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Analyzing Data (analyzing + data)
Selected AbstractsTo tell or not to tell: Men's disclosure of their HIV-positive status to their mothers,FAMILY RELATIONS, Issue 2 2005Constance L. Shehan Abstract: Disclosing an HIV diagnosis to his mother may be the first step in a man's successful management of his illness, but it may also lead to added stress due to stigmatization. Analyzing data provided by 166 HIV-positive men who lived in the southeastern United States, we found that the most powerful correlate of disclosure was exposure to HIV through homosexual contact. Additionally, those who had AIDS rather than HIV and exhibited more severe symptoms were significantly more likely to have disclosed to their mothers; older and more highly educated men were significantly less likely to have done so. We discuss the implications of our findings for maternal caregiving to adult sons in middle and later life. [source] Presumed Influence on Peer Norms: How Mass Media Indirectly Affect Adolescent SmokingJOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION, Issue 1 2006Albert C. Gunther In the context of adolescent smoking adoption, this study examined the presumed influence hypothesis, a theoretical model suggesting that smoking-related media content may have a significant indirect influence on adolescent smoking via its effect on perceived peer norms. That is, adolescents may assume that smoking-related messages in the mass media will influence the attitudes and behaviors of their peers and these perceptions in turn can influence adolescents' own smoking behaviors. Analyzing data from a sample of 818 middle school students, we found that both pro- and antismoking messages indirectly influenced smoking susceptibility through their perceived effect on peers. However, this indirect effect was significantly stronger for prosmoking messages than for antismoking messages, an outcome that most likely increases adolescents' susceptibility to cigarettes. [source] Perceiving Discrimination on the Job: Legal Consciousness, Workplace Context, and the Construction of Race DiscriminationLAW & SOCIETY REVIEW, Issue 2 2010Elizabeth Hirsh Despite the continued importance of discrimination for racial labor market inequality, little research explores the process by which workers name potentially negative experiences as race discrimination. Drawing on the legal consciousness literature and organizational approaches to employment discrimination, we assess the effect of social status, job characteristics, and workplace context on the likelihood that workers perceive race discrimination at work. Analyzing data from the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, we find that ascriptive status is associated with perceptions of discrimination, with African Americans, Hispanics, and women more likely to perceive racial discrimination, net of job and organizational controls. Results also suggest that workers with a greater sense of entitlement (as indicated by job authority, promotion experience, and union membership) and knowledge of legal entitlements (as indicated by education level and age) are more likely to perceive workplace racial discrimination. Other workplace conditions can signal fairness and decrease perceptions of racial bias, such as formalized screening practices and having nonwhite supervisors, whereas working among predominantly nonwhite coworkers increases the likelihood of perceiving discrimination. These findings suggest that personal attributions of discrimination vary across social groups and their environments, and demonstrate the importance of workplace context for understanding how individuals apply legal concepts, such as discrimination, to their experiences. [source] Balancing Regionalism and Localism: How Institutions and Incentives Shape American Transportation PolicyAMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 3 2009Elisabeth R. Gerber Public policy decisions are increasingly made by regional governance efforts that involve diverse decision makers from multiple government units within a geographic region. These decision-making bodies face competing pressures to represent regional and local interests. We study how decision makers balance preferences for regionalism and localism within metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), the policymaking entities that are responsible for implementing U.S. federal surface transportation policy at the regional level. Our model of regional governance relates variation in regional policy outcomes to the incentives of MPO decision makers and the institutional environments in which they interact. Analyzing data from a sample of the nation's largest metropolitan areas, we find that MPOs dominated by elected officials produce more locally focused policies, holding other factors constant, while MPOs dominated by nonelected public managers produce more regionally oriented policies. Contextual factors, as well as the regional governance institutions themselves, further shape the balance between regionalism and localism. [source] Toward a Trust-Based Construction ManagementCOMPUTER-AIDED CIVIL AND INFRASTRUCTURE ENGINEERING, Issue 4 2010Annie Guerriero Moreover, the uncertainty linked to the environment of the construction activity makes way for the notion of trust. The coordinator can make use of multiple tools/views for accomplishing his mission. This research work suggests analyzing data coming from these different views to consolidate trust indicators informing the coordinator about "trust in the correct progression of the construction activity." The approach suggested in this article distinguishes between four aspects of the activity determining the global trust level: task progress, actor's performance, documents required to perform the task, and building elements resulting from the task. The proposal suggests introducing these trust indicators in a dashboard, included in a multiview interface, thus allowing the coordinator to identify the tasks with a low trust level and to understand the nature of dysfunctions. A prototype has been developed and integrated in a service-based IT infrastructure. Results of an experiment stage are finally discussed to validate the approach. [source] Application of the 1988 International Headache Society Diagnostic Criteria in Nine Italian Headache Centers using a Computerized Structured RecordHEADACHE, Issue 10 2002Virgilio Gallai MD Background.,The actual application of the current International Headache Society (IHS) diagnostic criteria in clinical practice has not been investigated thoroughly. Objectives.,To develop a computerized, structured, medical record based exclusively on the IHS classification system. Design and Method.,We tested the computerized structured record by entering and analyzing data reported on the case sheets of 500 consecutive patients attending nine headache centers in Italy. All clinical diagnoses in the study were made according to current IHS criteria. The rate of concordance between the diagnosis provided by the computerized structured record and that reported by clinicians on the case sheets was calculated, and reasons for any discrepancies between the two diagnoses were analyzed. Results.,Concordance between the two diagnoses was found in 345 of 500 cases examined (69%). In the remaining 155 cases, diagnoses reached with the computerized structured record and case sheets were impossible or discordant with respect to the diagnoses made by the clinician. In 144 of these cases (28.8%), this was due to missing information or errors in the diagnosis recorded by the clinicians on the patient case sheet. In particular, the diagnosis could not be reached using the computerized structured record in 105 cases (20.6%) because of a lack of one or more data needed in formulating a correct diagnosis according to the IHS operational criteria for one of the primary headache disorders. In the remaining 41 cases some data were missing, but the data available were sufficient to reach a diagnosis according to the IHS criteria. Moreover, the diagnoses reached using the computerized structured record were not in agreement with those made by the clinicians in another 39 cases (7.9%) due to an incorrect interpretation by the clinicians of the data reported on the patients' case sheets. In only 2.2% of the cases (n = 11) misdiagnoses were due to errors of the program that were promptly corrected. Conclusions.,The present study suggests that incorrect application of IHS criteria for the diagnosis of primary headache may occur in as many as one third of patients attending headache centers and that use of a computerized structured record based exclusively on current IHS criteria may overcome this deficiency. [source] A study of creative tension of engineering students in KoreaHUMAN FACTORS AND ERGONOMICS IN MANUFACTURING & SERVICE INDUSTRIES, Issue 6 2007Yoon Chang The aim of this research was to study the nature of creative tension of engineering students in South Korea. The creative tension was analyzed according to relevant competences in project managers' work role. Most of the subjects who participated in this study were part-time students who worked as managers in manufacturing and industrial companies. The application used for collecting and analyzing data was the project managers' work-role,based competence application, Cycloid. Data were collected on the Internet by self-evaluation. The constructed competence model of the Cycloid application was added into the Evolute self-evaluation system utilizing fuzzy logic. The application was able to identify students' current state and personal aims and the creative tension essential for their personal development. The Cycloid application can be utilized in developing the professional competencies of individuals, teams, and organizations. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Hum Factors Man 17: 511,520, 2007. [source] Are Routine Arrhythmia Inductions Necessary in Patients with Pectoral Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators?JOURNAL OF CARDIOVASCULAR ELECTROPHYSIOLOGY, Issue 2 2000MICHAEL GLIKSON M.D. Routine Arrhythmia Inductions in Patients with ICDs. Introduction: The value of ventricular arrhythmia inductions as part of routine implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) follow-up in new-generation pectoral ICDs is unknown Methods and Results: We performed a retrospective analysis of a prospectively collected database analyzing data from 153 patients with pectoral ICDs who had routine arrhythmia inductions at predismissal, and 3 months and 1 year after implantation. Routine predismissal ventricular fibrillation (VF) induction yielded important findings in 8.8% of patients, all in patients with implantation defibrillation threshold (DFT) , 15 J or with concomitant pacemaker systems. At 3 months and 1 year, routine VF induction yielded important findings in 5.9% and 3.8% of tested patients, respectively, all in patients who had high DFT on prior testing. Ventricular tachycardia (VT) induction at predismissal, and 3 months and 1 year after implantation resulted in programming change in 37.4%, 28.1%, and 13.8% of tested patients, almost all in patients with inducible VT on baseline electrophysiologic study and clinical episodes since implantation. Conclusion: Although helpful in identifying potentially important ICD malfunctions, routine arrhythmia inductions during the first year after ICD implantation may not be necessary in all cases. VF inductions have a low yield in patients with previously low DFTs who lack concomitant pacemakers. VT inductions have a low yield in patients without baseline Inducible VT and in the absence of clinical events. Definite recommendations regarding patient selection must await larger prospective studies as well as consensus in the medical community about what comprises an acceptable risk justifying avoidance of the costs and inconveniences of routine arrhythmia inductions. [source] Multi-way models for sensory profiling dataJOURNAL OF CHEMOMETRICS, Issue 1 2008Rasmus Bro Abstract One of the problems in analyzing sensory profiling data is to handle the systematic individual differences in the assessments from different panelists. It is unavoidable that different persons have, at least to a certain degree, different perceptions of the samples as well as a different understanding of the attributes or of the scales used for quantifying the assessments. Hence, any model attempting to describe sensory profiling data needs to deal with individual differences; either implicitly or explicitly. In this paper, a unifying family of models is proposed based on (i) the assumption that latent variables are appropriate for sensory data, and (ii) that individual differences occur. Based on how individual differences occur, various mathematical models can be constructed, all aiming at modeling simultaneously the sample-specific variation and the panelist-specific variation. The model family includes Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and PARAllel FACtor analysis (PARAFAC). The paper can be viewed as extending the latent variable approach commonly based on PCA to multi-way models that specifically take certain panelist-variations into account. The proposed model family is focused on analyzing data from quantitative descriptive analysis with fixed vocabulary, but it also provides a foundation upon which comparisons, extensions and further developments can be made. An example is given which shows that even for well-working data, models handling individual differences can shed important light on differences between the quality of the data from individual panelists. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Brief communication: Mitochondrial haplotype C4c confirmed as a founding genome in the AmericasAMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 3 2010Ripan S. Malhi Abstract Mitochondrial DNA analysis of 31 unrelated Shuswap speakers from a previously poorly sampled region of North America revealed two individuals with haplogroups rarely found in the Americas, C4c and C1d. Comparison of the complete genomes of the two individuals with others found in the literature confirms that C4c is a founding haplotype and gives insight into the evolution of the C1d haplotype. This study demonstrates the importance of collecting and analyzing data from Native North Americans when addressing hypotheses about the peopling of the Americas. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2010. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Comparative Performance Data for Critical Access HospitalsTHE JOURNAL OF RURAL HEALTH, Issue 4 2004George H. Pink PhD ABSTRACT: Context: Among small rural hospitals, there is a growing recognition of the need to measure and report on the use of resources and the safety and quality of the services provided. Dashboards, clinical value compasses, and balanced scorecards are approaches to performance measurement that have been adopted by many health care organizations. However, there exists very little comparative performance data specific for critical access hospitals. Purpose: To identify how comparative performance data for critical access hospitals (CPD-CAH) might facilitate performance and quality improvement, to assess the potential benefits and drawbacks of such data, and to identify some of the critical issues in the development and implementation of CPD-CAH. Methods: Assessment of discussions by participants at a rural hospital performance improvement summit and authors' analyses. Findings: CPD-CAH potentially could improve quality of care and patient outcomes, provide comparative data and benchmarks, inform policy development, facilitate collaboration, and enhance community relations. However, CPD-CAH could also impose an unaffordable cost, produce poor information, require complex coordination, induce a negative public reaction, and result in perverse hospital behavior. Development and implementation of CPD-CAH would require including stakeholders' assessment of its desirability and feasibility, setting objectives, establishing guiding principles, developing a method, collecting and analyzing data, and disseminating results. Conclusions: CPD-CAH could significantly advance CAH performance and quality improvement. However, development and implementation would be a complicated exercise requiring academic expertise and practitioner consultation. The potential value of CPD-CAH should be carefully weighed against its potential cost. [source] | ||||||||||||||||