Methodological Issues In Analysis Research Articles

Methodological Issues in Analyzing Small Populations Using CCHS Cycles Based on the Official Language Minority Studies

Statistical analyses for small populations or small domains of interest can be challenging. To obtain reliable estimates, only very large surveys such as the Canadian Community Health Survey can be considered. However, despite its good geographical and temporal coverage, the analysis of small populations in smaller regions (e.g., health regions) and in regards to specific health issues remains challenging. We will look at the methodological issues in analysis of small populations in relation to sampling and non-sampling survey errors that affect the precision and accuracy of the estimates. Francophone minorities in Canada will be used to illustrate the issues throughout the paper.

The 1993 Survey of Recent Mothers: issues in survey design, analysis and influencing policy.

The 1993 Survey of Recent Mothers was a statewide postal survey of 2224 women who gave birth in Victoria in 2 weeks in 1993, excepting those who had a stillbirth or whose baby was known to have died. The survey questionnaire was mailed to women 6-7 months after the birth. The response rate, excluding duplicate responses, one woman who had a stillbirth and those whose questionnaires were returned unknown at the mailing address, was 62.5% (1336/2138). The questionnaire covered care in pregnancy, birth and the first 6 months. In each section, women were asked to give an overall rating of care, and to answer questions on specific aspects of care. Closed and open-ended questions were included. The paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the study design, the processes used for developing the questionnaire, methodological issues in analysis using both quantitative and qualitative methods, and relevance of the study to policy.

Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Analysis of Density-Dependent Legitimation in Organizational Evolution

geometric treatment of the niche. He defined the fundamental niche of a population as the hypervolume formed by the set of points for which the population's growth rate (fitness) is nonnegative. In other words, the fundamental niche consists of the set of all environmental conditions in which the population can grow or at least sustain its numbers. By extension, the fundamental niche of an organizational form consists of the social, economic, and political conditions required to sustain the functioning of organizations that embody the form. The geometric conception of the niche facilitates definition of the intersection of fundamental niches of pairs of populations. If two populations rely on completely different kinds of resources and depend on different kinds of social and political institutions, then their fundamental niches do not intersect. Otherwise, they do intersect, and it makes sense to measure their similarity in terms of the degree of intersection (or overlap, when only one or two environmental dimensions are considered). The concept of intersection of fundamental niches leads naturally to a definition of potential competition: The potential for two populations to compete is proportional to the intersection of their fundamental niches. (This is potential competition because the populations must exist in the same systems to actually compete.) It follows that two populations compete if and only if their fundamental niches intersect. The implied equivalence of niche intersection and competition has played a crucial role in allowing ecologists to relate naturalistic observations on realized niches to dynamic models of population growth and expansion. Hannan and Freeman (1977, 1989) argue that such equivalence can play a similarly central role in empirical analysis and theoretical analysis of organizational dynamics. When populations with intersecting fundamental niches inhabit the same system, potential competition is converted into actual competition. Under such conditions, the expansion of one population changes the conditions of existence of the others. In the case of competition, the presence of the competitor reduces the set (range) of environments in which the other populations can sustain themselves. Hutchinson coined the term realized niche to denote the restricted set of environments in which growth rates are positive in the presence of competitors (a subset of the fundamental niche). Except in the highly unusual case in which a population exists in isolation This content downloaded from 157.55.39.176 on Sat, 09 Apr 2016 06:40:26 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Surrogate measures of dietary intake

In studying health and disease in elderly subjects, information may be needed concerning current or past dietary intake. Regardless of whether emphasis is placed on current or past intake, the validity of self-reported dietary information probably diminishes with increasing respondent age. In studying diet in elderly subjects, obtaining information from surrogate sources may improve data quality and provide information otherwise unavailable for decreased or incompetent subjects. This review addresses availability of data from surrogates, validity of surrogate responses, and methodological issues in analysis of surrogate data. This literature review documents that surrogate respondents can provide dietary information, but the data on elderly persons are extremely limited. The literature also indicates that surrogate dietary data may introduce misclassification in analytical investigations, but that surrogate data may be useful in descriptive studies. Methodological studies on surrogate reporting should facilitate research on diet and disease in elderly subjects.