Methodological Issues Research Articles

Self-Esteem in Adults With ADHD Using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale: A Systematic Review

Objective: To summarize and analyze recent articles investigating self-esteem in adults with ADHD, focusing on the impact of demographic and clinical characteristics, and methodological issues. Method: Following PRISMA guidelines, a systematic search for literature published between 2010 and 2022 was conducted in the Web of Science, Ovid, Pubmed, and EBSCO databases. Results: Eleven studies met inclusion criteria. Five of the six studies including healthy controls reported lower self-esteem in participants with ADHD. ADHD symptoms correlated negatively with self-esteem. Gender differences were not observed. Self-esteem mediated several outcomes associated with ADHD. There was a lack of studies that examined potential mechanisms behind the reduced self-esteem, and studies controlling for confounding variables. Conclusion: A robust association between ADHD and low self-esteem in adults emerged, but the lack of control of confounding variables is critical to consider when interpreting the findings. Longitudinal studies addressing the limitations of the current studies are needed.

Historical Musicology and Digital Archives in Portugal: possibilities and challenges. The musical archives from the Monastery of Arouca and the Casa de Bragança Library-Museum: some methodological issues about the construction of a digital archive

O relevo da tecnologia digital nas Humanidades não precisa de ser sublinhado, tão vastas se revelam as possibilidades trazidas pelas ferramentas digitais na conservação, no processamento e no acesso em larga escala às mais variadas fontes de informação. Também na Musicologia Histórica se tem feito sentir de modo profundo o impacto do mundo digital, particularmente visível na multiplicação de bases de dados, seja na catalogação de repertórios específicos ou fundos documentais localizados, seja mesmo com a incorporação de recursos relacionados com a codificação da notação musical. No processo de construção das plataformas para a catalogação das fontes musicais, as questões metodológicas são fulcrais, de modo a que os dados acumulados permitam distintos níveis de utilização e produção acrescida de conhecimento, potenciando a interoperacionalidade entre sistemas digitais. A diversidade das fontes consideradas (nos planos temporal, do suporte material, dos conteúdos, da destinação, da conservação, etc.) suscita dificuldades. A isto acresce, por outro lado, a multidisciplinaridade envolvida na descrição destes materiais, englobando várias áreas de especialidade: musicologia, paleografia, codicologia, liturgia, história da arte, entre outras. São ainda escassos, todavia, os estudos sobre a catalogação de fontes musicais, faltando critérios normalizados, sejam eles de cariz musicológico, bibliográfico ou arquivístico. Este artigo considera, como estudos de caso, dois arquivos digitais de fundos musicais: “Acervo histórico do Mosteiro de Arouca – Catálogo” e o “Catálogo do Arquivo Musical do Museu-Biblioteca da Casa de Bragança”, procurando apresentar algumas das coordenadas metodológicas que têm orientado a construção destas bases.

Life cycle assessment of citrus tree nurseries in Uruguay: Are their environmental impacts relevant?

Perennial fruit production at the commercial scale, such as citrus fruits, begins with seedling production in a nursery. This stage lasts several months and involves different phases and the use of substrates and infrastructure. As the seedling does not produce fruit but does consume inputs, studying the environmental impacts associated with this stage becomes relevant, especially to understand its contribution to the total impact of the crop cycle. Despite the global relevance of fruit tree seedlings production, LCA studies in the literature focus on horticultural crop nurseries, and those on perennial tree nurseries do not consider both substrate and structures in the analysis, which is key for this type of crop since the main production system is soilless production in greenhouses. Thus, the main goal of this study is to quantify the environmental impacts related to the production of citrus fruit tree seedlings using LCA, analyse the main production system applied nowadays, and study its relevance with respect to the crop cycle. To this end, a certified Uruguayan citrus nursery was analysed, from which primary data was obtained. As well, methodological issues concerning water consumption and modelling emissions from input applications in soilless greenhouse systems are tackled. Results show that the main hotspots of the nursery stage are infrastructure production and peat transportation, which highlights the relevance of their inclusion when modelling the system. Extending the lifespan of the galvanised steel structures and decreasing substrate transport distances are shown to be effective measures to reduce environmental impacts. The contribution of the nursery stage to the citrus production cycle is negligible for almost all the impact categories assessed except cancer human toxicity, as it accounts for 0–3.6% of the impacts depending on the impact category. Great differences (from 10 to 400 times higher results on average) are observed when comparing the results with those from commercial databases, as they consider open-field nurseries where seedlings are grown in the soil. The need to develop harmonised methods to model water consumption and fertiliser and pesticide emissions for soilless crops in greenhouses arises. The present study presents a complete quantification of the environmental impacts of the main production system of citrus fruit tree seedlings and provides scientific and quantitative evidence of its contribution to the production cycle, helping decision-makers understand where efforts should be focused to achieve a more sustainable fruticulture.

Familism attitudes, behaviors, and adjustment during adolescence

AbstractIn the past two decades in the United States, research has surged on familism, a multidimensional construct encompassing attitudes and behaviors related to strong attachment, identification, and obligation to the family. In this article, we define familism and argue that it is a crucial way for adolescents to contribute to their social world and achieve a sense of role fulfillment. We also present examples from key studies highlighting the advantages and potential challenges of familism for adolescent adjustment. Lastly, we discuss conceptual and methodological issues to advance the study of familism.

Transparency and nudging: an overview and methodological critique of empirical investigations

Abstract Transparency is intimately linked to debates about the ethics, political legitimacy and effectiveness of nudging. This paper provides an overview of empirical studies investigating how changes in the transparency of a nudge affect people's choices and evaluations of the nudge. I conclude that the present literature provides generally consistent evidence supporting that the effectiveness of a nudge does not decrease when choosers are given good opportunity to detect and understand the influence it might have on their choices. However, several conceptual and methodological issues are identified, significantly limiting the scope of the conclusions that can be drawn. The limitations are discussed and organized into six themes, with recommendations provided for how future research may address them.

Apmąstant pasaką: nuo asmenybės iki šiuolaikinės visuomenės etnografiniame tyrime

In Lithuania, research on folktales from an anthropological perspective is a new topic. This article aims broaden the research on traditional folktales. It highlights the methodological issues of ethnographic research of folktales as cultural heritage, and seeks to answer how ethnographic research of folktales could reveal the human phenomenon and the contexts that surround folktales. It examines the primary outcomes of ethnographic fieldwork: attitudes towards tales and perceptions of the tradition of storytelling, the role of context in defining the meaning of a tale, and the individual’s relationship to the tale, reflecting issues of interrelationship, community and identity.

Causal clauses as source of sentential complementation: cross-linguistic evidence and methodological issues

Abstract In many languages, causal clause markers can also function as – or are formally identical to – complement markers (e.g., Bulgarian če, Twi se, or Latin quod). This isomorphism is often explained as the result of independent developments from a common source (interrogatives, relativizers, etc.). By contrast, it is also frequently accepted that in some cases the aforementioned identity originates in a type of structural change by which causal clauses are eventually reanalysed as factive complements. However, the nature of the proposed CAUSE > COMPLEMENT development, involving both semantic adjustments and syntactic integration, is not yet fully understood, and it remains unclear how recurrent this phenomenon might be from a cross-linguistic perspective. This article aims to shed light on these questions by analysing diachronic and cross-linguistic data and assessing some of the evidence given for the development of complementation from causal adverbial clauses. The observations reveal significant documentation gaps for postulated models of the emergence of complement clauses and highlight methodological issues that qualify previous explanations about the diachronic relationship between causal and complement clauses.

TDCS over PPC or DLPFC does not improve visual working memory capacity

Non-invasive brain stimulation has been highlighted as a possible intervention to induce cognitive benefits, including on visual working memory (VWM). However, findings are inconsistent, possibly due to methodological issues. A recent high-profile study by Wang et al.1 reported that anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over posterior parietal cortex (PPC), but not over dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), selectively improved VWM capacity but not precision, especially at a high VWM load. Thus, in the current pre-registered conceptual replication study, we accounted for the key potential methodological issues in the original study and tested an adequate number of participants required to demonstrate the previously reported effects (n = 48 compared to n = 20). Participants underwent counterbalanced PPC, DLPFC and sham stimulation before completing 360 trials of a continuous orientation-reproduction task with a slight variation of task stimuli and setup. We found no evidence for the selective effect of PPC stimulation. Instead, our results showed that tDCS effects were absent regardless of stimulation region and VWM load, which was largely supported by substantial to strong Bayesian evidence. Therefore, our results challenge previously reported benefits of single-session anodal PPC-tDCS on VWM.

The Effects of Type 2 Diabetes on Cognitive Performance: A Review of Reviews.

Multiple systematic reviews have found that type 2 diabetes is associated with cognitive decrements. However, these reviews are heterogeneous in terms of methodology, quality and results, making it difficult for researchers and clinicians to build an informed overall picture. We therefore conducted a review of systematic reviews on the association between type 2 diabetes and cognitive decrements in relation to healthy controls. Following a pre-registered research protocol, we searched four major databases. Nine systematic reviews met our inclusion criteria: seven were meta-analyses and two were narrative syntheses. We assessed the risk of bias in each review and reported all effect sizes and confidence intervals obtained. Type 2 diabetes was associated with cognitive decrements in all reviews, with small or negligible effect sizes obtained in the largest meta-analyses. The most studied cognitive domains were attention, executive functions, memory, processing speed and working memory. All reviews had methodological issues and were rated as having a high or an unclear risk of bias. Type 2 diabetes appears to be associated with lower cognitive performance in several cognitive domains and in different age groups. However, high-quality meta-analyses on the subject are still needed. Future reviews must follow the PRISMA guidelines and take into account the risk of bias of the original studies through sensitivity analyses and the heterogeneity of the studies by conducting subgroup analyses for example according to age group and disease duration. The meta-analyses that aim to study the entire type 2 diabetes population without excluding severe comorbidities, should assess concept formation and reasoning, construction and motor performance, perception, and verbal functions and language skills in addition to the cognitive domains that have been most frequently analysed in the reviews conducted so far.

Design and statistical analysis reporting among interrupted time series studies in drug utilization research: a cross-sectional survey

IntroductionInterrupted time series (ITS) design is a commonly used method for evaluating large-scale interventions in clinical practice or public health. However, improperly using this method can lead to biased results.ObjectiveTo investigate design and statistical analysis characteristics of drug utilization studies using ITS design, and give recommendations for improvements.MethodsA literature search was conducted based on PubMed from January 2021 to December 2021. We included original articles that used ITS design to investigate drug utilization without restriction on study population or outcome types. A structured, pilot-tested questionnaire was developed to extract information regarding study characteristics and details about design and statistical analysis.ResultsWe included 153 eligible studies. Among those, 28.1% (43/153) clearly explained the rationale for using the ITS design and 13.7% (21/153) clarified the rationale of using the specified ITS model structure. One hundred and forty-nine studies used aggregated data to do ITS analysis, and 20.8% (31/149) clarified the rationale for the number of time points. The consideration of autocorrelation, non-stationary and seasonality was often lacking among those studies, and only 14 studies mentioned all of three methodological issues. Missing data was mentioned in 31 studies. Only 39.22% (60/153) reported the regression models, while 15 studies gave the incorrect interpretation of level change due to time parameterization. Time-varying participant characteristics were considered in 24 studies. In 97 studies containing hierarchical data, 23 studies clarified the heterogeneity among clusters and used statistical methods to address this issue.ConclusionThe quality of design and statistical analyses in ITS studies for drug utilization remains unsatisfactory. Three emerging methodological issues warranted particular attention, including incorrect interpretation of level change due to time parameterization, time-varying participant characteristics and hierarchical data analysis. We offered specific recommendations about the design, analysis and reporting of the ITS study.

Evaluating Experimental Studies in Couple Therapy: Some Implications for Assessment and Best Practices

This article is written to help therapists who are not clinical researchers assess the quality of experimental studies that are designed to compare the relative merits of different approaches to treating distressed couples. To illustrate some of the major difficulties encountered in conducting comparative research with couples (instrumentation, pretreatment assessment, internal validity, external validity, reliability of treatments, outcome evaluation, etc.) hypothetical examples are presented. Suggestions for addressing some of the salient methodological issues identified in the article and implications for determining best practices are offered for consideration.

No evidence of attentional prioritization for threatening targets in visual search

Throughout human evolutionary history, snakes have been associated with danger and threat. Research has shown that snakes are prioritized by our attentional system, despite many of us rarely encountering them in our daily lives. We conducted two high-powered, pre-registered experiments (total N = 224) manipulating target prevalence to understand this heightened prioritization of threatening targets. Target prevalence refers to the proportion of trials wherein a target is presented; reductions in prevalence consistently reduce the likelihood that targets will be found. We reasoned that snake targets in visual search should experience weaker effects of low target prevalence compared to non-threatening targets (rabbits) because they should be prioritized by searchers despite appearing rarely. In both experiments, we found evidence of classic prevalence effects but (contrasting prior work) we also found that search for threatening targets was slower and less accurate than for nonthreatening targets. This surprising result is possibly due to methodological issues common in prior studies, including comparatively smaller sample sizes, fewer trials, and a tendency to exclusively examine conditions of relatively high prevalence. Our findings call into question accounts of threat prioritization and suggest that prior attention findings may be constrained to a narrow range of circumstances.

Credit risk modelling within the euro area in the COVID‐19 period: Evidence from an ICAS framework

AbstractThis paper develops a logistic regression model in an in‐house credit assessment system (ICAS) framework for predicting corporate defaults in the Greek economy. We consider the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic and the associated government financial support schemes, aiming to protect against financial vulnerabilities, on the probability of default of non‐financial firms, as well as the relevant sectoral and firm‐size effects. In developing the ICAS framework, we address methodological issues such as the predictive performance of statistical versus machine learning approaches and the imbalanced dataset problem, indicating ways to evaluate such models with strong predictive power. Our findings suggest that the effect of the financial support measures dominates the pandemic shocks, thus substantially reducing the probability of firms' default, while the size‐ and industry‐based models show that firms in the micro and services sectors benefited the most. Furthermore, using a random forest model, our findings highlight the trade‐off between the transparency of traditional statistical models and the predictive value of machine learning models.

Associations between daily food insecurity and parent and child well-being.

Food insecurity poses a serious threat to children's development, but the mechanisms through which food insecurity undermines child development are far less clear. Specifically, food insecurity may influence children through its effect on parents' psychological well-being and parent-child interactions as a result, but past research on the role of parents is correlational and undermined by omitted variable bias. Using a partially rural, low-income sample of parents living in Pennsylvania (N = 272, 90% mother, Mage = 35) and their school-aged children (ages 4-11, 50% female) alongside daily measures of parent-reported food insecurity and parent and child mood and behavior, we examine how daily changes in food insecurity predict daily changes in parent and child well-being, and the extent to which food insecurity operates through parents to affect children. This method not only explores families' daily, lived experiences of food insecurity, but improves upon the methodological issues undermining past research. Findings indicate that food insecurity influences parent and child well-being on a daily basis, but that associations are stronger and sustain longer for parents than children. Further, parent mood and behavior partially explain the association between daily food insecurity and child mood and behavior, but food insecurity is also independently associated with child well-being. This study is the first to examine daily associations between food insecurity and parent and child well-being. Its implications for food assistance programs, policies, and the future of food insecurity research are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The concept of successful ageing in wartime: A review of Western scientific sources

Preserving the full life of an elderly person as the most vulnerable category of the population in times of armed conflict raises many methodological, theoretical, and practical issues for scholars. The article is an attempt at a problematic and reflective analysis of the heuristic nature of the concept of successful ageing for the study of ageing of elderly Ukrainians in the context of the war with Russia. The paper presents a problem-oriented review of contemporary Western literature on successful ageing. In addition to the basic empirical and theoretical works, a significant part of the theoretical analysis is based on the results of the most significant meta-analytical studies on this topic. The methodology of problem-oriented and integrative analysis was used to determine which problem areas of the concept of successful ageing can contribute to its study in wartime. The potential and limitations of the modern concept of successful ageing are considered. Eight problem areas of this concept are presented, which reveal certain contradictions, debatable issues, and gaps, which are simultaneously directions for the development of both the concept itself and its research in the context of war. Among them: vagueness of the criteria for successful ageing and its dilution with similar concepts; interaction of biomedical and psychosocial contexts of successful ageing; limits of responsibility for the success of ageing in the context of the “person – society” dichotomy; socio-structural inequalities between older people and the inability to age equally “successfully”; discrepancies between subjective and objective indicators of successful ageing; dominance of the Western model of successful ageing and levelling of its cultural specificity; integration of individual, social and scientific conceptualization of successful ageing. The author analyses the most promising theoretical and methodological concepts and theories of successful ageing that are most relevant to the problem of ageing in war. The literature review presented in the article will help to draw attention to the problem of improving and preserving the full life of an elderly person in the context of armed conflict. The results of the research will be useful to scholars and practitioners for the further development of programmes to protect the mental and physical health of older people in war

Understanding Canadian stakeholders’ views on measuring and valuing health for children and adolescents: a qualitative study

ObjectiveValuing child health is critical to assessing the value of healthcare interventions for children. However, there remain important methodological and normative issues. This qualitative study aimed to understand the views of Canadian stakeholders on these issues.MethodsStakeholders from health technology assessment (HTA) agencies, pharmaceutical industry representatives, healthcare providers, and academic researchers/scholars were invited to attend an online interview. Semi-structured interviews were designed to focus on: (1) comparing the 3-level and 5-level versions of the EQ-5D-Y; (2) source of preferences for valuation (adults vs. children); (3) perspective of valuation tasks; and (4) methods for valuation (discrete choice experiment [DCE] and its variants versus time trade-off [TTO]). Participants were probed to consider HTA guidelines, cognitive capacity, and potential ethical concerns. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Framework analysis with the incidence density method was used to analyze the data.ResultsFifteen interviews were conducted between May and September 2022. 66.7% (N = 10) of participants had experience with economic evaluations, and 86.7% (N = 13) were parents. Eleven participants preferred the EQ-5D-Y-5L. 12 participants suggested that adolescents should be directly involved in child health valuation from their own perspective. The participants were split on the ethical concerns. Eight participants did not think that there was ethical concern. 11 participants preferred DCE to TTO. Among the DCE variants, 6 participants preferred the DCE with duration to the DCE with death.ConclusionsMost Canadian stakeholders supported eliciting the preferences of adolescents directly from their own perspective for child health valuation. DCE was preferred if adolescents are directly involved.

Using Legitimation Code Theory to explore knowledge building in English medium higher education teaching: methodological challenges and innovations

ABSTRACT This article examines theoretical and methodological issues raised when Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) is used to investigate knowledge-building practices in online and face-to-face teaching environments where English is the medium of instruction (EMI) in non-Anglophone higher education (HE) contexts. The article introduces two dimensions of LCT, Semantics and Autonomy, and demonstrates how “translation devices” were adapted and developed in two studies to analyze lecturers' knowledge-building practices within HE EMI contexts. It then delves into the theoretical and methodological challenges encountered when employing LCT in interdisciplinary studies, alongside other frameworks such as multimodal conversation analysis. Data extracts from the two studies are employed to illustrate the challenges faced and the methodological innovations developed. Methodological implications and potential new directions for the use of LCT in similar problem-situations are discussed, with an emphasis on technological innovation.

Statin use in relation to long-term survival after gastrectomy for gastric adenocarcinoma: a Swedish population-based cohort study.

Studies have suggested that medication with statins improves survival in patients with gastric cancer, but methodological issues have limited the interpretability and prohibited conclusive results. We aimed to provide valid evidence as to whether statin use improves survival of gastric adenocarcinoma. This nationwide and population-based cohort study included virtually all patients who underwent curatively intended surgery (gastrectomy) for gastric adenocarcinoma in Sweden between 2006 and 2015 with follow-up throughout 2019 for disease-specific mortality and 2020 for all-cause mortality. Data came from medical records and national healthcare registries. The exposure was statin use during the year prior to gastrectomy which was compared to no such use during the same period. The outcomes were 5-year disease-specific mortality (main) and 5-year all-cause mortality (secondary). Multivariable Cox regression provided hazard ratios (HR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI), adjusted for age, sex, education, calendar year, comorbidity, low-dose aspirin use, tumour sublocation, pathological tumour stage, neoadjuvant chemotherapy, annual surgeon volume, and surgical radicality. Among 1515 participating patients, the mean age was 69years and 58.4% were men. Statin use, identified in 399 (26.3%) patients, was not associated with any statistically significantly decreased 5-year disease-specific mortality (HR 0.99, 95% CI 0.82-1.21) or 5-year all-cause mortality (HR 0.94, 95% CI 0.79-1.12). No risk reductions were found across subgroups of age, sex, aspirin user status, or tumour stage, or in patients with long-term preoperative of postoperative use of statins, all with point estimates close to 1. Perioperative use of statins does not seem to improve the 5-year survival in patients who undergo gastrectomy with curative intent for gastric adenocarcinoma in Sweden.

In search of better practice in executive functions assessment: Methodological issues and potential solutions.

The multicomponent nature of executive functions (EF) has long been recognized, pushing for a better understanding of both the commonalities and the diversity between EF components. Despite the advances made, the operationalization of performance in EF tasks remains rather heterogeneous, and the structure of EF as modeled by confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) is still a topic of debate (Karr et al., 2018). The present work demonstrates these two issues are related, showing how different operationalizations in task-based performance indicators impact the resulting models of EF structure with CFA. Using bootstrapped data from 294 children (8-12 years old) and nine EF tasks (tapping inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility), we first show improved model convergence and acceptance when operationalizing EF through single tasks' scores (e.g., incongruent trials, Flanker task) relative to difference scores (e.g., incongruent minus congruent trials, Flanker task). Furthermore, we show that response times exhibit poor model convergence and acceptance compared not only to accuracy but also drift rate. The latter, a well-known indicator in drift-diffusion models, is found to present the best trade-off between convergence and acceptance to model EF with CFA. Finally, we examine how various operationalizations of performance in EF tasks impact CFA model comparison in the assessment of EF structure and discuss the theoretical foundations for these results. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Influence of Taekwondo Training as a Martial Art Sport on Enhancing Mental Wellness of Security Officers in Kenya

Purpose: The purpose of this research was to investigate whether or not training in taekwondo as a martial art sport has a positive impact on the mental health of Kenyan security officers.
 Methodology: The study used a desk top approach where literature was sought from different sources. The research was carried out with consideration given to previous theoretical literature, both published and unpublished.
 Findings: Problems with mental wellness is a serious societal and work related issue that has numerous ramifications, including far-reaching social and economic impact in Kenyan security officers. However, a significant number of security officers do not seek help when they are experiencing issues with their mental wellness. Research in this area is scant, but there are suggestions that training in Taekwondo as martial arts sport may be an effective sports-based intervention for mental wellness, and that it may provide an affordable alternative to psychological therapy to security officers both public and private.
 Unique contribution to theory, practice and policy: Uncertainty regarding the validity and trustworthiness of previous research is unfortunately caused by the limited number of studies that are relevant to the topic at hand, in addition to other methodological issues.