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Support Condition (support + condition)
Selected AbstractsPartner-assisted emotional disclosure for patients with gastrointestinal cancer,CANCER, Issue S18 2009Results from a randomized controlled trial Abstract BACKGROUND: For patients with cancer who are married or in an intimate relationship, their relationships with their partners play a critical role in their adaptation to illness. However, cancer patients and their partners often have difficulty in talking with each other about their cancer-related concerns. Difficulties in communication ultimately may compromise both the patient-partner relationship and the patient's psychological adjustment. The current study tested the efficacy of a novel partner-assisted emotional disclosure intervention in a sample of patients with gastrointestinal (GI) cancer. METHODS: One hundred thirty patients with GI cancer and their partners were assigned randomly to receive 4 sessions of either partner-assisted emotional disclosure or a couples cancer education/support intervention. Patients and partners completed measures of relationship quality, intimacy with their partner, and psychological distress before randomization and at the end of the intervention sessions. Data were analyzed using multilevel modeling. RESULTS: Compared with an education/support condition, the partner-assisted emotional disclosure condition led to improvements in relationship quality and intimacy for couples in which the patient initially reported higher levels of holding back from discussing cancer-related concerns. CONCLUSIONS: Partner-assisted emotional disclosure is a novel intervention that builds on both the private emotional disclosure and the cognitive-behavioral marital literature. The results of this study suggested that this intervention may be beneficial for couples in which the patient tends to hold back from discussing concerns. The authors concluded that future research on methods of enhancing the effects of partner-assisted emotional disclosure is warranted. Cancer 2009;115(18 suppl):4326,38. © 2009 American Cancer Society. [source] c-Type method of unified CAMG and FEA.INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL METHODS IN ENGINEERING, Issue 9 20032D non-linear, 3D linear, Part 1: Beam, arch mega-elements Abstract Computer-aided mesh generation (CAMG) dictated solely by the minimal key set of requirements of geometry, material, loading and support condition can produce ,mega-sized', arbitrary-shaped distorted elements. However, this may result in substantial cost saving and reduced bookkeeping for the subsequent finite element analysis (FEA) and reduced engineering manpower requirement for final quality assurance. A method, denoted as c-type, has been proposed by constructively defining a finite element space whereby the above hurdles may be overcome with a minimal number of hyper-sized elements. Bezier (and de Boor) control vectors are used as the generalized displacements and the Bernstein polynomials (and B-splines) as the elemental basis functions. A concomitant idea of coerced parametry and inter-element continuity on demand unifies modelling and finite element method. The c-type method may introduce additional control, namely, an inter-element continuity condition to the existing h-type and p-type methods. Adaptation of the c-type method to existing commercial and general-purpose computer programs based on a conventional displacement-based finite element method is straightforward. The c-type method with associated subdivision technique can be easily made into a hierarchic adaptive computer method with a suitable a posteriori error analysis. In this context, a summary of a geometrically exact non-linear formulation for the two-dimensional curved beams/arches is presented. Several beam problems ranging from truly three-dimensional tortuous linear curved beams to geometrically extremely non-linear two-dimensional arches are solved to establish numerical efficiency of the method. Incremental Lagrangian curvilinear formulation may be extended to overcome rotational singularity in 3D geometric non-linearity and to treat general material non-linearity. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] SOME PRACTICAL GUIDANCE FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF PROPENSITY SCORE MATCHINGJOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SURVEYS, Issue 1 2008Marco Caliendo Abstract Propensity score matching (PSM) has become a popular approach to estimate causal treatment effects. It is widely applied when evaluating labour market policies, but empirical examples can be found in very diverse fields of study. Once the researcher has decided to use PSM, he is confronted with a lot of questions regarding its implementation. To begin with, a first decision has to be made concerning the estimation of the propensity score. Following that one has to decide which matching algorithm to choose and determine the region of common support. Subsequently, the matching quality has to be assessed and treatment effects and their standard errors have to be estimated. Furthermore, questions like ,what to do if there is choice-based sampling?' or ,when to measure effects?' can be important in empirical studies. Finally, one might also want to test the sensitivity of estimated treatment effects with respect to unobserved heterogeneity or failure of the common support condition. Each implementation step involves a lot of decisions and different approaches can be thought of. The aim of this paper is to discuss these implementation issues and give some guidance to researchers who want to use PSM for evaluation purposes. [source] A randomized, controlled study of Internet peer-to-peer interactions among women newly diagnosed with breast cancerPSYCHO-ONCOLOGY, Issue 4 2010Mark S. Salzer Abstract Objective: Peer-to-peer interactions are associated with enhanced psychosocial adjustment among women with breast cancer. Millions of women with cancer and others with various health conditions use the Internet to establish peer relationships, usually without professional moderation. This paper reports findings from the first randomized, controlled study of the benefits of these types of Internet-based peer interactions. Methods: This pilot study involved seventy-eight women who were recently diagnosed with breast cancer. Participants were randomly assigned to either an Internet peer support condition or Internet-based educational control condition. Data were gathered at baseline and 4- and 12-months. Primary outcomes of interest were psychological distress and quality of life. Results: Contrary to hypotheses, participants in the Internet peer support condition tended to do worse over time on primary outcome measures. There were no differences between groups on secondary outcomes of perceived social support, self-efficacy, or hope. Paradoxically, many women in the Internet peer support condition actively participated and reported high levels of satisfaction, suggesting some self-perceived benefits. Conclusions: These results suggest that Internet based peer-to-peer interactions may not necessarily be universally beneficial despite the positive experiences reported by many participants. Further research is needed to understand the magnitude of this effect with a larger sample. Moreover, these results raise questions about the need to understand the comparative effectiveness of Internet-based communications by group structure (i.e., unstructured/structured; unmoderated/moderated) and the effect of content (i.e., expression of fear/anxiety, insightful disclosures, etc.) on outcomes. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Response simulation and seismic assessment of highway overcrossingsEARTHQUAKE ENGINEERING AND STRUCTURAL DYNAMICS, Issue 9 2010Anastasios Kotsoglou Abstract Interaction of bridge structures with the adjacent embankment fills and pile foundations is generally responsible for response modification of the system to strong ground excitations, to a degree that depends on soil compliance, support conditions, and soil mass mobilized in dynamic response. This paper presents a general modeling and assessment procedure specifically targeted for simulation of the dynamic response of short bridges such as highway overcrossings, where the embankment soil,structure interaction is the most prevalent. From previous studies it has been shown that in this type of interaction, seismic displacement demands are magnified in the critical bridge components such as the central piers. This issue is of particular relevance not only in new design but also in the assessment of the existing infrastructure. Among a wide range of issues relevant to soil,structure interaction, typical highway overcrossings that have flexible abutments supported on earth embankments were investigated extensively in the paper. Simulation procedures are proposed for consideration of bridge-embankment interaction effects in practical analysis of these structures for estimation of their seismic performance. Results are extrapolated after extensive parametric studies and are used to extract ready-to-use, general, and parameterized capacity curves for a wide range of possible material properties and geometric characteristics of the bridge-embankment assembly. Using two instrumented highway overpasses as benchmark examples, the capacity curves estimated using the proposed practical procedures are correlated successfully with the results of explicit incremental dynamic analysis, verifying the applicability of the simple tools developed herein, in seismic assessment of existing short bridges. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Discrete singular convolution and its application to the analysis of plates with internal supports.INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL METHODS IN ENGINEERING, Issue 8 2002Part 1: Theory, algorithm Abstract This paper presents a novel computational approach, the discrete singular convolution (DSC) algorithm, for analysing plate structures. The basic philosophy behind the DSC algorithm for the approximation of functions and their derivatives is studied. Approximations to the delta distribution are constructed as either bandlimited reproducing kernels or approximate reproducing kernels. Unified features of the DSC algorithm for solving differential equations are explored. It is demonstrated that different methods of implementation for the present algorithm, such as global, local, Galerkin, collocation, and finite difference, can be deduced from a single starting point. The use of the algorithm for the vibration analysis of plates with internal supports is discussed. Detailed formulation is given to the treatment of different plate boundary conditions, including simply supported, elastically supported and clamped edges. This work paves the way for applying the DSC approach in the following paper to plates with complex support conditions, which have not been fully addressed in the literature yet. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] The Comparison Between Active and Passive Types of Social Support: The Emotional Responses,JOURNAL OF APPLIED BIOBEHAVIORAL RESEARCH, Issue 2 2009Ai Ni Teoh Social support was manipulated in previous experimental studies in different ways, including active support and passive support. The present study compared the effects among active support, passive support, and alone conditions on emotional changes by randomly assigning 61 participants to either one of the support conditions. Consistent with the hypothesis, passive support produced a lower level of positive affect and attentive than active support and alone, reduced level of active than alone, as well as a decrease in determined and pleasantness appraisal than active support after a stressful task. Implications of the findings were discussed in terms of the definition of social support and the manipulation of social support in laboratory settings. [source] | |||||||||||||