an ADL summary scale that assesses a gradient of difficulty in ADLs for moderately to severely disabled women aged 65 and older living in the Baltimore, Maryland area. At baseline and for each of six interviews done at 6-month intervals, an ADL summary score measuring ADL difficulty was created. ADL summary score slopes were created for each woman who completed at least the baseline and first three follow-up interviews. The baseline ADL summary score and slope of the ADL summary score were used to predict risk of future hospitalization, nursing home admission and death. Additionally, 6-month ADL summary change scores were calculated in o...Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) rating scales often classify older persons as independent or dependent in self-care activities. However, with this type of classification system little information is available on people who, while not dependent, do report some difficulty in performing self-care activities. This 3-year prospective cohort study presents an ADL summary scale that assesses a gradient of difficulty in ADLs for moderately to severely disabled women aged 65 and older living in the Baltimore, Maryland area. At baseline and for each of six interviews done at 6-month intervals, an ADL summary score measuring ADL difficulty was created. ADL summary score slopes were created for each woman who completed at least the baseline and first three follow-up interviews. The baseline ADL summary score and slope of the ADL summary score were used to predict risk of future hospitalization, nursing home admission and death. Additionally, 6-month ADL summary change scores were calculated in order to assess change in the ADL summary score for women who did and did not report an acute event (MI, stroke or hip fracture) at follow-up. The ADL summary scale showed excellent reliability. Intraclass correlation coefficients ranged from 0.83 to 0.93 for measures made one week apart. The 6-month average correlation coefficient was 0.77. The ADL summary scale also performed well in tests of validity. Poorer scores on the ADL summary scale were significantly and inversely related to an objective physical performance scale. The baseline ADL summary score and slope of the ADL summary score predicted future risk of hospitalization, nursing home admission and death. Each unit increase in the slope of the ADL summary score was associated with a 19% (95% CI 1.10, 1.29) increased risk of hospitalization, a 57% (95% CI 1.37, 1.81) increased risk of nursing home admission and a 41% (95% CI 1.22, 1.64) increased risk of death, adjusting for potential confounders. The mean 6-month ADL change score for women reporting an acute event (2.59) was significantly different from those not reporting an acute event (0.52). The strongest and most significant mean 6-month ADL change score was observed for women who reported a hip fracture (4.52) followed by stroke (2.40) and MI (1.00). These results demonstrate that the ADL summary scale presented has validity, reliability and is sensitive to change. This scale, therefore, offers the opportunity to classify functional problems in a larger proportion of the population than do ADL dependence scales. Additionally, it gives us a way to identify earlier functional changes, and a way to track the natural history of functional problems as well as a response to interventions
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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