Individual Characteristics Of Participants Research Articles

Anxiety in Children submitted to Dental Appointment

Objective: To determine anxiety in children undergoing dental treatment and to evaluate associated factors. Material and Methods: The sample consisted of 48 children during dental appointment in dental clinics of the Franciscano University Center, 48 caregivers, and 46 dentistry students. The modified Venham Picture Test was used to determine anxiety of children during dental appointment, before and after treatment. For determining anxiety related to dental care among caregivers, the modified Corah’s dental anxiety scale was used. The Lipp`s stress symptoms inventory for adults was applied to determine the stress level of dentistry students. In addition, the individual characteristics of participants were recorded to determine their association with the presence of anxiety. Results: Anxiety was observed in 60.4% of children, and it was related to invasive dental procedures (p = 0.021), history of dental pain (p = 0.002), presence of bruxism (p = 0.028), anxious caregivers (p = 0.023), and stress of the dental student that conducted the appointment (p = 0.005). Conclusion: Overall, the majority of pediatric patients showed anxiety, which was directly related to misbehavior during dental care. Moreover, anxiety was related to individual characteristics of children and was influenced by the anxiety level of caregivers, as well as the emotional state of dentistry students during the dental appointment.

Resting heart rate and risk of incident heart failure: three prospective cohort studies and a systematic meta-analysis.

BackgroundThe relationship between resting heart rate (RHR) and incident heart failure (HF) has been questioned.Methods and ResultsRHR was assessed at baseline in 7073 participants in 3 prospective cohorts (Cardiovascular Health Study, Health ABC study and Kuopio Ischemic Heart Disease Study) that recorded 1189 incident HF outcomes during 92 702 person‐years of follow‐up. Mean age of participants was 67 (9.9) years and mean RHR was 64.6 (11.1) bpm. Baseline RHR correlated (P<0.001) positively with body mass index (r=0.10), fasting glucose (r=0.18), and C‐reactive protein (r=0.20); and inversely with serum creatinine (r=−0.05) and albumin (r=−0.05). Baseline RHR was non‐linearly associated with HF risk. The age and sex‐adjusted hazard ratio for HF comparing the top (>72 bpm) versus the bottom (<57 bpm) quartile of baseline RHR was 1.48 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.26 to 1.74) and was modestly attenuated (1.30, 95% CI 1.10 to 1.53) with further adjustment for body mass index, history of diabetes, hypertension, smoking status, serum creatinine, and left ventricular hypertrophy. These findings remained consistent in analyses accounting for incident coronary heart disease, excluding individuals with prior cardiovascular events, or those taking beta‐blockers; and in subgroups defined by several individual participant characteristics. In a pooled random effects meta‐analysis of 7 population‐based studies (43 051 participants and 3476 HF events), the overall hazard ratio comparing top versus bottom fourth of RHR was 1.40 (95% CI: 1.19 to 1.64).ConclusionsThere is a non‐linear association between RHR and incident HF. Further research is needed to understand the physiologic foundations of this association.

Baseline participant characteristics and risk for dropout from ten obesity randomized controlled trials: a pooled analysis of individual level data.

Introduction: Understanding participant demographic characteristics that inform the optimal design of obesity randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been examined in few studies. The objective of this study was to investigate the association of individual participant characteristics and dropout rates (DORs) in obesity RCTs by pooling data from several publicly available datasets for analyses. We comprehensively characterize DORs and patterns in obesity RCTs at the individual study level, and describe how such rates and patterns vary as a function of individual level characteristics.Methods: We obtained and analyzed nine publicly available, obesity RCT datasets that examined weight loss or weight gain prevention as a primary or secondary endpoint. Four risk factors for dropout were examined by Cox proportional hazards including sex, age, baseline BMI, and race/ethnicity. The individual study data were pooled in the final analyses with a random effect for study, and HR and 95% CIs were computed.Results: Results of the multivariate analysis indicated that the risk of dropout was significantly higher for females compared to males (HR = 1.24, 95% CI = 1.05, 1.46). Hispanics and Non-Hispanic blacks had a significantly higher dropout rate compared to non-Hispanic whites (HR = 1.62, 95% CI = 1.37, 1.91; HR = 1.22, 95% CI = 1.11, 1.35, respectively). There was a significantly increased risk of dropout associated with advancing age (HR = 1.02, 95% CI = 1.01, 1.02) and increasing BMI (HR = 1.03, 95% CI = 1.03, 1.04).Conclusion/Significance: As more studies may focus on special populations, researchers designing obesity RCTs may wish to oversample in certain demographic groups if attempting to match comparison groups based on generalized estimates of expected DORs, or otherwise adjust a priori power estimates. Understanding true reasons for dropout may require additional methods of data gathering not generally employed in obesity RCTs, e.g., time on treatment.

Characteristics of Individuals Associated with Involvement in Different Types of Marriage Preparation Interventions

As evidence of the benefits of marriage preparation continues to mount, so does the importance of investigating the characteristics of the interventions that are most helpful and for whom. Currently, more emphasis is paid to assessing program outcomes in marriage than to systematically determining the characteristics of the audience (DeMaria, 2005). Understanding the characteristics of a target audience is critical to the development of targeted programs (Hawkins, Carroll, Doherty, & Willoughby, 2004), marketing the programs to those who need them, and ensuring that the resulting programs are relevant and based on identified needs of the audience (Duncan & Goddard, 2011).Recent research has shed additional light on the individual, couple, and contextual characteristics of the audience predictive of involvement in marriage preparation in general, from an ecosystemic-developmental perspective (Duncan, Holman, & Yang, 2007). Recent marriage intervention scholarship has emphasized the importance of tailoring interventions to the needs of clientele (Larson & Halford, 2011) rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all approach. Carroll and Doherty (2003) suggested that a variety of education formats may be equally effective (p. 115). Duncan, Childs, and Larson (2010) verified that a variety of interventions receiving attention in the published literature (i.e., for-credit college classes, community workshops, premarital counseling, and self-directed approaches; see Duncan et al., 2010, for full description) are seen by marriage preparation participants as helpful and change producing.These studies have set the stage for further inquiry into what factors precipitate selection of different types of marriage preparation interventions. Currently, we know little about the individual, couple, and context characteristics of participants who select which interventions and how helpful and change producing they are for what kind of clientele. For example, are persons with certain individual characteristics more likely to select one intervention over another? Is there a better fit of interventions, in terms of perceived (for marketing and recruitment) and actual (in terms of outcomes) helpfulness and benefit, for persons with select individual personality and emotional health characteristics?This study focuses on the first question and seeks to uncover characteristics of individuals associated with the selection of specific marriage preparation interventions. Findings from this study should be helpful to marriage preparation practitioners seeking to attract a wider range of participation and create interventions more closely tailored to the needs of participants.Conceptual FrameworkThe conceptual framework guiding this study is based on the summary of over 50 years of research on premarital predictors of marital quality authored by Busby, Holman, and Taniguchi (2001). These authors suggested that this research can best be understood from an ecosystemic developmental perspective. This perspective suggests that the premarital predictors of later marital quality can be organized into a model comprising individual contexts, couple contexts, family background contexts, and sociocultural contexts. Although numerous contexts could be assessed and used to predict involvement in various forms of marriage preparation, this model identifies the most important contexts for premarital and marital relationships (Holman, 2001).The focus of this study is on the individual context. The individual context comprises inherent individual characteristics (e.g., age, gender), personality traits and emotional health (e.g.,, kindness, neuroticism), and beliefs and attitudes (e.g.,, beliefs about marriage and family life, gender roles). These characteristics can present assets or liabilities to a relationship. For example, though the personal assets of flexibility and kindness predict marital satisfaction, unmanaged depression and anxiety predict marital troubles (Busby et al. …

Differentiating Ideals versus Practices in the Discussion of Confucian Influences on Chinese Parent–Child Relationships

The primary purpose of this essay is to call for a renewed understanding of Confucianism in the discussion of Chinese parent-child relationships. Citing historical evidence, we present the evolution of Confucianism as a school of thought in China. In addition, we present research on Chinese parent–child relationships, which to a varying degree are said to be associated with Confucian influences, in contemporary Chinese communities. By comparing Confucian ideals versus practices in the name of Confucianism, we conclude that Confucianism has been through transformations throughout history and its influences on Chinese parent–child relationships are intertwined with practical needs of the specific historical time and social context. In addition, we suggest focusing on social class variability in the study of Confucian influences represented in parent–child relationships. To conclude, it is important to study the actual beliefs and practices of families, taking into consideration to specific historical time, social contexts, as well as individual circumstances and characteristics of participants.

Does poor spelling equate to slow reading? The relationship between reading, spelling, and orthographic quality

High quality lexical representations in memory, characterized by accuracy and stability, are said to underpin fluent reading. Here, the relationship between orthographic quality and reading speed was examined by asking undergraduates (N = 74) to repeatedly read and spell words. Spelling performance over five trials indicated orthographic quality. Single word reading speed was measured using E-Prime technology. A within-participant repeated measures analysis revealed that words which participants spelled consistently accurately, were read faster than words which were misspelled. This pattern also held in a within-word analysis; the same words were read faster by individuals who always spelled them correctly, compared to those who did not. Further, it was found that when words were spelled using the same incorrect letter patterns across trials (i.e., in the same erroneous way), they were read faster than when they had an incorrect but less stable representation (i.e., inconsistent spelling across trials). Hence, the difference in reading speed appears to be a function of both the accuracy and stability of the orthographic representations stored in memory, rather than due to characteristics of individual participants or words. These results lend support for a central role of lexical quality in both spelling and reading, and are discussed with reference to the lexical quality hypothesis.

Limits to the construction of a community-based open innovation network and implications for specialisation of a small urban area

The article studies an ICT collaborative project developed in the framework of the regional innovation policy of the PACA region, France. It seeks to gain a better understanding of the evolution of a community-based open innovation network shaped during the project implementation. Conditions for its emergence, construction and stabilisation are discussed from theoretical and practical viewpoints, including governance design and leadership characteristics as well as factors determining collaboration (IPR, timespan and individual characteristics of participants). Community animation style is highlighted as an important ingredient for emergence of innovative ideas from the cognitive resources of the territory, to favour smart specialisation. A longitudinal and qualitative method of observation is used, covering the period from the emergence of the project until its administrative end, with follow-up of emerged innovative enterprises. A participative research approach is adopted to collect diverse data (minutes of meeting, working documents, etc.) and to conduct interviews during the project.

Reducing time-to-treatment in underserved Latinas with breast cancer: the Six Cities Study.

The interaction of clinical and patient-level challenges following a breast cancer diagnosis can be a significant source of health care disparities. Failure to address specific cultural features that create or exacerbate barriers can lead to less-than optimal navigation results, specifically in Hispanic/Latino women. To address these disparities, the study leaders in San Antonio, Texas, and 5 other regional partners of the federally-funded Redes En Acción: The National Latino Cancer Research Network developed a culturally-tailored patient navigation intervention model for Latinas with breast cancer. Compared with control patients, a higher percentage of navigated subjects initiated treatment within 30 days (69.0% versus 46.3%, P = .029) and 60 days (97.6% versus 73.1%, P = .001) following their cancer diagnosis. Time from cancer diagnosis to first treatment was lower in the navigated group (mean, 22.22 days; median, 23.00 days) than controls (mean, 48.30 days; median, 33.00 days). These results were independent of cancer stage at diagnosis and numerous characteristics of cancer clinics and individual participants. Successful application of patient navigation increased the percentage of Latinas initiating breast cancer treatment within 30 and 60 days of diagnosis. This was achieved through navigator provision of services such as accompaniment to appointments, transportation arrangements, patient telephone support, patient-family telephone support, Spanish-English language translation, and assistance with insurance paperwork.

Analysis of Simulator Sickness in IVE by PCA

Virtual environment persuaded users feeling similar within the real world. Unfortunately, it also induces simulator sickness for some users. Kennedy and Fowlkes state that the prevalence of sickness symptoms in simulator users ranges from 20% in the “best” simulator to 60% in the “worst” [1]. The impact of influential factors on virtual reality-induced symptoms and effects are virtual reality system, virtual environment, and individual participant characteristics [2]. There are researches published the sickness related as the older participants had a greater likelihood of simulator sickness than younger participants [3], subjects exhibited more postural disturbance with increasing field-of-view [4], parallax and number of display screens effect to simulator sickness [5]. Even though several factors effect to simulator sickness but they are not present what is the most important factor of sickness. Therefore, main purpose of this paper is to analyze simulator sickness results for specify the important influential factors of sickness, then proposal for safety immersive virtual environment.

Listening between the lines

This paper investigates the effect of listener attitudes on the ability to understand a foreign (non-Australian) accent. The research focuses on individual listener characteristics, such as attitude and frequency of contact with accented speakers, rather than speech production. Data was collected through a web-based survey and analysis employed both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Correlation was found between a negative attitude toward other ethnicities and ability to correctly transcribe foreign-accented speech, with a stronger correlation between a negative attitude and comprehensibility. Qualitative analysis of participant comments highlighted discrepancies in attitude testing methods and indicated that an accent can inspire many assumptions, the most common being that foreign-accented speakers have a lower level of education than Australian-accented speakers. The results suggest that future research in this area should always try to account for individual participant characteristics.

Special Diabetes Program for Indians: Retention in Cardiovascular Risk Reduction

This study examined the associations between participant and site characteristics and retention in a multisite cardiovascular disease risk reduction project. Data were derived from the Special Diabetes Program for Indians Healthy Heart Demonstration Project, an intervention to reduce cardiovascular risk among American Indians and Alaska Natives with diabetes. In 2006, a total of 1,072 participants from 30 participating sites completed baseline questionnaires measuring demographics and sociobehavioral factors. They also underwent a medical examination at baseline and were reassessed annually after baseline. A Provider Annual Questionnaire was administered to staff members of each grantee site at the end of each year to assess site characteristics. Generalized estimating equation models were used to evaluate the relationships between participant and site characteristics and retention 1 year after baseline. Among enrolled participants, 792 (74%) completed their first annual assessment. Participants who completed the first annual assessment tended to be older and had, at baseline, higher body mass index and higher level of physical activity. Site characteristics associated with retention included average age of staff, proportion of female staff members, and percentage of staff members having completed graduate or professional school. Understanding successful retention must reach beyond individual characteristics of participants to include features of the settings that house the interventions.

Individual differences methods for randomized experiments.

Experiments allow researchers to randomly vary the key manipulation, the instruments of measurement, and the sequences of the measurements and manipulations across participants. To date, however, the advantages of randomized experiments to manipulate both the aspects of interest and the aspects that threaten internal validity have been primarily used to make inferences about the average causal effect of the experimental manipulation. This article introduces a general framework for analyzing experimental data to make inferences about individual differences in causal effects. Approaches to analyzing the data produced by a number of classical designs and 2 more novel designs are discussed. Simulations highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the data produced by each design with respect to internal validity. Results indicate that, although the data produced by standard designs can be used to produce accurate estimates of average causal effects of experimental manipulations, more elaborate designs are often necessary for accurate inferences with respect to individual differences in causal effects. The methods described here can be diversely applied by researchers interested in determining the extent to which individuals respond differentially to an experimental manipulation or treatment and how differential responsiveness relates to individual participant characteristics.

“Fitness for duty”: Social, organisational and structural influences on the design and conduct of candidate hepatitis C vaccine trials involving people who inject drugs

Several candidate vaccines for hepatitis C are currently in preclinical development or the early stages of clinical trials. Implementing trials of these vaccines among people who inject drugs will be challenging. Previous research, particularly willingness to participate studies in relation to HIV vaccines in marginalized groups, has focused on the modifiable characteristics of individual participants. This qualitative research with people who inject drugs, health staff and clinicians focuses on social, organisational and structural elements of vaccine trial designs which may exclude or reduce the participation of people who inject drugs.

Methodological issues in a cluster-randomized trial to prevent dementia by intensive vascular care.

Description of methodological issues in a trial designed to evaluate if a multi-component intervention aimed at vascular risk factors can prevent dementia. Multi-center, open, cluster-randomized controlled clinical trial (preDIVA) including 3535 non-demented subjects aged 70-78, executed in primary practice and coordinated from one academic hospital. General practices are randomized to standard care or intensive vascular care. Vascular care consists of 4-monthly visits to a practice nurse who monitors all cardiovascular risk factors. Hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, overweight, lack of physical exercise and diabetes are strictly controlled according to a protocol and treated in a way, tailored to the characteristics of individual participants. Primary outcomes are incident dementia and disability; secondary outcomes are mortality, vascular events (stroke, myocardial infarction, peripheral vascular disease), cognitive decline and depression. Between May 2006 and February 2009, 3535 subjects from 115 general practices have been included. The clusters have an average size of 31 (SD 22, range 2-114). 1658 Patients from 52 practices were randomized to the standard care condition and 1877 patients in 63 practices to the vascular care condition. When designing a cluster-randomized trial, clustering of patient data within GP practices leads to a loss of power. This should be adjusted for in the power calculation. Since intensive vascular care will probably lead to a reduction in cardiovascular mortality, the competing risks of mortality and dementia should be taken into account.

The Effects of Choice Making on Toy Engagement in Nonambulatory and Partially Ambulatory Preschool Students

This study evaluated the effects of an experimenter-delivered choice-making procedure. Three nonambulatory and partially ambulatory preschoolers were given access to six teacher-nominated preferred toys in two conditions: child choice and interventionist choice. Using an alternating treatment design and a 10-second momentary time-sampling procedure, results showed that children were comparably engaged with the toys in both conditions. Results are discussed in terms of implementing choice procedures with very young children with severe disabilities. Suggestions for further study of the effects of choice using comprehensive preference assessment strategies and considerations of individual participant characteristics are discussed.

Conversational script performance in adults with non‐fluent aphasia: Treatment intensity and aphasia severity

Background: A growing body of research in aphasia treatment has indicated that greater amount and intensity of treatment is associated with better outcomes in individuals with chronic aphasia. AphasiaScriptsTM is a computerised conversational script training program that simultaneously collects accurate, reliable data about amount and intensity of treatment. Aims: The purpose of this study was first to investigate the relationship between amount of treatment and improvement on conversational script performance in persons with chronic non‐fluent aphasia, and second to investigate the influence of severity of language impairment on this relationship. Methods & Procedures: We collected computer‐generated treatment data from 17 participants with chronic non‐fluent aphasia during the 9‐week AphasiaScriptsTM treatment protocol. Participants practised three individualised conversational scripts for 3 weeks each. We computed two measures of outcome performance: percent change in script content (script‐related words) and percent change in rate (script‐related words per minute). Outcomes & Results: Amount of treatment varied greatly, from 1.9 to 16.9 hours per week. Amount of treatment was significantly correlated with percent change in script content (r = .67, p<.01) and rate (r = .53, p<.05), after an outlier was removed from the analyses. Severity of aphasia, measured by the Western Aphasia Battery Aphasia Quotient (WAB AQ), was negatively correlated with amount of treatment. When the sample was divided into two severity groups based on WAB AQ scores, amount of treatment was significantly correlated with improvement in content in participants with more severe aphasia, and significantly correlated with improvement in rate in participants with less severe aphasia. Conclusions: Results are consistent with previous studies that support the relationship between aphasia treatment intensity and outcomes. Severity of aphasia and individual participants' characteristics also impact the relationship between intensity and improvement. Individual participants' treatment trends and characteristics of participants who benefit the most from conversational script training are discussed.

The Influence of Collaboration on Program Outcomes

Though collaboration is often required in community initiatives, little evidence documents relationships between collaboration and program success. The authors contend that clarification of the construct collaboration is necessary for investigating its contribution to the success of community initiatives. After respecifying collaboration, they present a study of a multisite program that involved varying degrees of collaboration in the 16 communities adopting a nurse home visitation program. The authors employ hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to test the predictive power of individual participant characteristics and examine the increased accuracy of predictions from a second level model of site qualities--specifically, features of the collaborative process associated with different sites. The first-level model predicted approximately 10% of the variance in attrition, or dropout, of program clients. The second-level model accounted for an additional 28% of the variance in attrition. A theory of commitment transfer is offered as a first explanation of this result.

An experimental study of the influence of individual participant characteristics on formal consensus development

The aim of this study was to examine the influence of participants' characteristics on the results produced by formal consensus methods. The approach was an experimental study of 346 participants in 20 groups rating the appropriateness of four mental health interventions for the treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, and chronic back pain. There were four factors in the design: systematic literature review provided or not, decisions made under realistic or "ideal" resource assumptions, clinically mixed (general practitioners and mental health professionals) or homogenous group (general practitioners only), convened or mail-only group. A group's rating was defined as the median of participants' ratings. The influence of participants' characteristics (age, sex, and specialty) was examined using multilevel models. The largest differences were between the GPs and mental health professionals, both in their initial ratings of the different interventions, and in how much they altered their ratings between rounds. There were smaller but statistically significant (p<.05) differences between specialty and age groups in initial ratings for the treatment (by whatever means) of different conditions, and for certain conditions women increased their ratings more than men. Women rated intervention more favorably when assuming "ideal" rather than realistic levels of resources, but men did not. Our findings support the practice of treating professional specialty as an important determinant of the results in consensus panels.

A systematic review of factors affecting the judgments produced by formal consensus development methods in health care

Formal consensus development methods are ways of obtaining and synthesising views of experts, opinion leaders and other stakeholders, and are increasingly being used to develop clinical practice guidelines. Our objective was to examine the impact that the characteristics of individual participants, groups and the consensus process have on the judgments produced by formal consensus development methods in health care. Studies were identified from an earlier methodological review and a search of five bibliographic databases for the period January 1996 to December 2004. Studies were eligible if they involved formal consensus development methods and reported differences in judgments between groups or participants. For studies comparing two or more groups overall percentage agreement, the kappa coefficient and the odds ratio for differences in judgments were calculated. There were 22 studies comparing the impact of the characteristics of individual participants within groups and 30 studies comparing the results produced by two or more groups. Practitioners who perform a procedure tend to emphasise the appropriateness of the procedure compared with non-performing practitioners, and individuals from groups that were subject to performance criteria are more critical of those criteria than individuals from other groups. There was no clear pattern for the differences in judgments produced by participants and groups from different countries. Except for participant specialty there is little general evidence for how the characteristics of participants and groups influence the judgments produced in formal consensus development methods. Multi-specialty groups are preferable to single-specialty groups because of their potential for taking account of a wider range of opinions.

Language and Auditory Processing Changes Following Fast ForWord

This study examined changes in performance of 8 Australian children with language impairments of varying severity and presentation and/or auditory processing difficulties on standardised measures of language and auditory processing pre- and post-Fast ForWord (FFWD) training. In addition, performance changes on four measures of auditory processing were tracked using a single-subject ABA design. Increases in receptive and expressive language scores were observed. All participants showed at least one area of improvement on standardised tests of auditory discrimination for speech. Of those who produced interpretable results on standardised tests of shortterm auditory memory, 1 participant in 6 improved on Digit Span and 3 in 7 showed variable improvement on Memory for Sentences. Over half of the auditory processing gains remained evident after four weeks. One third of these gains were evident after 12 months. Characteristics of individual participants partially contributed to the identification of patterns of performance in the area of language. The findings are discussed in light of extraneous influences and recommendations for future research are offered.