1,721,026 research outputs found
Daily physical activity assessment in school children: Movimentiamoci Diary validation study
No full textIn a behavioural epidemiology perspective there are different dimensions for featuring and assessing physical activity (PA) profile: type, frequency, duration, intensity, correlates, outcomes. Scientific evidences on health and PA led to recommendations for children and adolescents. They should be at least moderately active for at least one hour a day with a wide range of possible activities: sports, physical education at school, free range play, active transport, dance, housework.
In 2012 we carried out a validation study to assess criterion validity of an Italian Daily Physical Activity Diary (IDPAD), targeted at primary school children and originally created from overseas examples.
51 pupils (10-11 years old) of Abruzzo region (middle Italy) filled in IDPAD for four consecutive days, registering everything they do from 7.00 am to 12 pm in 68 intervals of 15 minutes. Using a coded system, they specified for each interval the kind of activity (e.g. sleeping, having lunch, getting dress, school lessons, sports, walking, homework, etc) and their perceived intensity (i.e. light, moderate, vigorous, very vigorous activity). We obtained METs-transformed data and the number of errors that occurred when reported intensity was too high or low compared with coded criteria.
In three out of four days, a subsample of 18 children wore in a belt around their waist an electronic device, the Liferecorder – Plus accelerometer, collecting objective measures of PA intensity (METs) and motion (steps).
For overall 54 days coupled data, self-report vs objective measures have been compared by means of pairwise Spearman’s Rho.
Correlations between METs values for single intervals have been found not sufficient (rho ≤ 3.0) nor significant. However we found a significant sufficient correlation between the daily amount of bouts classified as LPA intense (Low PA, rho=0.42, p<0.01) and MVPA intense (Moderate to Vigorous PA, 0.47, p<0.001).
MVPA level appears significantly higher in males than in females and it increases from week-days to week-end. At same time, sedentary activity (SA) increases in the week-end, interestingly confirming what recent scientific literature is showing: PA and SA have to be considered separated patterns of behaviour, with different mechanisms of influence on health outcomes.
Our study demonstrated that the IDPAD has some limits due to subjective measures so it couldn’t be considered an exact instrument for assessing absolute energy expenditure in a quantitative analyses (e.g. causal relationship evaluation in epidemiological studies). However it is valid as raw quantitative assessment of daily child’s PA level. Nevertheless it makes subjects aware about what kind of activities they do more or less and how practically change their sedentary lifestyle. So, daily self-reporting PA by means of diary is a good instrument for health promoting interventions, from individual goal setting to impact assessment at school and population level
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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