A nursing interface terminology: evaluation of face validity

A range of different language systems for nursing diagnosis, interventions and outcomes are currently available. Nursing terminologies are intended to support nursing practice but they have to be evaluated. This study aims to assess the results of an expert survey to establish the face validity of a nursing interface terminology. The study applied a descriptive design with a cross-sectional survey strategy using a written questionnaire administered to expert nurses working in hospitals. Sample size was estimated at 35 participants. The questionnaire included topics related to validity and reliability criteria for nursing controlled vocabularies described in the literature. Mean global score and criteria scoring at least 7 were considered main outcome measures. The analysis included descriptive statistics with a confidence level of 95%. The mean global score was 8.1. The mean score for the validity criteria was 8.4 and 7.8 for reliability and applicability criteria. Two of the criteria for reliability and applicability evaluation did not achieve minimum scores. According to the experts" responses, this terminology meets face validity, but that improvements are required in some criteria and further research is needed to completely demonstrate its metric properties.

Adaptation and validation of the Spanish Version of the 'Survey Work-Home Interaction-NijmeGen' (SWING) to Spanish speaking countries

The purpose of this study is the adaptation and validation of the"Survey Work-Home Interaction NijmeGen" (SWING) developed by Geurts and colleagues to Spanish speaking countries (SWING-SSC). In order to analyze the questionnaire"s psychometric properties, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was carried out with a sample of 203 employees from various Spanish-speaking countries. Criterion related validity was tested by examining correlations between the SWING-SSC, and the theoretically relevant variables: health, role conflict, role clarity and supervisor support. Finally, reliability was tested analyzing the internal consistency of the scales. The analyses carried out indicate that SWING-SSC has good psychometric properties. In addition, the present results support the relation of the construct with health, role conflict, role clarity, and supervisor support. This study offers evidence for a sound work-life balance measure that contributes to the encouragement adequate conditions in the workplace, to reduce the conflict between the two spheres of professional and personal life, and to enhance positive relationships.

Modeling usage of medical care services: the medical expenditure panel survey data, 1996-2000

We explore the determinants of usage of six different types of health care services, using the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey data, years 1996-2000. We apply a number of models for univariate count data, including semiparametric, semi-nonparametric and finite mixture models. We find that the complexity of the model that is required to fit the data well depends upon the way in which the data is pooled across sexes and over time, and upon the characteristics of the usage measure. Pooling across time and sexes is almost always favored, but when more heterogeneous data is pooled it is often the case that a more complex statistical model is required.

Use and users of electronic journals at Catalan universities: the results of a survey

Es presenten els resultats d’una enquesta sobre l’ús de revistes electròniques realitzada al professorat de les universitats que formen el Consorci de Biblioteques Universitàries de Catalunya (CBUC). Els resultats mostren un elevat grau de coneixement de la col·lecció de revistes electròniques entre el personal docent i investigador i una creixent preferència pel format electrònic en detriment de l’imprès. L’alt grau de coneixement i d’ús dels títols electrònics, i la preferència per aquest suport, comporten una elevada valoració de la col·lecció de revistes electròniques. Al mateix temps, la major part dels usuaris preveu un increment de l’ús dels títols electrònics durant els propers anys. Els resultats també confirmen la importància de la disciplina i de l’edat com a factors explicatius de l’ús de les revistes electròniques.

Environmental Kuznets Curves for Carbon Emissions: A Critical Survey

The empirical finding of an inverse U-shaped relationship between per capita income and pollution, the so-called Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), suggests that as countries experience economic growth, environmental deterioration decelerates and thus becomes less of an issue. Focusing on the prime example of carbon emissions, the present article provides a critical review of the new econometric techniques that have questioned the baseline polynomial specification in the EKC literature. We discuss issues related to the functional form, heterogeneity, “spurious” regressions and spatial dependence to address whether and to what extent the EKC can be observed. Despite these new approaches, there is still no clear-cut evidence supporting the existence of the EKC for carbon emissions. JEL classifications: C20; Q32; Q50; O13 Keywords: Environmental Kuznets Curve; Carbon emissions; Functional form; Heterogeneity; “Spurious” regressions; Spatial dependence.Residential satisfaction is often used as a barometer to assess the performance of public policy and programmes designed to raise individuals' well-being. However, the fact that responses elicited from residents might be biased by subjective, non-observable factors casts doubt on whether these responses can be taken as trustable indicators of the individuals' housing situation. Emotional factors such as aspirations or expectations might affect individuals' cognitions of their true residential situation. To disentangle this puzzle, we investigated whether identical residential attributes can be perceived differently depending on tenure status. Our results indicate that tenure status is crucial not only in determining the level of housing satisfaction, but also regarding how dwellers perceive their housing characteristics. Keywords: Housing satisfaction, subjective well-being, homeownership. JEL classification: D1, R2.

Health care utilization among immigrants and native-born populations in 11 European countries. Results from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe

Objective: This study examines health care utilization of immigrants relative to the native-born populations aged 50 years and older in eleven European countries. Methods. We analyzed data from the Survey of Health Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) from 2004 for a sample of 27,444 individuals in 11 European countries. Negative Binomial regression was conducted to examine the difference in number of doctor visits, visits to General Practitioners (GPs), and hospital stays between immigrants and the native-born individuals. Results: We find evidence those immigrants above age 50 use health services on average more than the native-born populations with the same characteristics. Our models show immigrants have between 6% and 27% more expected visits to the doctor, GP or hospital stays when compared to native-born populations in a number of European countries. Discussion: Elderly immigrant populations might be using health services more intensively due to cultural reasons.

Infrastructures and productivity: an updated survey

The relationship between infrastructures and productivity has been the subject of an ongoing debate during the last two decades. The available empirical evidence is inconclusive and its interpretation is complicated by econometric problems that have not been fully solved. This paper surveys the relevant literature, focusing on studies that estimate aggregate production functions or growth regressions, and extracts some tentative conclusions. On the whole, my reading of the evidence is that there are sufficient indications that public infrastructure investment contributes significantly to productivity growth, at least for countries where a saturation point has not been reached. The returns to such investment are probably quite high in early stages, when infrastructures are scarce and basic networks have not been completed, but fall sharply thereafter. Hence, appropriate infrastructure provision is probably a key input for development policy, even if it does not hold the key to rapid productivity growth in advanced countries where transportation and communications needs are already adequately served.

A survey on recent p-adic integration theories and arithmetic applications

"Vegeu el resum a l'inici del document del fitxer adjunt."

Temperament in Bach’s Well-tempered clavier: a historical survey and a new evaluation according to dissonance theory

After a historical survey of temperament in Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier by Johann Sebastian Bach, an analysis of the work has been made by applying a number of historical good temperaments as well as some recent proposals. The results obtained show that the global dissonance for all preludes and fugues in major keys can be minimized using the Kirnberger II temperament. The method of analysis used for this research is based on the mathematical theories of sensory dissonance, which have been developed by authors such as Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz, Harry Partch, Reinier Plomp, Willem J. M. Levelt and William A. Sethares

QoS online routing and MPLS multilevel protection: a survey

A survey of MPLS protection methods and their utilization in combination with online routing methods is presented in this article. Usually, fault management methods pre-establish backup paths to recover traffic after a failure. In addition, MPLS allows the creation of different backup types, and hence MPLS is a suitable method to support traffic-engineered networks. In this article, an introduction of several label switch path backup types and their pros and cons are pointed out. The creation of an LSP involves a routing phase, which should include QoS aspects. In a similar way, to achieve a reliable network the LSP backups must also be routed by a QoS routing method. When LSP creation requests arrive one by one (a dynamic network scenario), online routing methods are applied. The relationship between MPLS fault management and QoS online routing methods is unavoidable, in particular during the creation of LSP backups. Both aspects are discussed in this article. Several ideas on how these actual technologies could be applied together are presented and compared

A survey addressing the fundamental matrix estimation problem

Epipolar geometry is a key point in computer vision and the fundamental matrix estimation is the only way to compute it. This article surveys several methods of fundamental matrix estimation which have been classified into linear methods, iterative methods and robust methods. All of these methods have been programmed and their accuracy analysed using real images. A summary, accompanied with experimental results, is given

Assessing the Precision of Compositional Data in a Stratified Double Stage Cluster Sample: Application to the Swiss Earnings Structure Survey

Precision of released figures is not only an important quality feature of official statistics,it is also essential for a good understanding of the data. In this paper we show a casestudy of how precision could be conveyed if the multivariate nature of data has to betaken into account. In the official release of the Swiss earnings structure survey, the totalsalary is broken down into several wage components. We follow Aitchison's approachfor the analysis of compositional data, which is based on logratios of components. Wefirst present diferent multivariate analyses of the compositional data whereby the wagecomponents are broken down by economic activity classes. Then we propose a numberof ways to assess precision

A survey on voltage sag events in power systems

This paper aims to survey the techniques and methods described in literature to analyse and characterise voltage sags and the corresponding objectives of these works. The study has been performed from a data mining point of view

Let's talk: public evaluation of large projects: variational inequialities, bilevel programming and complementarity. a survey

Large projects evaluation rises well known difficulties because -by definition- they modify the current price system; their public evaluation presents additional difficulties because they modify too existing shadow prices without the project. This paper analyzes -first- the basic methodologies applied until late 80s., based on the integration of projects in optimization models or, alternatively, based on iterative procedures with information exchange between two organizational levels. New methodologies applied afterwards are based on variational inequalities, bilevel programming and linear or nonlinear complementarity. Their foundations and different applications related with project evaluation are explored. As a matter of fact, these new tools are closely related among them and can treat more complex cases involving -for example- the reaction of agents to policies or the existence of multiple agents in an environment characterized by common functions representing demands or constraints on polluting emissions.

The Employment Precariousness Scale (EPRES): psychometric properties of a new tool for epidemiological studies among waged and salaried workers

Background: Despite the fact that labour market flexibility has resulted in an expansion of precarious employment in industrialized countries, to date there is limited empirical evidence about its health consequences. The Employment Precariousness Scale (EPRES) is a newly developed, theory-based, multidimensional questionnaire specifically devised for epidemiological studies among waged and salaried workers. Objective: To assess acceptability, reliability and construct validity of EPRES in a sample of waged and salaried workers in Spain. Methods: Cross-sectional study, using a sub-sample of 6.968 temporary and permanent workers from a population-based survey carried out in 2004-2005. The survey questionnaire was interviewer administered and included the six EPRES subscales, measures of the psychosocial work environment (COPSOQ ISTAS21), and perceived general and mental health (SF-36). Results: A high response rate to all EPRES items indicated good acceptability; Cronbach’s alpha coefficients, over 0.70 for all subscales and the global score, demonstrated good internal consistency reliability; exploratory factor analysis using principal axis analysis and varimax rotation confirmed the six-subscale structure and the theoretical allocation of all items. Patterns across known groups and correlation coefficients with psychosocial work environment measures and perceived health demonstrated the expected relations, providing evidence of construct validity. Conclusions: Our results provide evidence in support of the psychometric properties of EPRES, which appears to be a promising tool for the measurement of employment precariousness in public health research.