Validity of the portable piko-6 spirometer used for screening obstructive airway diseases in community pharmacy practice

Background: Obstructive airway diseases (OADs) are among the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Shortness of breath (SOB) is the main symptom associated with OADs. International guidelines from the Global Initiative for Chronic Lung Disease (GOLD) and the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) have recommended spirometry as an indispensable tool for the diagnosis of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD), but spirometry is rarely used in family practice. Simple and reliable diagnostic tools are necessary for screening community patients with onset of OADs for timely management. Purpose: This thesis examined screening utility of the PiKo-6 forced expiratory volume in one second (pFEV₁) , in six second (pFEV₆), and the pRatio ( pFEV₁/pFEV₆) in SOB patients for OADs in community pharmacy settings. FEV₆ has recently been suggested an excellent surrogate for Forced Vital Capacity (FVC), which requires maximum exhalation of the lungs. Methods: Patients with SOB symptoms who were prescribed pulmonary inhalers, by their family physicians, were recruited via community pharmacies. Trained pharmacists collected two PiKo-6 tests to assess the repeatability of the PiKo-6 device. All patients performed laboratory spirometry ( FEV₁, FVC and FEV₁/FVC) to obtain physician diagnosis of their OADs. The results of the PiKo-6 spirometer and laboratory spirometer were compared. In addition, the PiKo-6 pRatio and laboratory FEV₁/FVC were assessed against physician diagnosed COPD. Results: Sixty three patients volunteered to perform the PiKo-6 spirometry. Of these, 52.4 % were men (age 53.9 ± 15.3 years; BMI 31.9 ± 7.40 kg/m2). Repeated testing with pFEV₁, pFEV6 and pRatio correlated significantly (within correlation, r = 0.835, p-Value≤ 0.05 ; 0.872, p- Value≤ 0.05; and 0.664, p-Value≤ 0.05). In addition, pFEV₁, pFEV6 and pRatio correlated significantly with FEV₁, FVC and FEV₁/FVC, respectively (between correlation = 0.630, p- Value≤ 0.05 ; 0.660, p-Value≤ 0.05 and 0.580, p-Value≤ 0.05). The cut-off value corresponding to the greatest sum of sensitivity and specificity of pRatio for physician-diagnosed COPD was <0.80, the sensitivity and specificity were 84 % and 50%, respectively. Conclusions The portable PiKo-6 correlates moderately well with the standard spirometry, when delivered by community pharmacists to patients with OADs. The PiKo-6 spirometer may play a role in screening patients suspected of having an OAD in community pharmacies that may benefit from early physician diagnosis and appropriate management.

Addition of sodium criterion to SOAR stroke score

Funding The NNUH Stroke and TIA Register is maintained by the NNUH NHS Foundation Trust Stroke Services and data management for this study is supported by the NNUH Research and Development Department through Research Capability Funds.

Assessing the relative validity of the Scottish Collaborative Group Food Frequency Questionnaire for measuring dietary intake in adults

Peer reviewed

The development and validity of a functional assessment instrument for persons with major mental disorders

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Peripheral refraction validity of the Shin-Nippon SRW5000 autorefractor

PURPOSE: To investigate the operation of the Shin-Nippon/Grand Seiko autorefractor and whether higher-order aberrations affect its peripheral refraction measurements. METHODS: Information on instrument design, together with parameters and equations used to obtain refraction, was obtained from a patent. A model eye simulating the operating principles was tested with an optical design program. Effects of induced defocus and astigmatism on the retinal image were used to calibrate the model eye to match the patent equations. Coma and trefoil were added to assess their effects on the image. Peripheral refraction of a physical model eye was measured along four visual field meridians with the Shin-Nippon/Grand Seiko autorefractor SRW-5000 and a Hartmann-Shack aberrometer, and simulated autorefractor peripheral refraction was derived using the Zernike coefficients from the aberrometer. RESULTS: In simulation, the autorefractor's square image was changed in size by defocus, into rectangles or parallelograms by astigmatism, and into irregular shapes by coma and trefoil. In the presence of 1.0 D oblique astigmatism, errors in refraction were proportional to the higher-order aberrations, with up to 0.8 D sphere and 1.5 D cylinder for ±0.6 μm of coma or trefoil coefficients with a 5-mm-diameter pupil. For the physical model eye, refraction with the aberrometer was similar in all visual field meridians, but refraction with the autorefractor changed more quickly along one oblique meridian and less quickly along the other oblique meridian than along the horizontal and vertical meridians. Simulations predicted that higher-order aberrations would affect refraction in oblique meridians, and this was supported by the experimental measurements with the physical model eye. CONCLUSIONS: The autorefractor's peripheral refraction measurements are valid for horizontal and vertical field meridians, but not for oblique field meridians. Similar instruments must be validated before being adopted outside their design scope.

The development and validity of a functional assessment instrument for persons with major mental disorders

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

The Validity of Broad and Narrow Personality Traits For Predicting Job Performance: The Differential Effects of Time

Research into the dynamicity of job performance criteria has found evidence suggesting the presence of rank-order changes to job performance scores across time as well as intraindividual trajectories in job performance scores across time. These findings have influenced a large body of research into (a) the dynamicity of validities of individual differences predictors of job performance and (b) the relationship between individual differences predictors of job performance and intraindividual trajectories of job performance. In the present dissertation, I addressed these issues within the context of the Five Factor Model of personality. The Five Factor Model is arranged hierarchically, with five broad higher-order factors subsuming a number of more narrowly tailored personality facets. Research has debated the relative merits of broad versus narrow traits for predicting job performance, but the entire body of research has addressed the issue from a static perspective -- by examining the relative magnitude of validities of global factors versus their facets. While research along these lines has been enlightening, theoretical perspectives suggest that the validities of global factors versus their facets may differ in their stability across time. Thus, research is needed to not only compare the relative magnitude of validities of global factors versus their facets at a single point in time, but also to compare the relative stability of validities of global factors versus their facets across time. Also necessary to advance cumulative knowledge concerning intraindividual performance trajectories is research into broad vs. narrow traits for predicting such trajectories. In the present dissertation, I addressed these issues using a four-year longitudinal design. The results indicated that the validities of global conscientiousness were stable across time, while the validities of conscientiousness facets were more likely to fluctuate. However, the validities of emotional stability and extraversion facets were no more likely to fluctuate across time than those of the factors. Finally, while some personality factors and facets predicted performance intercepts (i.e., performance at the first measurement occasion), my results failed to indicate a significant effect of any personality variable on performance growth. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

The Responsiveness, Content Validity, and Convergent Validity of the Measure Yourself Concerns and Wellbeing (MYCaW) Patient-Reported Outcome Measure

Objective Measure Yourself Concerns and Wellbeing (MYCaW) is a patient-centred questionnaire that allows cancer patients to identify and quantify the severity of their ‘Concerns’ and Wellbeing, as opposed to using a pre-determined list. MYCaW administration is brief and aids in prioritising treatment approaches. Our goal was to assess the convergent validity and responsiveness of MYCaW scores over time, the generalisability of the existing qualitative coding framework in different complementary and integrative healthcare settings and content validity. Methods Baseline and 6-week follow-up data (n=82) from MYCaW and FACIT-SpEx questionnaires were collected for a service evaluation of the ‘Living Well With The Impact of Cancer’ course at Penny Brohn Cancer Care. MYCaW construct validity was determined using Spearman's Rank Correlation test, and responsiveness indices assessed score changes over time. The existing qualitative coding framework was reviewed using a new dataset (n=158) and coverage of concern categories compared to items of existing outcome measures. Results Good correlation between MYCaW and FACIT-SpEx score changes were achieved (r= -0.57, p≥0.01). MYCaW Profile and Concern scores were highly responsive to change: SRM=1.02 and 1.08; effect size=1.26 and 1.22. MYCaW change scores showed the anticipated gradient of change according to clinically relevant degrees of change. Categories including ‘Spirituality’, ‘weight change’ and ‘practical concerns’ were added to the coding framework to improve generalisability. Conclusions MYCaW scores were highly responsive to change, allowing personalized patient outcomes to be quantified; the qualitative coding framework is generalisable across different oncology settings and has broader coverage of patient-identified concerns compared with existing cancer-related patient-reported outcome measures.

Item and task difficulty in a B2 reading examination: perceptions of test-takers and CEFR alignment experts compared with psychometric measurements

The article presents a study of a CEFR B2-level reading subtest that is part of the Slovenian national secondary school leaving examination in English as a foreign language, and compares the test-taker actual performance (objective difficulty) with the test-taker and expert perceptions of item difficulty (subjective difficulty). The study also analyses the test-takers’ comments on item difficulty obtained from a while-reading questionnaire. The results are discussed in the framework of the existing research in the fields of (the assessment of) reading comprehension, and are addressed with regard to their implications for item-writing, FL teaching and curriculum development.

The reliability and factorial validity of the Adolescent Alcohol Involvement Scale in a large sample in the United Kingdom

The assessment of adolescent drinking behavior is a complex task, complicated by variability in drinking patterns, the transitory and developmental nature of the behavior and the reliance (for large scale studies) on self-report questionnaires. The Adolescent Alcohol Involvement Scale (Mayer & Filstead, 1979) is a 14-item screening tool designed to help to identify alcohol misusers or more problematic drinkers. The present study utilized a large sample (n = 4066) adolescents from Northern Ireland. Results of Confirmatory Factor Analyses and reliability estimates revealed that the 14-items share sufficient common variance that scores can be considered to be reliable and that the 14 items can be scored to provide a composite alcohol use score.

A literature review to Examine the Validity and Reliability of group poster presentations as an assessment method of a module in an undergraduate nursing degree programme

The introduction of a poster presentation as a formative assessment method over a multiple choice examination after the first phase of a three phase “health and well-being” module in an undergraduate nursing degree programme was greeted with a storm of criticism from fellow lecturers stating that poster presentations are not valid or reliable and totally irrelevant to the assessment of learning in the module. This paper seeks to investigate these criticisms by investigating the literature regarding producing nurses fit for practice, nurse curriculum development and wider nurse education, the purpose of assessment, validity and reliability to critically evaluate the poster presentation as a legitimate assessment method for these aims.

Existence of disjoint weakly mixing operators that fail to satisfy the Disjoint Hypercyclicity Criterion

Recently, Bès, Martin, and Sanders [11] provided examples of disjoint hypercyclic operators which fail to satisfy the Disjoint Hypercyclicity Criterion. However, their operators also fail to be disjoint weakly mixing. We show that every separable, infinite dimensional Banach space admits operators T1,T2,…,TN with N⩾2 which are disjoint weakly mixing, and still fail to satisfy the Disjoint Hypercyclicity Criterion, answering a question posed in [11]. Moreover, we provide examples of disjoint hypercyclic operators T1, T2 whose corresponding set of disjoint hypercyclic vectors is nowhere dense, answering another question posed in [11]. In fact, we explicitly describe their set of disjoint hypercyclic vectors. Those same disjoint hypercyclic operators fail to be disjoint topologically transitive. Lastly, we create examples of two families of d-hypercyclic operators which fail to have any d-hypercyclic vectors in common.

Discussion about the validity of virtual practices in subjects in the radioccomunication area. Results of the educational experience

[EN]Nowadays we are living a virtual learning boom. Mainly, it is due to two facts: first, easy spreading of the knowledge and second, virtual learning is cheaper than classic instrumentation laboratories. This cost is even bigger in radiocommunication and high frequency area. In fact, time and time again there are more universities that give up offering the realization of laboratory practice. In the present report we propose a discussion about the increase of virtual practices when contact with instrumentation and circuits is basic. The experience of seven lecturers of the Communications Engineering Group (GIC) will be exposed.

Análise comparativa e teste empírico da validade dos modelos CAPM tradicional e condicional: o caso das ações da Petrobrás

ALVES, Janaína da Silva. Análise comparativa e teste empírico da validade dos modelos CAPM tradicional e condicional: o caso das ações da Petrobrás. Revista Ciências Administrativas, Fotaleza, v. 13, n. 1, p.147-157, ago. 2007.