1,721,179 research outputs found
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
Prenatal Maternal Depression Symptoms and Dietary Intake – A Population Based Study in Rural Pakistan
Full text linkBackground: High prevalence of depression among pregnant women has been observed in low and middle-income countries including Pakistan.Pregnancy is an important stressor for depression and depressed women tend to have poor dietary intake.The present study aimed to determine the prevalence of prenatal depression and its risk factors, and explored the relationship of prenatal depression with dietary intake in a representative sample of women living in a rural setting of Pakistan.
Methods: This study was conducted at the baseline of a large cluster randomised controlled trial. Five hundred pregnant women in the second and third trimester of pregnancy, living a in a rural area of district Rawalpindi Pakistan, were recruited for the baseline of the trial. Depression was assessed using “Patient Health Questionnaire” (PHQ9), with a cut-off score of 10, and the dietary intake assessment was carried out by“Food Frequency Questionnaire” and “24 Hour Dietary Recall”.Data on stressful life-events and perceived social support were captured through “Life Events Checklist” and “Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support”.All pregnant women who had PHQ-9 scores of 10 or more were invited to participate. Those women whose PHQ 9 was less than 10 were selected through simple random sampling and invited for baseline measurements after obtaining informed consent. Response rate was around 98%.Appropriate tests of significance were used for bivariate analysis. Final Generalized Linear Model with logit link function was obtained.
Results: The prevalence of prenatal depression was found to be 27%.Depressed pregnant women belonged to 23-30 years age group, were less educated had,lived in joint family and had less perceived support from family and friends.Depressed women suffered from at least 3-4 stressful life events .Food variety scores were generated and dichotomized at median for dietary inadequacy. Mean intake of all the energy, macronutrients and micronutrients was significantly less among depressed (p<0.001).Prenatal depression was significantly associated with dietary inadequacy (P<0.05). In addition factors like life satisfaction, husband away from home in last six months (P<0.05), physical IPV (P<0.05) and stressful life events (P<0.01) were also independently associated with dietary inadequacy.
Conclusion: The current study to the best of my knowledge is the first study to investigate in a large rural community based sample of women the link between prenatal depression and dietary intake. Most of the depressed women did not eat sufficient items from various food groups to meet the recommended dietary allowance. Prenatal depression was independently associated with inadequate dietary intake. Risk factors for prenatal depression as well as dietary inadequacy were psychosocial in nature. There is a need to screen women at antenatal visit and provide nutritional counselling to improve dietary behaviors for better pregnancy outcomes
EVALUATING A MULTI-COMPONENT GROUP INTERVENTION FOR IMPROVING PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING OF TRAINEE CIVIL SERVANTS IN PAKISTAN: A RANDOMISED CONTROLLED STUDY
Full text linkEvaluating a multi-component group intervention for improving psychological well-being of trainee civil servants in Pakistan: a randomised controlled study
Zahoor Ahmed
Abstract
Introduction: Mental health by its very definition is related to productivity and economic output as well. It has been termed a priority under the UN 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Covid-19 has further brought it into limelight with almost one billion people estimated to have a mental-health or substance-use disorder (Greenwood & Krol, 2020; WHO, 2020). Work-related stress has been associated with psychological problems (Quick et al., 1997). In Pakistan, the civil service carries a disproportionally high burden of responsibility and national development depends on their performance and productivity which in turn cannot be divorced from their state of mental health. However, to the best of my knowledge, no study has so far been conducted on addressing workplace related psychological issues among the civil servants in Pakistan. The present study was conducted to fill this gap. It adapted WHO’s low intensity, group psychological intervention, Problem Management Plus (PM+) to design 5 workshops to improve psychological well-being of newly inducted civil servant trainees and evaluate its effectiveness.
Methods: The study was conducted at Civil Service Academy (CSA), Lahore, Pakistan in two phases. In the first phase, a scoping review of the literature and consultations with stakeholders were conducted to inform adaptation of the PM+ to ensure effective implementation with trainee civil servants in Pakistan. In the second phase, a two-arm single blinded Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the adapted curriculum to reduce symptoms of psychological distress in trainee civil servants in Pakistan. 240 newly inducted civil servants, undergoing a 6 months’ induction training were randomized on a 1:1 allocation ratio into intervention and usual training curriculum arm. The intervention arm received the adapted group psychosocial intervention, consisted of 5 training workshops, integrated into their orientation sessions of trainee civil servants along with the usual training. The control arm received the usual training only. The primary outcomes were changes in the scores of psychological distresses as measured by Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) and coping skills strategies as measured by Brief Cope Questionnaire at 3-months post intervention. Secondary outcomes included symptoms of anxiety, well-being, and psychological capital. Intention-to-treat analyses were done using mixed models adjusted for covariates. Ethical approval of the study was obtained from the Human Development Research Foundation, Pakistan and the University of Liverpool. The trial was registered prospectively on clinicaltrials.gov (NCT03762421).
Results: Phase 1 showed that PM+ was transferable into Civil Service Academy (CSA) settings following a careful adaptation process. The adaptation retained the concepts and strategies of the intervention while making significant changes in its structure and delivery.
In the RCT conducted in Phase 2, of the 240 participants enrolled, 213 completed the post assessment at 7 weeks and 3 months’ post intervention. The mixed-model analysis showed that intervention arm participants reported significantly higher scores on Brief-COPE, compared to control arm participants (m[SD], 23.42[8.86] vs. 21.92[8.55]; mean difference, 95%CI, 2.11 [0.19 to 4.04]; p<0.05) at 3-months post-intervention. Similarly, lower scores on PHQ-9 at one-week post intervention were reported by intervention arm participants compared to control arm participants (m[SD], 2.61[2.98] vs. 3.64[4.72]; mean difference, 95%CI, -1.01[-1.80 to -0.22]; p<0.05). Statistically significant difference on secondary outcomes at one-week and 3-months post-intervention was also observed.
Conclusions: The adapted PM+ intervention has resulted in improving coping skills and reducing psychological distress in trainee civil servants. The intervention has the potential to be integrated into the curriculum of Civil Service Academy (CSA) and could be useful to equip civil servant trainees with necessary skills to cope with their forthcoming workplace challenges
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
Facilitators, barriers and requirements for addressing perinatal depression in urban slums through mobile phone-based interventions in Bangladesh: A qualitative study
Full text linkThe Development and Evaluation of a Digital Platform for Management of Perinatal Depression by Nurses in China
Full text linkDispelling 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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