Answer Patterns Research Articles

Diagnostic support for selected neuromuscular diseases using answer-pattern recognition and data mining techniques: a proof of concept multicenter prospective trial

BackgroundDiagnosis of neuromuscular diseases in primary care is often challenging. Rare diseases such as Pompe disease are easily overlooked by the general practitioner. We therefore aimed to develop a diagnostic support tool using patient-oriented questions and combined data mining algorithms recognizing answer patterns in individuals with selected neuromuscular diseases. A multicenter prospective study for the proof of concept was conducted thereafter.MethodsFirst, 16 interviews with patients were conducted focusing on their pre-diagnostic observations and experiences. From these interviews, we developed a questionnaire with 46 items. Then, patients with diagnosed neuromuscular diseases as well as patients without such a disease answered the questionnaire to establish a database for data mining. For proof of concept, initially only six diagnoses were chosen (myotonic dystrophy and myotonia (MdMy), Pompe disease (MP), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), polyneuropathy (PNP), spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), other neuromuscular diseases, and no neuromuscular disease (NND). A prospective study was performed to validate the automated malleable system, which included six different classification methods combined in a fusion algorithm proposing a final diagnosis. Finally, new diagnoses were incorporated into the system.ResultsIn total, questionnaires from 210 individuals were used to train the system. 89.5 % correct diagnoses were achieved during cross-validation. The sensitivity of the system was 93–97 % for individuals with MP, with MdMy and without neuromuscular diseases, but only 69 % in SMA and 81 % in ALS patients. In the prospective trial, 57/64 (89 %) diagnoses were predicted correctly by the computerized system. All questions, or rather all answers, increased the diagnostic accuracy of the system, with the best results reached by the fusion of different classifier methods. Receiver operating curve (ROC) and p-value analyses confirmed the results.ConclusionA questionnaire-based diagnostic support tool using data mining methods exhibited good results in predicting selected neuromuscular diseases. Due to the variety of neuromuscular diseases, additional studies are required to measure beneficial effects in the clinical setting.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12911-016-0268-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Words or graphics to present a Discrete Choice Experiment: Does it matter?

ObjectiveTo test whether presenting attribute levels in words or graphics generates different results with respect to attribute level interpretation, relative importance and participation probabilities. MethodsParents of 959 newborns completed a DCE questionnaire that contained two versions of the same nine choice tasks in which the attribute levels were presented in words or graphics. Five attributes related to the decision of parents to vaccinate their newborn against rotavirus were included. Mixed-logit models were conducted to estimate the relative importance of the attribute levels. ResultsRespondents who started with the choice tasks in words produced the most consistent answer patterns. All respondents significantly preferred words to graphics. Part-worth utilities and the relative importance of the attribute levels differed based on the words and graphics data, resulting in different probabilities to participate in vaccination. ConclusionsWords were preferred over graphics, resulted in higher choice consistency, and showed more valid attribute level estimates. Graphics did not improve respondents’ understanding of the attribute levels. Practice implicationsFuture research on the use of either words or graphics is recommended in order to establish guidelines on how to develop a valid presentation method for attribute levels in the choice tasks of a DCE.

A influência das percepções de benefícios, resultados e dificuldades dos grupos de pesquisa sobre as interações com empresas

O presente trabalho tem por objetivo investigar como as percepções dos grupos de pesquisa acadêmica sobre resultados, benefícios e dificuldades esperados das interações influenciam o número de interações que eles realizam com empresas, com base em um survey sobre as relações universidade-empresa no Brasil. Para tanto, por meio da Teoria de Resposta ao Item não Paramétrico (TRIN), foram criados agrupamentos não ad hoc a partir de padrões de resposta de pesquisadores para as percepções analisadas. A partir dos agrupamentos, foi estimado um modelo para identificar como essas percepções influenciam o número de interações dos grupos. Os resultados apontam que os grupos de pesquisa que percebem benefícios intangíveis e resultados de conhecimentos como mais importantes tendem a apresentar maior número de interações com empresas. Além disso, as dificuldades transacionais implicam menos interações com empresas. Por fim, são tecidos alguns desdobramentos para políticas públicas.

Perception and use of landscape concepts in the procedure of Environmental Impact Assessment: Case study—Switzerland and Romania

The European Landscape Convention (ELC) defines landscape as “an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors”. Because all aspects linked to landscape are evaluated during the Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) procedure, we assessed the Swiss and Romanian experts’ perception and EIA reports regarding the landscape concept. Therefore, we analysed Swiss and Romanian experts’ perception of landscape, we evaluated concepts and methods used in environmental impact reports to assess landscape characteristics and functions, and how the ELC's aim and objectives are reflected by the EIA reports.The Canonical Correspondence Analysis performed to evaluate the experts’ perception of landscape integration in the EIA procedure showed a significant relationship among pattern of answers and experts’ professional background. Moreover, there is a significant difference between Swiss and Romanian expert's perception. Longer experience in the field and a higher level of education indicates higher awareness of landscape characteristics and properties, which demonstrates that alongside with the initial training, there is a need for developing a coherent long-life learning systems having landscape analysis as a focus.The ELC is familiar to nearly 86% of the Romanian Environmental Impact Assessment actors and nearly 29% of the Swiss experts. By contrast, most of the Romanian EIA reports analysed do not employ many concepts of the ELC, while most of the Swiss environmental reports incorporate objectives of landscape protection consistent with the Convention.Our study relies on the comparative investigation of representative case studies of Environmental Impact Assessment reports for industry, local infrastructures, tourism facilities, and wind farm projects, as well on tracking how the European Landscape Convention is reflected by the EIA reports. We found that EIA reports from both countries evaluate the visual landscape, thus, achieving subjective assessment of landscape aesthetics without focusing on social and ecological sub-systems. Quantitative elements of landscape analysis are mostly absent and it is challenging to evaluate whether environmental assessments are consistent among European Landscape Convention countries.To overcome the abstract way of evaluation of project's impact on landscape through EIA procedure, an improved landscape analysis procedure is needed and we propose developing technical guidelines, under the European Landscape Convention umbrella, in order to enhance landscape management.

Intuitive Judgments Govern Students’ Answering Patterns in Multiple-Choice Exercises in Organic Chemistry

Research in chemistry education has revealed that students going through their undergraduate and graduate studies in organic chemistry have a fragmented conceptual knowledge of the subject. Rote memorization, rule-based reasoning, and heuristic strategies seem to strongly influence students’ performances. There appears to be a gap between what we believe students understand in organic chemistry and what they actually learn. In this report, findings are presented on how intuitive judgment processes governed organic chemistry students’ unsuccessful and successful answering patterns in a traditional set of multiple-choice items. Analyzing the participants’ approaches through the lens of associative processes in intuitive judgments contributes to the ongoing discussion about appropriate assessment in organic chemistry and encourages the improvement of the traditional curriculum in the discipline.

Presentation matters: how mode effects in item non-response depend on the presentation of response options

Comparability of data across modes is an important issue in survey research. In this paper we discuss item non-response to attitudinal questions in telephone and web surveys. We present results from a survey experiment conducted in Italy and in Spain that compares different presentations of response options in an online setting with a benchmark telephone survey. In line with earlier studies we find that (A), the share of non substantial answers in the online survey depends on how the response option is presented. Comparing different presentations in an online survey to the standard approach of telephone surveys using propensity score matching, we find that (B), the share and pattern of non substantial answers, is most similar across the two modes in the online survey when the it is captured in an instruction on each screen for the online survey. Our findings are of particular relevance for the design of multiple mode or mix-mode surveys of attitudinal questions using online and telephone modes.

Effects of Apophenia on Multiple-Choice Exam Performance

There is a broad literature on the various issues related to effective exam construction applicable to both on-ground and online course delivery. These guidelines tend to support rather close contact between the instructor and the exam. However, to remain competitive, both textbook and course management providers have developed technologies to automate many aspects of exam construction. As test construction becomes automated, the possibility of inadvertently deviating from demonstrated or intuitive guidelines increases. Two experiments were conducted to examine the degree to which apophenia (perceiving patterns in random data) might negatively influence multiple-choice exam performance among college students. Experiment 1 indirectly demonstrated the extent to which certain answer patterns seemed to be tolerated among students (maximum of three repeated answers) in comparison with what might be expected from randomly generated exams from Blackboard. Experiment 2 directly examined the effects of answer patt...

Patterns of response times and response choices to science questions: the influence of relative processing time.

We report on five experiments investigating response choices and response times to simple science questions that evoke student "misconceptions," and we construct a simple model to explain the patterns of response choices. Physics students were asked to compare a physical quantity represented by the slope, such as speed, on simple physics graphs. We found that response times of incorrect answers, resulting from comparing heights, were faster than response times of correct answers comparing slopes. This result alone might be explained by the fact that height was typically processed faster than slope for this kind of task, which we confirmed in a separate experiment. However, we hypothesize that the difference in response time is an indicator of the cause (rather than the result) of the response choice. To support this, we found that imposing a 3-s delay in responding increased the number of students comparing slopes (answering correctly) on the task. Additionally a significant proportion of students recognized the correct written rule (compare slope), but on the graph task they incorrectly compared heights. Finally, training either with repetitive examples or providing a general rule both improved scores, but only repetitive examples had a large effect on response times, thus providing evidence of dual paths or processes to a solution. Considering models of heuristics, information accumulation models, and models relevant to the Stroop effect, we construct a simple relative processing time model that could be viewed as a kind of fluency heuristic. The results suggest that misconception-like patterns of answers to some science questions commonly found on tests may be explained in part by automatic processes that involve the relative processing time of considered dimensions and a priority to answer quickly.

Probabilistic Expectations in Developing Countries

Many decisions are made under uncertainty, and individuals are likely to form subjective expectations about the probabilities of events that are relevant to their decisions. I review here a recent and growing literature that uses probabilistic expectations elicited from survey respondents in developing countries. I first present an illustrative model of one particular decision under uncertainty—the choice of a college—to exemplify the importance of subjective expectations data for identification purposes. I then review existing evidence emphasizing that it is feasible to elicit probabilities from survey respondents in low-literacy settings and describe common patterns of answers. Finally, I describe existing applications, many of which seek to assess how expectations influence behavior, in various domains, including health, education, agricultural production, and migration.

Muntlig kommunikation under en lektion om energikällor i årskurs 5 <br>Oral Communication during a Lesson on Energy Sources in Grade 5

There are alarming signals of a decreasing interest in science among students and, according to research, one reason for this development is, the exclusion of the students’ experiences and thoughts in the teaching process. This article presents a study of oral communication patterns during a lesson on energy sources in year five in a Swedish primary school. The teaching sequence is analysed with both quantitative and qualitative methods to make evident the use of time, question – answer patterns, roles, and genres. The teacher creates a dialogue, using both everyday and academic language to explain complicated concepts, and allowing plenty of time for the students’ contributions. The students are also given opportunities to internalise the scientific language by means of demanding roles and genres. By including writing elements this wholly oral lesson would have provided even greater learning opportunities.

Symptom Checklist 90–Revised in neurological outpatients

The Symptom Checklist 90–Revised (SCL-90-R) is an international, widely used, self-report questionnaire of multidimensional complaints with normative data for healthy control subjects and psychiatric patients. The questionnaire is also often used in neurological patients. Little is known about the amount and pattern of complaints in this group, and normative data are lacking. We therefore analyzed self-reported symptoms on the SCL-90-R of a neurological population (N = 600). Moreover, we compared the answer patterns of five subgroups: neurodegenerative disease, cerebrovascular disease, epilepsy, brain tumor, and traumatic brain injury. Neurological outpatients scored significantly higher in comparison with normative data from healthy control subjects, with most pronounced scores on Inadequacy of Thinking and Acting, Depression, and Somatization (p < .01, effect sizes 1.69, 0.83, and 0.83). No differences between the various pathologies were found. Although it is difficult to determine whether the complaints arise directly from the neurological disease or more indirectly from psychiatric disturbances accompanying the disease, simply comparing a neurological patient to normative data for healthy control subjects can lead to inappropriate classifications. Complaints of our patients should not be directly interpreted as psychopathology. A two-step procedure in which scores on the SCL-90-R are first compared to healthy control subjects and secondly to neurological patients can be helpful in the interpretation.

Estimating Mis-Reporting in Dyadic Data: Are Transfers Mutually Beneficial?

Many studies have used self-reported dyadic data without exploiting the pattern of discordant answers. In this paper we propose a maximum likelihood estimator that deals with mis-reporting in a systematic way. We illustrate the methodology using dyadic data on inter-household transfers (gifts and loans) from the village of Nyakatoke in Tanzania, investigating whether observed transfers are mutually beneficial, i.e. in the self-interest of both parties involved. Our results suggest that mutual self-interest is not a necessary condition for transfers between households who are sufficiently close socially and geographically to take place, and we show that not taking reporting bias into account leads to serious underestimation of the total amount of transfers between villagers.

Conformity of Witnesses with Low Self-Esteem to Their Co-Witnesses

We investigated the conformity of Japanese female students with varying self-esteem levels in a co-witness memory experimental paradigm. We had 24 Japanese female student pairs (18 - 26 years old) watch a video clip of a simulated criminal event together. Utilizing a presentation trick, we presented two different versions of the video clip simultaneously on the screen but allowed the viewers to observe only one without their being aware of the duality. Conformity responses were detected through analysis of the answer patterns showing change from their own to their partner’s in pre- and post-memory tests. We also assessed self-esteem and divided the participants into three groups according to their levels. The results showed that participants with low levels of self-esteem tended to conform to their co-witness more often than those with high self-esteem scores. We found that personality traits would be crucial factors in conformity through the present study.

The co-occurrence of self-observed norm-conforming behavior, reduction of zero observations and remaining measurement quality

Norm-violating behavior is characterized by clear social norms which prescribe the non-occurrence of that behavior. From the theoretical framework of Allport it is derived that specifically norm-conformation is consistent, while violating norms is expected to be inconsistent and more circumstantial. This is in contrast to test-theoretic approaches of delinquent behavior that assume that various norm-violating responses form a consistent answer pattern that is scalable and reliable. In this study we study the inter-correlations, scalability and reliability of norm-violating responses and their relation with the reduction of zero observations. In concordance with Allport’s view it is expected that different norm-violating self-report items have limited interrelatedness and are limited in scalability and reliability in the norm-violating sub-population. The NLSY98 self-report data show that a large majority of respondents (69 %) conform systematically to all ten different norms, while only nine percent admits more than two different violations. The results show that in subsamples of norm-violating respondents, the correlations between items become closer to zero, dependent on the amount of zero reduction. Furthermore, both Loevinger’s H coefficient of scalability and scale reliability become unsatisfactorily low, when 35 % or more strict norm-conforming subjects are removed.

Measuring the impact of the Web: Rasch modelling for survey evaluation

In 2012, the World Wide Web Foundation launched for the first time the Web Index (WI), which combines the existing secondary data with new primary data to rank countries according to their progress and use of the Web. Primary data are gathered via a multi-country specifically designed questionnaire. The aim of our analysis is (1) to evaluate the measurement properties of the expert assessment survey and to provide survey designers with some insights into possible problematic questions and/or unexpectedly behaving countries and (2) to assess the experts’ perception of the state and the value of the Web. To do so the Rating Scale Rasch model is employed. Results show that about 10% of survey questions are detected as misfitting and need to be reworded. Possible reasons are: counter-orientation with respect to the WI polarity, difficulty in understanding the question's words or binary instead of the multiple response scale. Country analysis shows that no country can be considered as an outlier due to notable unexpected pattern of answers. Since the survey is to be expanded in future editions of the WI, the results of our analysis are very important in pin-pointing the questions most in need of refinement for the next edition of the Index.

The Answering System to Yes–No Truth-Functional Questions in Korean–English Bilingual Children

This study presents an experiment that explores the patterns of answers to yes-no truth-functional questions in English and Korean. The answering patterns are examined from 12 Korean-English bilingual children and 10 Korean-monolingual children. Four types of sentences in relation to given situations (Wason in Br J Psychol 52:133-142, 1961) were provided as questions such as true affirmative (TA), true negative (TN), false affirmative (FA), and false negative (FN). The bilingual children's answers were observed in separate language settings, English and Korean. The results by the bilingual in the Korean setting were compared with those by the monolinguals. The results show that bilingual children can process two systems rather successfully by providing correct responses to the given questions. But difficulty patterns, measured from error rates in each setting, are found different in two languages. The bilinguals' difficulty patterns in English and Korean, however, show deviation from monolinguals' difficulty patterns suggested in previous studies (Wason in Br J Psychol 52:133-142, 1961, Akiyama in Dev Psychol 20:219-228, 1984, Kim in Dev Psychol 21(3):462-472, 1985, Choi in Dev Psychol 29(3):407-420, 1991). The present work also shows that negatives are not uniformly reported with more errors than affirmatives when the truth condition and the answering system are further involved. All in all, the current study suggests that bilingual children have two separate processing systems for yes-no truth-functional questions. However, the two systems cannot be understood as a simple coexistence of two monolingual systems. Interaction of the two competing linguistic systems is discussed further.

Truth table task: Working memory load, latencies, and perceived relevance

The aim of the present study is to uncover the relation between cognitive ability and the answer patterns yielded by the truth table task. According to the Classical Mental Models Theory, people with high working memory capacity answer according to two-valued or “logical” answer patterns. The Suppositional Theory and the Revised Mental Models Theory predict that the answer patterns given by the most intelligent ones are three-valued or “defective”. Correlations are examined, and in three experiments it is tested with a dual task paradigm whether a differential working memory load alters participants' answer patterns. A positive correlation is observed between cognitive ability and three-valued answer patterns, but no effect of the working memory load manipulation is revealed. With an inspection of the classification times we shed light on the processes underlying truth table judgements. We conclude that the Revised Mental Models Theory provides the best account for our results.

E‐testing in anatomical teaching

In modern curricula on the one hand the time frame for anatomy teaching is progressively reduced, and on the other hand the successful integration with clinical applications must be confirmed. Taking into account the high number of 720 students/year at the Medical University of Vienna, and the parallel education of second‐ and third‐year students, more than 4000 individual assessments have to be plannend, held and evaluated each term. For this reasons and in order to avoid biases by different examiners, two e‐testing modalities were implemented. In settings where students have no access to individual PCs (e.g. in the dissection halls), auditory response systems were employed, whereas assessments held in a PC‐room used the moodle Course Management System. In both cases most of the questions were image‐based multiple choice questions. Due to the information about their grades immediately after the assessment, the equal level of difficulty for all students, and the chance to instantly clear up misunderstandings, the students’ compliance was continously encouraging during the past four years. Both types are technically mature and – once an adequate question library is established – cost‐ and time‐saving. Immediate statistical analyses of answer patterns provide teachers with valuable, objective feedback and enable teachers to rapidly accommodate contents and objectives to the students actual level of competence.

다중선택 시험에서 부정행위자 발견을 위한 새로운 통계적 측도

It is important to construct a firm basis for accusing potential violators of academic integrity in order to avoid spurious accusations and false convictions. Educational researchers have developed many statistical methods that can either uncover or confirm cases of cheating on tests. However, most of them rely on simple correlation-based measures, and often fail to account for patterns in responses or answers. In this paper, we propose a new statistical index denoted by a Standardized Signed Entropy Similarity Score to resolve this difficulty. In addition, we apply the proposed method to analyze a real data set and compare the results to other existing methods.

Methodological Issues in a Survey of Children's Online Risk-Taking and Other Behaviours in Europe

Survey researchers confront a variety of problems when interviewing children and these are compounded when the research includes thousands of children across multiple countries. This article analyses some of the pre-testing and cognitive interview data in the EU Kids Online study for the difficulties children had in answering questions related to risk, patterns of answers to the final questionnaire provided by the children, and the evidence for providing socially desirable answers to questions related to risk and sensitive information. The format of the administration of the survey in the field was also examined. Age, but not gender, differences were found in understanding, response rates, levels of completion for an open-ended question, and in social desirability influences on answers. The format of administration (CAPI versus PAPI) made no difference in responses to sensitive or risk behaviour-related questions, but the presence of others in the room was related to less socially desirable responses. The research contributes to the methodological considerations of survey research with children.