1,721,017 research outputs found
Quality assessment of the FIM (Functional Independence Measure) ratings through Rasch analysis
No full textThe Functional Independence Measure (FIM(sm)) is an 18-item, 7-level ordinal scale, widely accepted as a standard measure of disability. The instrument is used mainly for analyses of effectiveness/efficiency of inpatient rehabilitation. National data banks are available, providing normative admission/discharge scores, thus allowing quality control of care. Besides the analysis of the overall score, the pattern of response to the various items can be used as a quality check of the data. The Rasch analysis is used to check the internal consistency of the FIM scores. This is a model of a more general item-response theory. On a common true interval scale, it allows the estimation of the 'ability' of the patients and the 'difficulty' of the items, on the basis of the raw interval scores. Measures of ability are independent of the specific items adopted, and measures of difficulty are independent of the specific sample of subjects tested. The Rasch analysis also allows identification of the 'misfitting' subjects, i.e., those who pass too difficult items and/or do not pass too easy items compared to their overall ability (e.g., due to clinical peculiarity, rating errors, rater's tricks). The average difficulty of the FIM items in the various impairments is then calculated in the large national sample. Within the samples sent by each facility to the data bank, cases misfitting with respect to the national response pattern can be easily singled out. This keeps the data bank free from ambiguous scores. In the meanwhile, these cases are brought to the attention of the submitting facility which can then opt for further examination or, when needed, for redirection of the treatment plan
A short measure of balance in multiple sclerosis: validation through Rasch analysis
No full textAmbulatory patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) frequently present with poor balance. Neither static nor dynamic posturography explore balance during self-paced movements in real-life activities, when fall is most probable. Behavioural item-response scales can easily represent these activities. However, testing many items can easily cause fatigue in MS patients, thus distorting their scores. On the other hand, the lower the number of items, the lower the precision of the cumulative score and its reliability. A new short instrument: was derived from existing ones (the Tinetti and the Berg balance scales). A preliminary 10-item version encompassed sit/stand manoeuvres, standing with eyes open and closed, standing with eyes closed and head extended, leaning forward while standing, picking up an object from floor, resisting nudges on the sternum, turning around, tandem stance. The instrument was administered 1-3 times to 55 MS patients (103 observations overall), all of them able to walk autonomously for at least 20 metres. The Rasch Analysis was adopted to explore the psychometric validity of the scale. Two items (Stand-to-sit and Standing with eyes open) were deleted, as they were too easy and thus uninformative. The remaining 8 items made up a scale (called EQUISCALE) complying with the requirements of unidimensionality and reliability. The item scores remained stable in a sub-sample of 24 patients tested before and after ten 1-hour exercise sessions, thus supporting the homogeneity of the items
Speed-dependent variations of lower-limb joint angles during walking: a graphic computerized method showing individual patterns
No full textA method for obtaining a synthetic representation of the joint angle time-courses at different walking velocities is presented, based on a computerized procedure. Hip, knee and ankle joint angles are measured by electrogoniometric devices and checked on line for their reliability. One stride only for each walking speed is selected as representative of the adopted cadence. For each joint a tridimensional representation of angle time-course versus stride frequency or versus gait speed is performed so that speed-dependent variations can be analyzed. Ten normal (seven males and three females) and three prosthetized subjects have been tested by this method. In normal as well as in pathological subjects individual features could be easily detected and the method proved to be useful for a functional gait evaluation
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
The illness-disease dichotomy and the biological-clinical splitting of medicine
Full text linkIn a recent paper, Sharpe and Greco (2019) argue that some clinical conditions, such as chronic fatigue syndrome (sometimes called myalgic encephalomyelitis), should be treated by altering the patient’s experience and response to symptoms without necessarily searching for an underlying cause. As a result, we should allow for the existence of ’illnesses without (underlying) diseases’. Wilshire and Ward (2019) reply that this possibility requires unwarranted causal assumptions about the psychosocial origins of conditions not predicted by a disease model. In so doing, it is argued that Sharpe and Greco introduce epistemological and methodological problems with serious medical consequences, for example, patients feel guilt for seeking treatment for illnesses that only exist ’all in the mind’, and medical researchers are discouraged from looking for more effective treatments of such conditions. We propose a view that integrates the insights of both papers. We abandon both the strict distinction between disease and illness and the naïve unidirectional account of causality that accompanies it. This, we claim, is a step towards overcoming the current harmful tendencies to conceptually separate (1) Symptom management and disease-modifying treatments. (2) Rehabilitative-palliative care and ’causal’ curing. (3) Most importantly, biomedicine and clinical medicine, where the latter is currently at risk of losing its status as scientific
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
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