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Complex Outcomes (complex + outcome)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Life Sciences	50%

Selected Abstracts

Simple Transfers, Complex Outcomes: The Impacts of Pensions on Poor Households in Brazil

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 5 2006
Peter Lloyd-Sherlock
ABSTRACT Drawing on quantitative survey data and in-depth interviews, this article seeks to map out the potential direct and indirect effects of simple cash transfers on households in impoverished rural and urban settings. Brazil is shown to have an extensive system of old age pensions, which affords almost universal coverage to households containing older people. These benefits have a significant impact on levels of poverty and vulnerability in recipient households. They also facilitate access to essential healthcare items, such as drugs, which are seldom freely available through the state health system. The in-depth interviews reveal that pensions can have important effects on intra-household relations, but these effects were not generalizable nor easily captured by quantitative survey tools. There was clear evidence that pensions reduced the propensity of older people to remain economically active, but this must be understood in a context of limited employment opportunities for all age groups and a high prevalence of disability. Overall, the article demonstrates the complex effects of a relatively simple cash transfer, which policy makers need to take into account. [source]

Latent Transition Regression for Mixed Outcomes

BIOMETRICS, Issue 3 2003
Diana L. Miglioretti
Summary. Health status is a complex outcome, often characterized by multiple measures. When assessing changes in health status over time, multiple measures are typically collected longitudinally. Analytic challenges posed by these multivariate longitudinal data are further complicated when the outcomes are combinations of continuous, categorical, and count data. To address these challenges, we propose a fully Bayesian latent transition regression approach for jointly analyzing a mixture of longitudinal outcomes from any distribution. Health status is assumed to be a categorical latent variable, and the multiple outcomes are treated as surrogate measures of the latent health state, observed with error. Using this approach, both baseline latent health state prevalences and the probabilities of transitioning between the health states over time are modeled as functions of covariates. The observed outcomes are related to the latent health states through regression models that include subject-specific effects to account for residual correlation among repeated measures over time, and covariate effects to account for differential measurement of the latent health states. We illustrate our approach with data from a longitudinal study of back pain. [source]

Synergistic effects associated with climate change and the development of rocky shore molluscs

GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY, Issue 3 2005
R. Przeslawski
Abstract Global climate change and ozone layer thinning will simultaneously expose organisms to increasingly stressful conditions. Early life stages of marine organisms, particularly eggs and larvae, are considered most vulnerable to environmental extremes. Here, we exposed encapsulated embryos of three common rocky shore gastropods to simultaneous combinations of ecologically realistic levels of ultraviolet radiation (UVR), water temperature stress and salinity stress to identify potential interactions and associated impacts of climate change. We detected synergistic effects with increases in mortality and retardation in development associated with the most physiologically stressful conditions. The effects of UVR were particularly marked, with mortality increasing up to 12-fold under stressful conditions. Importantly, the complex outcomes observed on applying multiple stressors could not have been predicted from examining environmental variables in isolation. Hence, we are probably dramatically underestimating the ecological impacts of climate change by failing to consider the complex interplay of combinations of environmental variables with organisms. [source]

Integrating Soil Ecological Knowledge into Restoration Management

RESTORATION ECOLOGY, Issue 4 2008
Liam Heneghan
Abstract The variability in the type of ecosystem degradation and the specificity of restoration goals can challenge restorationists' ability to generalize about approaches that lead to restoration success. The discipline of soil ecology, which emphasizes both soil organisms and ecosystem processes, has generated a body of knowledge that can be generally useful in improving the outcomes of restoration despite this variability. Here, we propose that the usefulness of this soil ecological knowledge (SEK) for restoration is best considered in the context of the severity of the original perturbation, the goals of the project, and the resilience of the ecosystem to disturbance. A straightforward manipulation of single physical, chemical, or biological components of the soil system can be useful in the restoration of a site, especially when the restoration goal is loosely defined in terms of the species and processes that management seeks to achieve. These single-factor manipulations may in fact produce cascading effects on several ecosystem attributes and can result in unintended recovery trajectories. When complex outcomes are desired, intentional and holistic integration of all aspects of the soil knowledge is necessary. We provide a short roster of examples to illustrate that SEK benefits management and restoration of ecosystems and suggest areas for future research. [source]