1,720,968 research outputs found
Shoulder Pain Intervention Delivered Over the interNet (SPIN) After Spinal Cord Impairment (SCI): Development of a Self-Guided Digital Exercise Intervention
No full textFor people living with spinal cord impairment (SCI), chronic shoulder pain is common and frequently limits community mobility. This leads to loss of independence and reduced quality of life. Evidence has shown that specific exercises, supervised by a physiotherapist, can significantly reduce shoulder pain. However, cost, need for expertise, and transport barriers can limit access to treatment services. Technology is increasingly being used to help bridge this gap and deliver health care services directly to people in their communities. Despite this, there remains a lack of well-designed and evidence-based digital interventions, delivered remotely, that support self-guided exercises to help manage shoulder pain in this population. My doctoral work aimed to develop an evidence-informed and self-guided digital intervention: SPIN (Shoulder Pain Intervention over the interNet) to help people living with SCI (pwSCI) manage their shoulder pain.
The Person-Based Approach (PBA) was used to guide the development of SPIN. This approach involved iterative phases that were informed by a deep understanding of the needs and context of those who would use the intervention (pwSCI who have shoulder pain).
A systematic review and meta-analysis of other digital self-guided physical activity and exercise interventions was conducted early in the research. It found that interventions that were underpinned by a theoretical framework and that incorporated self-regulatory behavioural strategies had a positive effect on physical activity and other health outcomes in people living with chronic health conditions. These findings lent support to the notion of a self-guided intervention and helped inform what features SPIN should incorporate.
Primary evidence was then collected through an Interpretive Descriptive qualitative study, undertaken with pwSCI who have shoulder pain. The purpose was to better understand the factors that would influence engagement, when contemplating and using a self-guided digital intervention. Themes were drawn from the data that represented decision-making steps for pwSCI that occurred at key points. A schematic model was developed: Should I use it? Can I use it? Will I use it?. This work informed the subsequent PBA phase which involved the design and development of SPIN.
Guiding principles were formulated during the design phase, using data from the earlier phase. These shaped the design objectives and intervention features of SPIN, ensuring they continued to meet the identified needs of those who would use the intervention. Initial wireframes were then created. Wireframes are basic screen layouts that demonstrate intervention features, focusing on content, space allocation and flow, without getting distracted by aesthetics. These were refined over the development phase through focus groups with academic and clinical informants and individual ‘think aloud’ sessions with pwSCI. A final SPIN wireframe prototype was produced, ready for the post-doctoral phase of software design and coding.
My doctoral work has developed a digital intervention that is evidence-informed, self-guided and responsive to users’ needs, addressing many of the problems with existing apps. It has been explicit in its development during each phase and has continued to keep users’ identified needs central throughout. The findings from this work have applicability to current clinical practice while addressing many limitations.
NOTE: Chapters 6 and 7, and appendices P, Q, W and X are embargoed until 23 August 2026. Redacted version of the full thesis is available
Muscle Power After Stroke
No full textStroke is the leading cause of disability worldwide. It often leads to mobility limitations resulting from deficits in muscle performance. While reduced muscle strength and rate of force production have been reported, little is known about the power generating capability of people after stroke and its relationship to mobility. Research in other populations has found that measures of muscle power may have a greater association with activity performance than do measures of muscle force alone. Consequently, in an attempt to optimise power, investigators have focused on identifying ideal parameters within which to train for power. One such parameter is the identification of the loading level at which maximal power is generated. Literature reporting optimal loads from both young athletic and healthy older populations has yielded mixed results, making the applicability to a hemiparetic population difficult. The purpose of this study was to investigate muscle power performance at differing loads and to determine at what load muscle power is best elicited in hemiparetic and age and gender matched control groups. A secondary aim was to ascertain whether there is a relationship between the muscle power values obtained and activities such as gait, stair climbing and standing from a chair. Twenty nine hemiparetic volunteers and twenty nine age and gender matched controls were evaluated. Involved and uninvolved legs of the stroke group and a comparison leg of the control group underwent testing. Leg press muscle power was measured using a modified supine leg press machine at 30%, 50% and 70% of a one-repetition maximum (1-RM) load. Participants were positioned on the leg press machine and asked to push, with a single leg, as hard and as fast as they could. Data was collected via a mounted force platform and a linear transducer connected to a platform on which the participants lay. From these, power was able to be calculated. The activities were timed while being performed as fast as possible. The results showed that peak muscle power values differed significantly between the involved, uninvolved and control legs. Peak leg power in all three leg groups was greatest when pushing against a load of 30% of 1-RM. Involved leg peak power tested at 30% of 1-RM (Mean:240; SD:145 W) was significantly lower (p<0.05) than the uninvolved leg (Mean:506; SD:243 W). Both the involved and uninvolved legs generated significantly lower peak power (p<0.05) than the control leg (Mean:757; SD:292 W). Correlations were found between the involved leg peak power and gait speed and involved leg peak power and stair climbing (r=0.6-0.7, p<0.05). No correlation was found between paretic leg peak power and chair stands. The control group leg peak power demonstrated significant associations with the performance of all three activities.In summary, there were significant differences between the involved and the uninvolved leg in power production after stroke. As well, there are significant differences between the uninvolved leg and the leg of those not affected by stroke. Power was related to a number of activities
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
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