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Collecting Data (collecting + data)
Selected AbstractsThe invisible reality of arthritis: A qualitative analysis of an online message boardMUSCULOSKELETAL CARE, Issue 3 2008Aimee Hadert MSc Abstract Background and aim:,Living with a chronic illness, such as arthritis, creates many psychosocial stressors, which can be difficult to cope with. Exploring the interactions which take place on an online message board for people with arthritis may provide insight into both the social support offered, as well as highlighting the groups' needs that perhaps are not being met in a more formal ,offline' setting. The aim of this study was to investigate how and why an arthritis online message board was used. Methods:,A retrospective three-month period of discussions posted on an online message board for people who have arthritis was downloaded into a word document. Collecting data in this manner ensured that completed discussions were captured. Eighty-seven initial messages and 981 replies were analysed. The discussions were analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis. Results:,Four master themes were identified. Firstly, the invisible reality of the condition; secondly, information exchange, whereby users of the message board were shown to be both seeking and providing information; thirdly, while users praised the support they received from family and friends, the support offered and received online was considered to provide additional benefits. Finally, the message board allowed users to share (primarily negative) emotions which they felt unable to express in their offline worlds. Conclusion and implications:,Patients do not always understand the information being offered by health care professionals, and they do not have the confidence to ask for clarification. Health care professionals need to ensure that they find a way of checking levels of patient understanding. Failure to do so means that patients may turn to alternative sources, which may not provide accurate information. The study also showed that people with arthritic conditions find it difficult to express how they are feeling in their offline world; furthermore, they find it difficult to ask for support from their significant others, preferring instead to ,suffer in silence' and seek support from the online community, potentially further isolating them from the support of those in their offline world. There is scope for such patients to be both empowered and educated, so that they are better able to ask for the help they need, which in turn will help to counteract the danger of isolation. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Improving transfer of mental health care for rural and remote consumers in South AustraliaHEALTH & SOCIAL CARE IN THE COMMUNITY, Issue 2 2009Judy Taylor BA Dip Soc Wk MSW PhD Abstract In Australia, it is commonplace for tertiary mental health care to be provided in large regional centres or metropolitan cities. Rural and remote consumers must be transferred long distances, and this inevitably results in difficulties with the integration of their care between primary and tertiary settings. Because of the need to address these issues, and improve the transfer process, a research project was commissioned by a national government department to be conducted in South Australia. The aim of the project was to document the experiences of mental health consumers travelling from the country to the city for acute care and to make policy recommendations to improve transitions of care. Six purposively sampled case studies were conducted collecting data through semistructured interviews with consumers, country professional and occupational groups and tertiary providers. Data were analysed to produce themes for consumers, and country and tertiary mental healthcare providers. The study found that consumers saw transfer to the city for mental health care as beneficial in spite of the challenges of being transferred over long distances, while being very unwell, and of being separated from family and friends. Country care providers noted that the disjointed nature of the mental health system caused problems with key aspects of transfer of care including transport and information flow, and achieving integration between the primary and tertiary settings. Improving transfer of care involves overcoming the systemic barriers to integration and moving to a primary care-led model of care. The distance consultation and liaison model provided by the Rural and Remote Mental Health Services, the major tertiary provider of services for country consumers, uses a primary care-led approach and was highly regarded by research participants. Extending the use of this model to other primary mental healthcare providers and tertiary facilities will improve transfer of care. [source] A field guide to models of sex-ratio evolution in gynodioecious speciesOIKOS, Issue 10 2007Maia F. Bailey Gynodioecious plant species, species in which individuals are females or hermaphrodites, are ideal systems for studying connections between genetics, ecology, and long-term evolutionary changes because sex determination can be complex, involving cytoplasmic and/or nuclear genes, and sex ratio is often variable across landscapes. Field data are needed to evaluate the many theories concerning this breeding system. In order to facilitate the gathering of relevant data, this paper introduces the four types of gynodiocy (nuclear, nuclear-cytoplasmic and stochastic gynodioecy plus subdioecy), describes example species and expected patterns, discusses the various forces that drive the evolution of female frequencies, and gives concrete advice on where to start collecting data for different systems. For species in which females are relatively rare, we recommend reciprocal crosses to determine if sex-determination is nuclear or nuclear-cytoplasmic along with a search for correlations between female frequencies and ecological factors. For species in which females are common and sex ratios are highly variable, we recommend looking at female offspring sex ratios to determine if females are primarily produced in ephemeral epidemics. In the course of this discussion, we argue that the majority of natural gynodioecious species will have complex sex determination in which multiple cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS) genes interact with multiple nuclear restorers of fertility. Sex-ratio evolution in such species will be primarily influenced by fitness differences among hermaphrodites (costs of restoration) and less influenced by fitness differences between the sexes (compensation). Metapopulation dynamics alone may explain population sex ratios of species in which females are associated with marginal environments or hybrid zones; however, we feel that in most cases equilibrium forces within populations and metapopulation dynamics among populations each explain portions of the sex-ratio pattern. [source] Automated reprocessing pipeline for searching heterogeneous mass spectrometric data of the HUPO Brain Proteome Project pilot phasePROTEINS: STRUCTURE, FUNCTION AND BIOINFORMATICS, Issue 18 2006Christian Stephan Dr. Abstract The newly available techniques for sensitive proteome analysis and the resulting amount of data require a new bioinformatics focus on automatic methods for spectrum reprocessing and peptide/protein validation. Manual validation of results in such studies is not feasible and objective enough for quality relevant interpretation. The necessity for tools enabling an automatic quality control is, therefore, important to produce reliable and comparable data in such big consortia as the Human Proteome Organization Brain Proteome Project. Standards and well-defined processing pipelines are important for these consortia. We show a way for choosing the right database model, through collecting data, processing these with a decoy database and end up with a quality controlled protein list merged from several search engines, including a known false-positive rate. [source] Implementation of electronic signatures and records in a clinical CRO: A case studyQUALITY ASSURANCE JOURNAL, Issue 4 2002Graham D. Ogg Abstract Implementation of electronic signatures and records incurs special problems in a specialist Phase I clinical unit where rapid communication, rapid reporting, compliance with applicable regulations and high quality are of paramount importance. Both the business needs and the regulatory compliance issues must be considered in any possible solutions and thus some form of authentication of records and communications is required. In our facility, the requirements of 21 CFR Part 11 did not go far enough regarding authentication and were difficult to implement by medical staff collecting data. Biometric authentication of data entry and encryption of communications appeared to be the best solutions. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Cognitive-behavioural rehabilitation of high-risk violent offenders: Investigating treatment change with explicit and implicit measures of cognitionAPPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 3 2010Devon L. L. Polaschek Important as it is both to risk of re-offending and to cognitive behavioural treatment, violent cognition is seldom measured in rehabilitation programmes, and even more rarely linked to measures of violence risk. Most often, researchers measure violent cognition by having offenders complete transparent self-report questionnaires. This approach may be flawed both by socially desirable responding and by theoretical speculation that stronger links exist between automatic rather than explicit, consciously deliberated cognition and violent behaviour. We measured violent cognition in several ways; collecting data with two self-report scales, along with two Implicit Association Tests (IATs) from men commencing and completing an intensive cognitive-behavioural rehabilitation programme for high-risk violent prisoners. We addressed the questions of whether these two forms of assessment,explicit and implicit,are related, and which is most strongly linked to estimates of violence, based on the Violence Risk Scale. Explicit and implicit tests were not related to each other, although both self-report scales, and one of the IATs elicited significantly more pro-social responses following treatment. Further, the Aggression Questionnaire (AQ) scores were significantly correlated with dynamic risk both pre- and post-programme, while post-programme, scores on one of the two IATs was significantly correlated with dynamic and static risk, as measured pre- and post-programme. These findings suggest that implicit and explicit measures may be assessing different aspects of cognition, and only some are related to violence risk. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] An ecosystem-scale predictive model of coastal seagrass distributionAQUATIC CONSERVATION: MARINE AND FRESHWATER ECOSYSTEMS, Issue 4 2010A. Grech Abstract 1.Maintaining ecological processes that underpin the functioning of marine ecosystems requires planning and management of marine resources at an appropriate spatial scale. 2.The Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area (GBR) is the world's largest World Heritage Area (approximately 348,000,km2) and second largest marine protected area. It is difficult to inform the planning and management of marine ecosystems at that scale because of the high cost associated with collecting data. To address this and to inform the management of coastal (approximately 15,m below mean sea level) habitats at the scale of the GBR, this study determined the presence and distribution of seagrass by generating a Geographic Information System (GIS)-based habitat suitability model. 3.A Bayesian belief network was used to quantify the relationship (dependencies) between seagrass and eight environmental drivers: relative wave exposure, bathymetry, spatial extent of flood plumes, season, substrate, region, tidal range and sea surface temperature. The analysis showed at the scale of the entire coastal GBR that the main drivers of seagrass presence were tidal range and relative wave exposure. Outputs of the model include probabilistic GIS-surfaces of seagrass habitat suitability in two seasons and at a planning unit of cell size 2,km×2,km. 4.The habitat suitability maps developed in this study extend along the entire GBR coast, and can inform the management of coastal seagrasses at an ecosystem scale. The predictive modelling approach addresses the problems associated with delineating habitats at the scale appropriate for the management of ecosystems and the cost of collecting field data. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Community participation in organising rural general practice: Is it sustainable?AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF RURAL HEALTH, Issue 4 2006Judy Taylor Abstract Objective:,We analysed community participation in organising rural general medical practice in order to suggest ways to extend and sustain it. Design:,A multisite, embedded case-study design collecting data through semistructured interviews, non-participation observation and a document analysis. Setting:,One remote and two rural communities in Australia. Participants:,Community members, GPs, health professionals, government officers and rural medical workforce consultants. Results:,High levels of community participation in recruiting and retaining GPs, organising the business model, and contributing to practice infrastructure were evident. Community participation in designing health care was uncommon. Participation was primarily to ensure viable general practice services necessary to strengthen the social and economic fabric of the community. There were factors about the decision-making and partnership processes in each of the communities that threatened the viability of community participation. Conclusions:,We recommend that a concept of community development and explicit facilitation of the processes involved is necessary to strengthen participation, create effective partnerships and ensure inclusive decision-making. [source] | |||||||||||||