Differential item functioning (DIF) analysis refers to procedures that evaluate whether an item's characteristic differs for different groups of persons after controlling for overall differences in performance. DIF is routinely evaluated as a screening step to ensure items behavior the same across groups. Currently, the majority DIF studies focus…

Background: Individual patient data (IPD) meta-analysis allows for the exploration of heterogeneity and can identify subgroups that most benefit from an intervention (or exposure), much more successfully than meta-analysis of aggregate data. One-stage or two-stage IPD meta-analysis is possible, with the former using mixed-effects regression models…

Principal component analysis (PCA) is one of the most important and powerful methods in chemometrics as well as in a wealth of other areas. Running a PCA results in two main elements, the score plot and the loading plot; the score plot provides the location of the samples, and the loading plot indicates correlations among variables, the trends in…

Every year, hundreds of thousands of patients have coronary angiograms performed in the United States. The Impella is a percutaneous ventricular support device that provides hemodynamic support for patients if hemodynamic instability occurs during the procedure. The critical care nurse is responsible for the recovery and management of the patient…

Background: Stratified medicine seeks to identify patients most likely to respond to treatment. Individual participant data (IPD) network meta-analysis (NMA) models have greater power than individual trials to identify treatment-covariate interactions (TCIs). Treatment-covariate interactions contain "within" and "across" trial…

The use of individual patient data (IPD) in network meta-analysis (NMA) is becoming increasingly popular. However, as most studies do not report IPD, most NMAs are performed using aggregate data for at least some, if not all, of the studies. We investigate the benefits of including varying proportions of IPD studies in an NMA. Several models have…

Background: To meet rising clinical placement demand caused by increasing health student numbers, the use of paired (two students) rather than single (one student) placement models has been proposed. There is, however, limited research available to inform placement providers about the relative effects of both models on healthcare services,…

The Harkavy-Asnis Suicide Scale (HASS), one of the few self-report scales assessing suicidal behavior was evaluated and ideation, was evaluated and predictors of suicide attempts (SAs) were identified with the goal of developing a model that clinicians can use for monitoring SA risk. Participants were 131 pediatric emergency department (ED)…

Gaining insights from domain experts into how they view communication in real world settings is recognized as an important authenticity consideration in the development of criteria to assess language proficiency for specific academic or occupational purposes. These "indigenous" criteria represent an articulation of the test construct and…

Purpose: To assess the association between Veterans Affairs (VA) stroke patients' poststroke rehabilitation utilization and their residential settings by using 2 common rural-urban taxonomies. Methods: This retrospective study included all VA stroke inpatients in 2001 and 2002. Rehabilitation utilization referred to rehabilitation therapy received…

Introduction: The adult population is increasingly experiencing one or more chronic illnesses and living with such conditions longer. The Chronic Disease Self-Management Program (CDSMP) helps participants cope with chronic disease-related symptomatology and improve their health-related quality of life. Nevertheless, the long-term effectiveness of…

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate how speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD) and Multiple Sclerosis (MS) accomplish voluntary reductions in speech rate. A group of talkers with no history of neurological disease was included for comparison. This study was motivated by the idea that knowledge of how speakers with dysarthria…

Patients with semantic dementia (SD) show deficits in phoneme binding in immediate serial recall: when attempting to reproduce a sequence of words that they no longer fully understand, they show frequent migrations of phonemes between items (e.g., cap, frog recalled as "frap, cog"). This suggests that verbal short-term memory emerges directly from…

Introduction: Self-audit involves self-collection of personal performance data, reflection on gaps between performance and standards, and development and implementation of learning or quality improvement plans by individual care providers. It appears to stimulate learning and quality improvement, but few physicians engage in self-audit. The…

Evidence that medical error can cause harm to patients has raised the attention of the health care community towards patient safety and influenced how and what medical students learn about it. Patient safety is best taught when students are participating in clinical practice where they actually encounter patients at risk. This type of learning is…