8,746 research outputs found
The SF-36: a simple, effective measure of mobility disability for epidemiological studies
No full textBackgroundMobility disability is a major problem in older people. Numerous scales exist for the measurement of disability but often these do not permit comparisons between study groups. The physical functioning (PF) domain of the established and widely used Short Form-36 (SF-36) questionnaire asks about limitations on ten mobility activities.ObjectivesTo describe prevalence of mobility disability in an elderly population, investigate the validity of the SF-36 PF score as a measure of mobility disability, and to establish age and sex specific norms for the PF score.MethodsWe explored relationships between the SF-36 PF score and objectively measured physical performance variables among 349 men and 280 women, 59-72 years of age, who participated in the Hertfordshire Cohort Study (HCS). Normative data were derived from the Health Survey for England (HSE) 1996.Results32% of men and 46% of women had at least some limitation in PF scale items. Poor SF-36 PF scores (lowest fifth of the gender-specific distribution) were related to: lower grip strength; longer timed-up-and-go, 3m walk, and chair rises test times in men and women; and lower quadriceps peak torque in women but not men. HSE normative data showed that median PF scores declined with increasing age in men and women.ConclusionOur results are consistent with the SF-36 PF score being a valid measure of mobility disability in epidemiological studies. This approach might be a first step towards enabling simple comparisons of prevalence of mobility disability between different studies of older people. The SF-36 PF score could usefully complement existing detailed schemes for classification of disability and it now requires validation against them
SF Gospel: Blog contents, 2006-2015
No full textSF Gospel (2006-2015) was a blog exploring religious and theological themes in science fiction and popular culture by Gabriel Mckee, author of The Gospel According to Science Fiction. The primary PDF contains the textual content of the blog, along with most images that accompanied the original posts. The appendix PDF contains guest posts written by Mckee for other blogs and websites (including SF Signal, Holy Heroes, Nerve.com, and Religion Dispatches) during the course of SF Gospel's existence
SF-36 subscale scores for quality of life over time.
No full textSubscale scores for Physical (A) and Mental components (B) of the SF-36 for participant survivors of extracorporeal life support at 3, 6, 9 and 12 months compared with scores for the general population of Taiwan [30]. PF: physical functioning; RP: role disability due to physical health problems; BP: bodily pain; GH: general health; VT: vitality; SF: social functioning; RE: role disability due to emotional problems; MH: mental health; *p < .05.</p
Additional Files for Master Thesis "Framing Diets for Policy to Fight Climate Change"
No full textAdditional files for Master Thesis "Framing Diets for Policy to Fight Climate Change: Using video messages to measure the effect of goal framing on attitudes and intentions to reduce beef and dairy consumption to fight climate change"
Datasets
Intervention Framed Videos
Written within the M.Sc. Public Policy and Human Development at Maastricht University MGSoG/UNU-MERIT
Author: Sten Ritterfeld
Supervisor: Michelle González Amador
Submission date: July 12, 202
On the use of structure functions to study blazar variability: caveats and problems
No full textThe extensive use of the structure function (SF) in the field of blazar variability across the electromagnetic spectrum suggests that characteristics time-scales are embedded in the light curves of these objects. We argue that for blazar variability studies, the SF results are sometimes erroneously interpreted leading to misconceptions about the actual source properties. Based on extensive simulations, we caution that spurious breaks will appear in the SFs of almost all light curves, even though these light curves may contain no intrinsic characteristic time-scales, i.e. having a featureless underlying power spectral density (PSD). We show that the time-scales of the spurious SF breaks depend mainly on the length of the artificial data set and also on the character of the variability i.e. the shape of the PSD.The SF is often invoked in the framework of shot-noise models to determine the temporal properties of individual shots. We caution that although the SF may be fitted to infer the shot parameters, the resultant shot-noise model is usually inconsistent with the observed PSD. As any model should fit the data in both the time and the frequency domain, the shot-noise model, in these particular cases, cannot be valid.Moreover, we show that the lack of statistical independence between adjacent SF points, in the standard SF formulation, means that it is not possible to perform robust statistical model fitting following the commonly used least-squares fitting methodology. The latter yields uncertainties in the fitting parameters (i.e. slopes, breaks) that are far too small with respect to their true statistical scatter. Finally, it is also commonly thought that SFs are immune to the sampling problems, such as data gaps, which affects the estimators of the PSDs. However, we show that SFs are also troubled by gaps which can induce artefacts
Examining unidimensionality and improving reliability for the eight subscales of the SF-36 in opioid-dependent patients using Rasch analysis
No full textThe Medical Outcome Study Short Form 36 (SF-36) is one of the most commonly used questionnaires for monitoring the Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) of opioid-dependent patients. However, the unidimensionality and reliability of the SF-36 have not been verified in opioid-dependent patients. The aim of this study was to examine the unidimensionality and to improve the test reliability of the SF-36 for use in opioid-dependent patients. ;A total of 583 opioid-dependent patients were recruited in the study. Unidimensionality was examined by conducting unidimensional Rasch analysis. Item fit statistics and principle component analysis were used to check the item-model fit in each of the eight subscales of the SF-36. Reliability was evaluated by applying both unidimensional and multidimensional Rasch analyses. ;After three misfitting items were excluded, the remaining items of each subscale in the SF-36 represented a single construct. The test reliabilities (0.80-0.87) yielded by the multidimensional approach were much higher than those (0.68-0.82) produced by the unidimensional approach. ;The remaining 32 items of the SF-36 are appropriate for evaluating the HRQOL in opioid-dependent patients in terms of unidimensionality. Additionally, the test scores produced by the multidimensional approach were more accurate than those obtained by the unidimensional approach
SF-36 outcomes and cognition in blood donation of blood donors with different characteristics.
No full textSF-36 outcomes and cognition in blood donation of blood donors with different characteristics.</p
Can Automatic Abstracting Improve on Current Extracting Techniques in Aiding Users to Judge the Relevance of Pages in Search Engine Results?
No full textCurrent search engines use sentence extraction techniques to produce snippet result summaries, which users may find less than ideal for determining the relevance of pages. Unlike extracting, abstracting programs analyse the context of documents and rewrite them into informative summaries. Our project aims to produce abstracting summaries which are coherent and easy to read thereby lessening users’ time in judging the relevance of pages. However, automatic abstracting technique has its domain restriction. For solving this problem we propose to employ text classification techniques. We propose a new approach to initially classify whole web documents into sixteen top level ODP categories by using machine learning and a Bayesian classifier. We then manually create sixteen templates for each category. The summarisation techniques we use include a natural language processing techniques to weight words and analyse lexical chains to identify salient phrases and place them into relevant template slots to produce summaries
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