Identification Of Data Sources Research Articles

Prevalence of group A streptococcal disease in North and Sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review protocol

IntroductionThe true burden of group A streptococcal (GAS) disease in Africa is not known. GAS is a significant cause of mortality and morbidity on the global scale and in developing...

The prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus among older people in Africa: a systematic review study protocol

IntroductionThe number of people with diabetes in Africa is projected to increase substantially in the next two decades, due to factors including rapid urbanisation, adoption of unhealthy diets and exercise...

The role of technology in intelligence practice: linking the developer and the user perspectives

Technology has penetrated the social fabric of security practices so deeply that it is often used without much reflection on its role, significance and implications. This naturalisation of technology makes it difficult for practitioners to develop their own vision of technology. They may become subject to the coercive power of technology, and appropriate the narrow technological paradigm embodied in their tools. This, in turn, makes it difficult for technology developers to understand practitioner needs and to assess the transformative potential of technology. This paper aims to develop a conceptual framework for understanding the role of technology in intelligence. The focus is on the technological capabilities supporting an analysis of sociocultural processes related to so‐called ‘new threats’. The two main problems in intelligence nowadays are deciding what data are relevant and how they should be analysed. The major issue is not the collection of information, but turning information into knowledge and action. Accordingly, the practitioner thinking about technological tools can be usefully informed by the concept of technology as a mediator between areas of knowledge production and consumption. This concept highlights technology’s ability to affect intelligence analysts’ understanding of threats, identification of data sources and information gaps, and their interaction with colleagues and consumers of intelligence products.

Wisconsin Traffic Operations

In July 2006, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) initiated a Traffic Operations Corridor Sketch-Planning project with the goal of developing a methodology and associated tool that would enable the Bureau of Highway Operations (BHO) to evaluate operational projects in the same manner as traditional infrastructure projects, as well as to integrate operations into the WisDOT planning process. A sketch-planning methodology was developed to achieve these goals with the use of data to drive operations technology recommendations for the WisDOT 2030 multimodal corridor network. This project has resulted in a unique process by which an entire statewide network can be analyzed in terms of operational requirements. These requirements are developed by using not only traditional planning metrics such as safety and traffic volumes and patterns but also operational aspects such as the impacts that special events and weather have on the transportation system. By providing a structured operations data set for integration in long-range planning, the WisDOT BHO has enabled operations strategies to complement, rather than compete with, physical highway improvements. Operations strategies can be a contributing part of the long-range vision for the state through a series of recommendations that are logical and data-driven, as well as communicable and understandable. This report covers the identification of data sources, the development of criteria, the identification of critical thresholds, and the results of the sketch-planning methodology, along with a description of how sketch-planning results are translated into a finalized statewide operations plan.

Finding and estimating chemical property data for environmental assessment

The ability to predict the behavior of a chemical substance in a biological or environmental system largely depends on knowledge of the physicochemical properties and reactivity of that substance. We focus here on properties, with the objective of providing practical guidance for finding measured values and using estimation methods when necessary. Because currently available computer software often makes it more convenient to estimate than to retrieve measured values, we try to discourage irrational exuberance for these tools by including comprehensive lists of Internet and hard-copy data resources. Guidance for assessors is presented in the form of a process to obtain data that includes establishment of chemical identity, identification of data sources, assessment of accuracy and reliability, substructure searching for analogs when experimental data are unavailable, and estimation from chemical structure. Regarding property estimation, we cover estimation from close structural analogs in addition to broadly applicable methods requiring only the chemical structure. For the latter, we list and briefly discuss the most widely used methods. Concluding thoughts are offered concerning appropriate directions for future work on estimation methods, again with an emphasis on practical applications.

Developing evidence-based clinical indicators: a state of the art methods primer.

To describe steps in developing and testing clinical indicators based on state of the art methods in previous literature and experience in the Danish National Indicator Project. The development process includes a planning phase, where the clinical area to be evaluated is chosen and the measurement team selected and organized. The planning phase is followed by a development phase where clinical indicators are prioritized and selected by the measurement team on the basis of documentation and knowledge from the scientific literature. When clinical indicators have been selected, specific measure specifications should be designed, including inclusion and exclusion criteria for the target population, description of a risk adjustment strategy, identification of data sources, description of data collection procedures, and an analytical plan for data analyses. Before clinical indicators are implemented they should be tested for reliability and validity. Preliminary tests may identify areas requiring further modifications and specifications of the indicators. Using clinical indicators for quality assessment represents an important approach to documenting the quality of care. Consumers of indicator information (clinicians, administrators, purchasers, regulators, and patients) need reliable and valid information for benchmarking, making judgments, and determining priorities, accountability and quality improvement. This underlines the fact that clinical indicators must be developed and tested with scientific rigor in a transparent process.

Utilising the Information in Security Prices Within Strategic Management Accounting

A key element in the development of management accounting information systems is the identification of data sources from which strategically relevant information can be obtained. The argument forwarded in this paper is that the information content of security prices is a rich, relatively unbiased, timely and easily accessible data source which has a potentially fruitful role within the realm of strategic management accounting. The central aim of the present work is to encourage inter-disciplinary research on the potential of this information source for activities such as environmental scanning, budgeting/planning and competitor analysis.

Occupational Mobility and Historical Social Structure

Historical social mobility research has played an important part in the coming-of-age of “the new social history” as an active arena for empirical social research. The contribution of this social mobility research tradition can be traced in part to its success in providing three critical elements that lie at the heart of most coherent social science research traditions. These critical elements include the following: 1) the identification of important substantive questions that are susceptible to empirical analysis; 2) the identification of data sources that can provide empirical information relevant to these questions, and 3) the provision of a set of methodological operations and research practices that link substantive questions to the results of empirical analysis. The importance of Thernstrom’s (1964, 1973) landmark works on historical mobility in providing these fundamental elements is reflected in the widespread adoption of his research design by subsequent empirical studies of occupational mobility in historical settings.

The political and administrative context of primary health care in the Third World.

Despite increasing knowledge about technical aspects of Primary Health Care (PHC), there has been as yet only limited research into political and administrative influences on the effectiveness of PHC programs. A three-stage model of the policy process is developed as a framework for organizing the relationships between elements of (1) the national political setting and PHC policy formulation; (2) the implementing agency and program administration; and (3) the community setting and service delivery. Drawing upon the literature on PHC and related programs, hypotheses are proposed for each of these stages as a basis for future study and practical application. Possible output indicators are suggested for each stage of the model. Several basic methodological issues must be addressed in the design of empirical research on political-administrative factors, including variable selection, identification of data sources, and choice of analytical approach. It is hoped that this review will encourage more systematic investigation in this area.