Retrospective Pretest Design Research Articles

Impact of an Internet-Delivered Sound Healing Intervention on Chronic Non-Malignant Pain and Sleep Disturbances in Community Settings

IntroductionChronic pain patients often contend with insomnia symptoms, creating a reciprocal relationship that adds complexity to their condition. Evaluating interventions targeting insomnia in this population becomes paramount, given the intertwined nature of pain and sleep disturbances.ObjectivesThis retrospective pretest design aimed to assess the efficacy of an Internet-delivered sound healing intervention in reducing insomnia severity and addressing sleep- and pain-related parameters among individuals with chronic pain.MethodsConducted as a community-based project, Tuning for Health provided support to individuals grappling with long-term illnesses. The intervention involved the virtual delivery of a specially crafted sound track using tuning forks over a 6-week period, supervised by an experienced therapist and administered weekly for an hour. Participants were instructed to play the track daily at a time convenient for them. A total of 68 participants (mean age 59.3 years) completed the intervention. Outcome measures, including the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI), a sleep diary, and assessments for anxiety, depression, and pain-related parameters, were collected at the end of the 6-week intervention and repeated after a 6-month follow-up. Negative effects were monitored and reported.ResultsSignificant immediate interaction effects (time by treatment) were observed for the pain severity, ISI and various sleep parameters, such as sleep efficiency, sleep onset latency, early morning awakenings, and wake time after sleep onset. A time effect for anxiety and depression was noted at the 6-month follow-up. The group exhibited highly significant improvements in pain-related parameters. At the 6-month follow-up, sustained enhancements in sleep parameters and mental health were reported, with no reported side effects.ConclusionsThese unique results suggest the potential efficacy of sound healing in alleviating chronic pain and associated insomnia. Further research with a larger sample size is warranted to validate these findings. Combining sound healing with other treatments may offer enhanced outcomes for individuals dealing with both chronic pain and comorbid insomnia. This study lays the groundwork for future investigations into the promising intersection of sound healing, chronic pain management, and sleep improvement.Disclosure of InterestNone Declared

Interprofessional education perceptions: Intra-rater reliability of longitudinal retrospective pre-test design scores

Health, Interprofessional Practice and Education is a peer-reviewed, open access journal dedicated to increasing the availability of high-quality evidence to inform patient care and practitioner education from an interprofessional perspective. HIPE is aimed at academics, practitioners and student-practitioners who seek to become more knowledgeable and skilled at working with providers in other health disciplines for the purpose of providing compassionate, quality, integrated care to diverse patient populations.HIPE is published by Pacific University Libraries | ISSN 2641-1148

Goats in Schools: Parental Attitudes and Perceived Benefits

ABSTRACT Animal interactions can provide numerous benefits for child development and education. In the United States, goats are increasingly used in urban farm to school (FTS) programs to enhance children's learning and outdoor experiences. This study examined parents’ attitudes toward the presence of goats in a middle school FTS program and in their residential community, and the perceived effects of goat experiences for their children. Parents’ observations and reflections afford insights into the beneficial impacts that animals have on children and may also serve as a means to gauge parents’ willingness to support animal care and thus enhance the sustainability of FTS programming. Using a retrospective pretest design, we surveyed 112 parents and guardians of students at an urban middle school in the Southeast USA, posing questions about their evolving attitudes toward goats and other animals at the school, their children's experiences with goats and other FTS program elements, and their views regarding the presence, benefits, and drawbacks of goats in the community more broadly. We found that parents generally had very positive attitudes toward goats (and other FTS elements) prior to their students’ attendance, and that these became more positive with time. Over 90% of respondents believed goats positively influenced their children’s interest or enthusiasm for school. Parents also reported broad acceptance of the presence of goats throughout their community. We conclude that goats can be valuable assets in FTS programs, and use insights afforded by parents’ perceptions to draw recommendations for building collaborative support to provide more opportunities for child–goat engagement at schools and in urban communities.

Hexion to introduce new Resonance catalysts offering longer pot life and higher service temperatures for increased flexibility in composites manufacturing

This study reports on the use of a structured collaborative learning (SCL) approach to teach case studies in an advanced management accounting course. The SCL approach is intended to help students who are inexperienced with case studies make the transition from learning in lecture-based environment to learning in a case-based environment. Structure during collaborative learning is achieved through the use of a workbook that contains activities that guide students on how to think critically about the case presentation, and how to participate meaningfully in group discussions. A survey based on a retrospective pre-test design was used to obtain student perceptions of the effectiveness of the approach. Students indicated that they acquired more knowledge, critical thinking skills and teamwork skills after the course. They also found the course to be engaging and satisfying.

Using a structured collaborative learning approach in a case-based management accounting course

This study reports on the use of a structured collaborative learning (SCL) approach to teach case studies in an advanced management accounting course. The SCL approach is intended to help students who are inexperienced with case studies make the transition from learning in lecture-based environment to learning in a case-based environment. Structure during collaborative learning is achieved through the use of a workbook that contains activities that guide students on how to think critically about the case presentation, and how to participate meaningfully in group discussions. A survey based on a retrospective pre-test design was used to obtain student perceptions of the effectiveness of the approach. Students indicated that they acquired more knowledge, critical thinking skills and teamwork skills after the course. They also found the course to be engaging and satisfying.

Transformational Leadership Styles Pre- and Post-Trauma

Previous literature suggests that exposure to trauma has both positive and negative impacts on leadership and leadership development, although there is a lack of empirical research. This exploratory study compared military leaders’ use of transformational leadership styles (TLS) before and after trauma exposure from the followers’ perspective. This study used a retrospective pretest design to survey veteran and active duty military personnel. Significant differences were found between pre- and post-trauma exposure TLS ratings, with a mean decline in the TLS after trauma exposure. The analysis of the open-ended questions indicated a reduction in the use of the TLS after trauma, but identified positive changes in some cases. There was no evidence that changes in the TLS were concentrated in any of the five styles.

Survey Estimates of Changes in Alcohol Use Patterns Following the 2012 Privatization of the Washington Liquor Monopoly.

The US state of Washington's 333 state-run liquor stores were privatized on 1 June 2012 and purchases began in ~1500 licensed stores of a variety of types. A regime of taxes and fees was implemented to replace the revenues generated by the state stores and, 1 year later, the beer tax was reduced by two thirds. This study evaluates the impact of these changes on total alcohol and spirits consumption in a retrospective pre-test design. The study sample consists of 2289 adults recruited in three cross-sectional surveys during 2014 and 2015. Retrospective typical past month quantity-frequency measures for before privatization drinking and current past month quantity-frequency measures were compared within subjects, for all alcohol and for spirits only. No change in alcohol volume was seen across privatization while spirits volume was found to decrease, suggesting a shift from spirits to beer. This decline in spirits volume came from a reduction in drinking days while overall drinking days were found to increase. This was offset by a reduction in drinks per drinking day and in heavy occasions. These findings accurately mirror the overall flat trend in per capita alcohol sales but seem to exaggerate the very small shift towards beer seen in sales data. Effects of increased spirits availability appear to have been countered by increased spirits prices and a decreased beer tax, leading to a shift to beer consumption. Survey-based analyses of alcohol use across Washington's spirits privatization, beer tax reduction and marijuana legalization found no change in alcohol volume, a reduction in spirits volume and a shift to more moderate drinking patterns. Reductions in drinking occurred among marijuana users and those with lower educational attainment reduced spirits volume.

Innovations in Measurement: Visual Analog Scales and Retrospective Pretest Self-Report Designs

<p>Se discuten las limitaciones de dos procedimientos de medición extremadamente populares; la escala Likert y los diseños pre-post tradicionales. Ambos métodos tienen limitaciones; estos métodos son comúnmente combinados obteniendo como resultado una fidelidad limitada para la medición del cambio. Se discute sobre dos innovaciones en medición que proveen al investigador una mayor fidelidad: escalas visuales análogas y el diseño pre-test retrospectivo. Además, cuando se usan de manera combinada, estas innovaciones en medición proveen notables incrementos en el poder de detección y la cuantificación de cambios.</p>

Chronic disease management in developed and developing countries: a cardiovascular case study

CALD Australians are over-represented in the figures of consumers experiencing difficulties managing their medicines. To address this inequality, NPS MedicineWise developed an in-language educational program on the quality use of medicines (QUM) for CALD consumers from ten language groups. As a novel approach, it is delivered by bilingual pharmacists in their native tongue. It aimed to: Improve awareness and knowledge of quality use of medicines among CALD seniors; Influence their behaviour in a manner that supports QUM; and create and strengthen partnerships with ethnospecific organisations and bilingual health professionals. Methods: Education seminars were developed for 2 topis, Safe and wise use of medicines and Managing pain. Education seminars were run nationally over 12 months in ten different languages. Telephone surveys were conducted in-language with 50 Korean, 50 Macedonian and 50 Spanish consumers attending a seminar on Safe and Wise Use of Medicines. A retrospective pre-test design was used to assess any changes in knowledge and behaviour as a result of attending the seminars. Results: There was a significant increase in the number of CALD consumers using their medicines correctly. The seminars prompted improvements in recognition of the risks of using medicines, including, allergic reactions (+11.3%, p1⁄40.015); side effects (+10%, p1⁄40.017); combining different types of medicines (+9.3, p1⁄40.046). The seminars also successfully prompted respondents to use a medicines list. The top three likes of participants were: It provided helpful information (92.7%, n1⁄4139); it was conducted in the participants’ own language (48%, n1⁄472); and it was presented by a health professional (40%, n1⁄460). Conclusions: Empowering the consumer to take control of their medicines management is an important step to improving health outcomes. The seminars helped participants make informed choices about their medicines in partnership with their health professional, by encouraging them to ask the right questions and increase their own knowledge.

Threats to the Internal Validity of Spinal Surgery Outcome Assessment: Recalibration Response Shift or Implicit Theories of Change?

A recalibration response shift will cause the patient to think about a self-report measure’s response options differently after a health state change. Commonly assessed using the retrospective-pretest design (“then-test”), recent guidelines suggest adjusting then-test estimates for competing explanations. This prospective longitudinal study investigated recalibration response shift after adjusting for implicit theories of change in patients undergoing spinal surgery. The Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) and Short Form-36 (SF-36) were collected before surgery and at 6 weeks and 3 months after spinal decompression surgery. Then-tests of the measures were also collected at all post-tests. Recalibration response shift was operationalized as the then-minus-pre difference score on the evaluative SF-36. Implicit theories of change were operationalized as the then-minus-pre difference score on the perception-based ODI. Improved vs. No-Effect patient groups were compared using the Minimally Important Difference (±15 points) as a cut-off on the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) items for back and leg pain. Logistic regression analyses investigated whether recalibration response shift had an independent effect distinguishing patient groups, after adjusting for implicit theories of change. The sample (baseline n = 169, mean age 52, 39 % female) was well-educated, and 1/3 were working. All then-minus-pre difference scores were non-zero at each time point and were stable over time. In the adjusted models distinguishing Improved versus No Effect groups, then-minus-pre ODI difference scores were significant in the majority of the adjusted models at all timepoints, but only one then-minus-pre SF-36 difference score—for physical functioning recalibration—was significant and only at 6-weeks post-surgery. This suggests that implicit theories of change bias the estimation of post-surgical outcomes, but that recalibration response shift biased only the estimation of physical functioning and only at 6 weeks post-surgery. Recalibration response shift and implicit theories of change can both be sources of bias in patient-reported outcome assessment. Our findings suggest that implicit theories of change are a greater threat to validity in this patient sample. Future research using the then-test should control for implicit theories of change to minimize misspecification of effects.

Masters in nursing degrees: an evaluation of management and leadership outcomes using a retrospective pre-test design

The aim of the present study was to measure the leadership and management abilities of graduates who had completed a master's degree in nursing. A number of reports have recommended that leadership competencies be integrated into education programmes for nurses at a master's level. In spite of the growth in the number of graduates from higher degrees in nursing, there is a paucity of evidence on the management and leadership outcomes that develop as a result of undertaking a master's degree. A cross-sectional survey using a retrospective pre-test design was used to measure self-reported leadership and management outcomes from the graduates' educational programmes. Results found that graduates had gained significantly on their ability to change practice, communicate and work as part of a team and to problem solve as an outcome of completing a master's degree in nursing. Graduates make substantial gains in leadership and management capabilities as a consequence of their higher degree. These capabilities are necessary as nurses take the lead in many areas of healthcare. The masters in nursing degree now has a pivotal role in providing effective continuing education to the nursing profession; especially for those who occupy or intend to occupy senior positions within clinical, management or education branches of the profession.

Measuring Change in a Short-Term Educational Program Using a Retrospective Pretest Design

The Pennsylvania Governor's School for International Studies is an intensive summer program designed to give talented high school students a challenging introduction to the study of international affairs. One focus of the evaluation seeks to understand the effect of the program on the students' perception of their knowledge concerning core issues. Across the long history of the program, a variety of measures were used (and subsequently discarded) to assess changes in knowledge and perception of competence. Four years ago the program instituted a retrospective pre-post design. Results from these years, indicate that these students have consistently overestimated their pre-test understanding of core competencies emphasized in the program and that they seem better able to assess their knowledge gains and their initial inflated sense of knowledge as a result of the program. This article offers an overview of the development, application, use and analysis of a retrospective pre-post instrument to address response shift bias.

Evaluating learning in library training workshops: using the retrospective pretest design

The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of an evaluation instrument using the retrospective pretest design to measure changes in participants' behaviour after library training. This article focuses on the measurement component of training evaluation — the process of answering the question of how much change has occurred. Participants, who were from a large, public academic geriatric care centre in Toronto, included administrators, researchers, clinical and other staff, and university students doing field placements at the hospital. Participants attended one of four 1-hour sessions on the topic of Effectively Searching Google and Google Scholar that were held over a 3-month period. Sixty days post training, a self-administered retrospective pretest questionnaire, consisting of 10 searching behaviour statements developed using the learning objectives for the training session, was used to measure the impact of library training on participants' behaviour. Participants were asked to indicate their level of frequency of performing a searching behaviour described in the statement before and after training using a five-point, Likert-type scale ranging from 1, almost never; 2, seldom; 3, about half the time; 4, often; to 5, almost always. Summary baseline statistics are reported for respondents who never or rarely exhibited the behaviour prior to training. For the change measure, we report the simple percentage of respondents who improved. The findings of this study showed the potential of using the retrospective pretest to help librarians document the outcomes of library training. The benefits of gathering data using the retrospective pretest are discussed.

Estimating the Impact of Health and Safety Training Using the Retrospective Pretest Design

Abstract An alternative to the traditional pretest/postest method of assessing training program effectiveness from hazardous waste worker training, called the retrospective pretest design, is explored in this study. In the retrospective pretest design, trainee self-reports about their knowledge, skills, abilities, and/or attitudes are obtained only after the completion of the training, not before. Trainees provide two types of self-reports: (1) the traditional posttraining outcome responses and (2) responses on how they would have answered those same outcome items before they participated in the health and safety program. These latter responses are known as retrospective pretests, and comparison of the two responses for an item is considered a better measure of true change due to training than the traditional pretraining and posttraining responses to the same item. Data from five types of hazardous waste worker health and safety training curricula (40-hour site worker; 24-hour treatment, storage, and disp...

Evaluation of an intervention for staff in a long-term care facility using a retrospective pretest design.

It has been previously established that human service workers often suffer from emotional exhaustion, which has been conceptualized by Maslach and Jackson as burnout. Burnout may be a particularly great risk in workers providing long-term geriatric care. The current study evaluated the effects of a series of three 3-hour sessions designed to address team building, communication skills, self-esteem, and stress management on a random sample of 51 of the 188 long-term care staff who participated. Using a retrospective pretest design, a statistically significant improvement from "then" to "today" was found for the three components of burnout: Depersonalization, Emotional Exhaustion, and Personal Accomplishment. Responses to an open-ended question about workshop effects corroborated the quantitative data, and effects noted were highly related to the defined objectives of the workshops.

The Comparison Group Problem in Bereavement Studies and the Retrospective Pretest

An elaboration of Campbell and Stanley's (1963) retrospective pretest design to include a "surrogate comparison group" is described. The successful use of the design is illustrated and tested using data from a longitudinal investigation of bereavement outcome following pregnancy loss. The bereaved group was not significantly different from the surrogate comparison group of currently pregnant women in their retrospection of their prepregnancy mental health status. The pregnant surrogate group's current mental health status also did not differ from the bereaved group's retrospections concerning their mental health during their pregnancies. Implications for the use of the design are also discussed.

Retrospective Measures in the Modification of Attitudes Toward Persons with Disabilities

Many rehabilitation studies which attempt to determine the effectiveness of procedures designed to modify attitudes toward persons with disabilities rely on self-report measures. When utilizing self-report instruments within a pretest/posttest design, a potential threat to internal validity is the shift of response interpretation on the part of the subject. One way of dealing with this response-shift is to utilize retrospective pretests in addition to a pre-treatment pretest. Two studies are presented which compared the use of traditional pretests with retrospective pretests in the modification of attitudes toward the disabled. Both studies showed that the retrospective pretest design was more sensitive to perceived attitudinal changes.