Influence of Disturbance on Avian Communities in Agricultural Conservation Buffers in Mississippi, USA

Effects of minority status in the classroom on children’s intergroup attitudes

Although numerous studies have examined how child demographic characteristics may impact ratings of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, there is limited research on how these factors are related to ratings of impairment. This study examined child characteristics (assigned sex, age, race, ethnicity) that may affect parent and teacher ratings of ADHD symptom-related impairments in relationships with family and/or teacher, peer relationships, behavior disruption, academic impairment, homework performance, and self-esteem. The study was conducted using independent U.S. national samples of parents (n = 2,075) and teachers (n = 1,070). Informants rated impairments related to inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity using the ADHD Rating Scale-5. Rasch analyses were used to examine differential item functioning in relation to child characteristics. Separate analyses were conducted for inattention- and hyperactivity-impulsivity-related impairment for both the parent and teacher samples. For teacher ratings, only two items (behavior disruption, homework impairment) demonstrated differential item functioning with intermediate or large effect sizes (≥ .426 logits) in relation to any child characteristic; whereas for parent ratings, all six items displayed differential item functioning with at least intermediate effect sizes in relation to one or more child characteristics. The findings indicated several areas in which child characteristics may have an impact on ratings of ADHD-related impairment, particularly based on parent ratings, which have potential implications for the diagnostic assessment of ADHD and highlight the need for further research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Difference in male and female effective population sizes has, at times, been attributed to both sexes having unequal variance in their number of offspring. Such difference is paralleled by the relative effective sizes of autosomes, sex chromosomes, and mitochondrial DNA. I develop a simple framework to calculate the inbreeding effective population sizes for loci with different modes of inheritance. In this framework, I separate the effects due to mating strategy and those due to genetic transmission. I then show that, in addition to differences in the variance in offspring number, skew in the male/female effective sizes can also be caused by family composition. This approach can be used to illustrate the effect of induced behaviors on the relative male and female effective population sizes. In particular, I show the impact of the one-child policy formerly implemented in the People’s Republic of China on the relative male and female effective population sizes. Furthermore, I argue that, under some strong constraints on family structure, the concepts of male and female effective population sizes are invalid.

ABSTRACTEffect sizes are an important component of experimental design, data analysis, and interpretation of statistical results. In some situations, an effect size of clinical or practical importance may be unknown to the researcher. In other situations, the researcher may be interested in comparing observed effect sizes to known standards to quantify clinical importance. In these cases, the notion of relative effect sizes (small, medium, large) can be useful as benchmarks. Although there is generally an extensive literature on relative effect sizes for continuous data, little of this research has focused on relative effect sizes for measures of risk that are common in epidemiological or biomedical studies. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to extend existing relative effect sizes to the relative risk, odds ratio, hazard ratio, rate ratio, and Mantel–Haenszel odds ratio for related samples. In most scenarios with equal group allocation, effect sizes of 1.22, 1.86, and 3.00 can be taken as small, medium, and large, respectively. The odds ratio for a non rare event is a notable exception and modified relative effect sizes are 1.32, 2.38, and 4.70 in that situation.

BackgroundHuntington's disease (HD) develops in individuals with extended cytosine‐adenine‐guanine (CAG) repeats within the huntingtin (HTT) gene, causing neurodegeneration and progressive motor and cognitive symptoms. The inclusion of mutant HTT carriers in whom overt symptoms are not yet fully manifest in therapeutic trials would enable the development of treatments that delay or halt the accumulation of significant disability.ObjectivesThe present analyses assess whether screening prediagnosis (preHD) individuals based on a normalized prognostic index (PIN) score would enable the selection of prodromal preHD subjects in whom longitudinal changes in established outcome measures might provide robust signals. It also compares the relative statistical effect size of longitudinal change for these measures.MethodsIndividual participant data from 2 studies were used to develop mixed effect linear models to assess longitudinal changes in clinical metrics for participants with preHD and PIN‐stratified subcohorts. Relative effect sizes were calculated in 5 preHD studies and internally normalized to evaluate the strength and consistency of each metric across cohorts.ResultsLongitudinal modeling data demonstrate the amplification of effect sizes when preHD subcohorts were selected by PIN score thresholds of >0.0 and >0.4. These models and relative effect sizes across 5 studies consistently indicate that the Unified Huntington's Disease Rating Scale total motor score exhibits the greatest change in preHD.ConclusionsThese analyses suggest that the employment of PIN scores to homogenize and stratify preHD cohorts could improve the efficiency of current outcome measures, the most robust of which is the total motor score. © 2020 The Authors. Movement Disorders published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society

BackgroundAn assessment of the validity of individual diagnostic accuracy studies in systematic reviews is necessary to guide the analysis and the interpretation of results. Such an assessment is performed for each included study and typically reported at the study level. As studies may differ in sample size and disease prevalence, with larger studies contributing more to the meta-analysis, such a study-level report does not always reflect the risk of bias in the total body of evidence. We aimed to develop improved methods of presenting the risk of bias in the available evidence on diagnostic accuracy of medical tests in systematic reviews, reflecting the relative contribution of the study to the body of evidence in the review.MethodsWe applied alternative methods to represent evaluations with the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies tool (QUADAS-2), weighting studies according to their relative contribution to the total sample size or their relative effective sample size. We used these methods in four existing systematic reviews of diagnostic accuracy studies, including 9, 13, 22, and 32 studies, respectively.ResultsThe risk-of-bias summaries for each domain of the QUADAS-2 checklist changed in all four sets of studies after replacing unit weights for the studies with relative sample sizes or with the relative effective sample size. As an example, the risk of bias was high in the patient selection domain in 31% of the studies in one review, unclear in 23% and low in 46% of studies. Weighting studies according to the relative sample size changed the corresponding proportions to 4%, 4%, and 92%, respectively. The difference between the two weighting methods was small and more noticeable when the reviews included a smaller number of studies with wider range of sample size.ConclusionsWe present an alternative way of presenting the results of risk-of-bias assessments in systematic reviews of diagnostic accuracy studies. Weighting studies according to their relative sample size or their relative effective sample size can be used as more informative summaries of the risk of bias in the total body of available evidence.Systematic review registrationsNot applicable

This study examines the effects of relative group size, group increase and segregation on the earnings of blacks and Asians, using data from the 1980 census. Relative group size and segregation influence the earnings of blacks and Asians, net of human capital, but have different effects on workers from the two groups. The earnings of black workers increase as the relative group size (percent black) expands. But this positive effect diminishes and then becomes negative. Segregation is not significant. The earnings of Asian workers also increase as relative group size (percent Asian) expands. Yet, in contrast to blacks, there is no turning point in the relationship, although the positive effect declines at high levels of percent Asian. Segregation has a similar effect — positive with a declining slope — on the earnings of Asians. Disparities in the effects of group size and segregation suggest that Asians may have greater access to demographic and ecological “recourses” than do blacks.

What a time it has been since the world quite literally changed within weeks in early 2020. For all of us, as researchers and as normal citizens life changed drastically.1 Lab meetings turned into lockdown video calls, cultural events were deemed dispensable and a sentimental coffee on the balcony became the luxury version of any vacation plans. Now, as the pandemic is retreating in most countries and optimistic prognosis for the upcoming summer months are no more mutually exclusive, people take a step back to evaluate what happened over the last months, both on a societal and a personal level.

Assessment of child development often results in a multitude of binary outcome data. There is no agreed way to use them to score the developmental status of children. Conventional methods include age-standardized Z-scores and simple sum of number of passes. Recently two approaches based on the Rasch model and the concept of 'developmental age' have been proposed. This study aims to compare the performance of the four approaches. In a longitudinal study, 473 Malawian children were measured for growth status at age 36 months and administered a new test of developmental milestones between age 3 and 6 years. The test consisted of four domains: gross motor (GM), fine motor (FM), social and language development. The four approaches were used to score the developmental level of each child in each domain, and the results compared. In this sample, the approach based on the Rasch model provided development scores that were more normally distributed than the other approaches did. The four sets of scores were highly correlated with each other. They gave similar estimates of the effect of height-for-age on GM, social and language development. In FM development, the maximum difference in the effect size estimates was only 0.04 standard deviation despite its statistical significance (P = 0.009). The four approaches were practically equivalent in the context of the estimation of an intervention effect or association. Their relative advantages and disadvantages are discussed. None of them can be universally recommended.

Fluctuating asymmetry, the random departure from perfect bilateral symmetry, is a common measure of developmental instability that has been hypothesized to be inversely correlated with heterozygosity. Although this claim has been widely repeated, several studies have reported no such association. Therefore, we test the generality of this association, using meta-analysis, by converting test statistics for the relationship between heterozygosity (H) and fluctuating asymmetry (FA) into a common effect size, the Pearson's product-moment correlation coefficient. We have analysed a database containing 41 studies with a total of 118 individual samples. Overall we found an unweighted mean negative effect size; r=-0.09 (i. e. a negative correlation between H and FA). Significant heterogeneity in effect size was mainly caused by a difference between ectothermic and endothermic animals, and to a lesser extent by the use of different study designs (i.e. within-population vs. among-populations). Mean effect size for endothermic animals was positive and significantly different from the mean effect size for ectothermic animals. Only for within-population studies of ectothermic animals did we find a significantly negative effect size (r=-0.23 +/- 0.09). The distribution of effect sizes in relation to sample size provided little evidence for patterns typical of those produced by publication bias. Our analysis suggests, at best, only a weak association between H and FA, and heterozygosity seems to explain only a very small amount of the variation in developmental instability among individuals and populations (r2=0.01 for the total material).

Predicting replication outcomes in the Many Labs 2 study

Effects of relative granule size and gelatinization temperature on paste and gel properties of starch blends

Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) has harmful effects on physical and mental health and quality of life. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is a treatment option for GAD. This meta-analysis was conducted to determine the effectiveness of MBCT on GAD. Two authors independently performed the eligibility, quality assessment, and data extraction processes, and consensus was reached in case of discrepancies. Electronic databases were searched for eligible studies (randomised controlled trials, randomised trials, cluster randomised controlled trials, and clinical trials) up to November 2018 using keywords: mindfulness-based cognitive therapy OR mindfulness based cognitive therapy OR MBCT AND general anxiety disorder OR GAD*. The methodological quality of studies was assessed using the revised Jadad scale. Cohen's formula was used to determine the effect size based on the mean and standard deviation of the changes in the study groups before and after the intervention. Six studies that compared the effectiveness between MBCT and controls were included for analysis. The mean revised Jadad score of the six studies was 4.3 (range, 3-6). The overall mean effect size was -0.65. The funnel plot of effect sizes in relation to the effect size standard error showed a symmetrical distribution. Compared with controls, MBCT significantly improved the treatment outcome of GAD in all studies, except one. MBCT was effective for treating GAD.

Do experimental conditions bias plankton responses to increased concentration of dissolved organic matter (DOM)? A meta-analytical synthesis of the published results

PROTOCOL: Mentoring Interventions to Affect Juvenile Delinquency and Associated Problems