The Dimensionality and Gender Differential Item Functioning of the Mini Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (MiniAQLQ)

The present study investigated the factorstructure and item analysis of the Mini AsthmaQuality of Life Questionnaire (MiniAQLQ) in asample of 258 community-dwelling asthmaticadults between the ages of 16 and 87 years. The mean age was 56 years for males (N = 99) and50 years for females (N = 159). This studycompared the fit of three factor solutionsusing a maximum likelihood confirmatory factoranalysis. Based on the fit indices, supportwas found for a hierarchical factor structurewith a second-order factor of quality of lifeand four first-order factors of symptoms,activity limitation, emotional function andenvironmental stimuli. Given that the data fitan essentially unidimensional model, genderdifferential item functioning (DIF) wasexplored using Zumbo's (1999) ordinal logisticregression method with corresponding logisticregression effect size estimators. Aftermatching males and females on the underlyingvariable of quality of life, gender DIF wasfound on the cigarette smoke and weather or air pollution items. Thesefindings indicate that gender influences how anindividual endorses these particular items onthe MiniAQLQ.     

Determinants of Health and the Quality of Life in the Bella Coola Valley

The aim of this investigation is to obtain some baseline self-reported data on the health status and overall quality of life of all residents of the Bella Coola Valley of British Columbia aged 17 years or older, and to measure the impact of a set of designated health determinants on their health and quality of life. In the period from August to November 2001, a variety of procedures were used to ensure that all eligible residents of the Valley received a copy of our questionnaire, and 687 useable questionnaires were obtained for our working dataset. Health status was measured by SF-36 and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control healthy days items. Thirty-one items were used to measure the Provincial Health Officer’s designated determinants of health in four clusters, namely, biological, social and economic, health behaviours and health services determinants. Quality of life was measured by satisfaction levels in 13 specific domains of life (e.g., family, financial security), four global items (e.g., happiness, life satisfaction) and one global Subjective Well-Being Index. Besides obtaining baseline figures on all our measures for the Valley, we made some comparisons among our figures and those from other areas, e.g., Prince George, BC. Most of the measures indicated that the health status and quality of life of Bella Coola Valley residents were lower than those of Prince George residents. For the sample as a whole, SF-36 scores on the eight dimensions ran from 82.3 (physical functioning) to 50.0 (social functioning), with a mean of 62.7. Residents in the Valley averaged 6.5 days in the past 30 in which their health was physically not good, 5.5 days when it was mentally not good and 4.1 days when their health limited their usual daily activities. Eleven percent of respondents described their general health as “excellent” and another 27% said it was “very good”. On a 7-point scale from 1=very dissatisfied to 7=very satisfied, respondents had average life satisfaction and satisfaction with the overall quality of life scores of 5.5. For specific domains of life, the lowest mean level of satisfaction was reported for federal and provincial government officials (3.3) and the highest was reported for living partners and personal safety around home (5.8). Regarding bivariate relations, each of the eight dimensions of SF-36 was significantly correlated with a single item measure of general health, and five of the eight were significantly correlated with the number of good health days. Happiness and the Subjective Well-Being Index were positively but moderately correlated with six of the eight dimensions, and life satisfaction was positively correlated with five. Age was negatively related to general health, but positively related to life satisfaction. Not being of aboriginal descent was positively related to all of the four global health indicators and to the Subjective Well-Being Index. Education was positively related to the four global health measures but not to the three global quality of life measures. The Social Support and Good Family Indexes were positively related to all seven global measures. There was a positive correlation between six of the seven global measures and the frequency with which respondents participated in activities sponsored by voluntary organizations. Frequency of smoking was negatively associated with every global dependent variable except the Physical Health Index. Frequency of skipping meals was negatively associated and average hours of sleep per night was positively associated with all seven global measures. Turning to multivariate relationships, the four clusters of health determinants explained from 12% (SF-36 Mental Health Index) to 24% (general health) of the variance in the dependent global health variables, and from 20% (happiness) to 26% (Subjective Well-Being Index) of the variance in the dependent global quality of life variables. Adding domain satisfaction scores to the total set of predictors allowed us to explain from 20% (SF-36 Mental health Index) to 29% (general health) of the variance in the dependent global health variables, and from 39% (happiness) to 62% (life satisfaction) in the dependent global quality of life variables. By including measures of social support and good family relationships in our set of health determinants, we practically guaranteed that the latter would be relatively strongly predictive of global quality of life.     

Investigation of mixed model repeated measures analyses and non‐linear random coefficient models in the context of long‐term efficacy data

The longitudinal data from 2 published clinical trials in adult subjects with upper limb spasticity (a randomized placebo‐controlled study [NCT01313299] and its long‐term open‐label extension [NCT01313312]) were combined. Their study designs involved repeat intramuscular injections of abobotulinumtoxinA (Dysport®), and efficacy endpoints were collected accordingly. With the objective of characterizing the pattern of response across cycles, Mixed Model Repeated Measures analyses and Non‐Linear Random Coefficient (NLRC) analyses were performed and their results compared. The Mixed Model Repeated Measures analyses, commonly used in the context of repeated measures with missing dependent data, did not involve any parametric shape for the curve of changes over time. Based on clinical expectations, the NLRC included a negative exponential function of the number of treatment cycles, with its asymptote and rate included as random coefficients in the model. Our analysis focused on 2 specific efficacy parameters reflecting complementary aspects of efficacy in the study population. A simulation study based on a similar study design was also performed to further assess the performance of each method under different patterns of response over time. This highlighted a gain of precision with the NLRC model, and most importantly the need for its assumptions to be verified to avoid potentially biased estimates. These analyses describe a typical situation and the conditions under which non‐linear mixed modeling can provide additional insights on the behavior of efficacy parameters over time. Indeed, the resulting estimates from the negative exponential NLRC can help determine the expected maximal effect and the treatment duration required to reach it.     

整个世界都在变成科学元勘 ——法迪勒·马赞德兰尼对话布鲁诺·拉图尔

如何在这片森林中生存?如何使之保持活力?拉图尔就当前的全球生态危机提出了这些问题,但当应用于STS的"森林"——或者用拉图尔自己的隐喻"生物多样性"时,这些问题也同样恰当.在访谈中,拉图尔描绘了一幅STS生存模式的特殊图景.在这一图景中,STS既非对科学的批判也非对科学的辅助,而是通过教育与合作将不言而喻的STS敏感性融入科学之中.尽管拉图尔承认STS领域在立场和进路上存在诸多差异,但他淡化了这些差异,将所有"感染"STS人的定义特征设定为共同致力于将以大写的"S"开头的科学(Science)转化为一些可以进行经验研究的问题.毫无疑问,他所描绘的是一幅建构主义的图景,社会科学家和自然科学家、工程师、艺术家以及政治家们在其中共同"建设世界".     

Comparative Statics,Informativeness, and the Interval Dominance Order

We identify a new way to order functions, called the interval dominance order, that generalizes both the single crossing property and a standard condition used in statistical decision theory. This allows us to provide a unified treatment of the major theorems on monotone comparative statics with and without uncertainty, the comparison of signal informativeness, and a non‐Bayesian theorem on the completeness of increasing decision rules. We illustrate the concept and results with various applications, including an application to optimal stopping time problems where the single crossing property is typically violated.     

Contemplative Methods Meet Social Sciences: Back to Human Experience as It Is

The aim of this paper is to trace a pathway connecting contemplative knowledge and practices with the social sciences. Contemplative knowledge and practices offer material for reflection in social science even concerning their very foundation. I'll found an opportunity for meshing our disciplinary tools with this knowledge as I introduced it in a health promotion program. The result will be a transdisciplinary confluence of different lines of inquiry contributing to a new perspective of self and social action. First of all I will give a definition of contemplative knowledge and practices. Then, I will make a bridge between the contemplative approach and the social sciences, showing the contribution that symbolic interactionism can play. I will illustrate the perspective drawing on an action research program called Auriga aimed at smoking cessation and reduction among health professionals. The aim of this paper is focused on the specification of the conceptual background in which such kind of program has been developed. Finally, I outline some implications it could represent for what might be called transformative sociology. I believe that contemplative knowledge could contribute to disentangle some of the unanswered questions and concerns in the social sciences, once they dismiss for a while their scientistic perspective. The secular redefinition of tools mainly belonging to the wisdom traditions represents an innovation that can reshape what we intend by the self and experience, contributing to what is called the “social transformation from within,” a pragmatic and wise approach to change at any level.     

Influence Measures in Quantile Regression Models

In this article, we use the asymmetric Laplace distribution to define a new method to determine the influence of a certain observation in the fit of quantile regression models. Our measure is based on the likelihood displacement function and we propose two types of measures in order to determine influential observations in a set of conditional quantiles conjointly or in each conditional quantile of interest. We verify the validity of our average measure in a simulated data set as well in an illustrative example with data about air pollution.     

Incentives to cooperate and the discretionary power of courts in divorce law

In this paper, we study how the uncertainty in the behavior of judges provides parents going to separate with incentives to cooperate. We introduce a model of cooperative bargaining to describe the behavior of parents whose preferences satisfy the characterization of risk averse/pessimistic types proposed by Yaari (1987, Econometrica, 55, 95–116) in his Dual Decision Theory under Risk. The behavior of the judge is modeled in a simple manner: he is either supposed to follow a strict rule (we will say that he uses an imperative scale of alimony), or he may use discretion (he uses an indicative scale of alimony). The point is that for both parents the judgment represents an external opportunity to divorce—the disagreement point in negotiation. We show that the effective decision of parents (cooperation versus trial) depends on the specific structure of the costs and risks associated with divorce procedures, such that more uncertainty at trial increases the incentives to cooperate for risk averse parents. Finally, we give a characterization of the optimal degree of the judges’ discretionary power required to maximize the parents’ gains from negotiation.

Learning While Voting: Determinants of Collective Experimentation

This paper combines dynamic social choice and strategic experimentation to study the following question: How does a society, a committee, or, more generally, a group of individuals with potentially heterogeneous preferences, experiment with new opportunities? Each voter recognizes that, during experimentation, other voters also learn about their preferences. As a result, pivotal voters today are biased against experimentation because it reduces their likelihood of remaining pivotal. This phenomenon reduces equilibrium experimentation below the socially efficient level, and may even result in a negative option value of experimentation. However, one can restore efficiency by designing a voting rule that depends deterministically on time. Another main result is that even when payoffs of a reform are independently distributed across the population, good news about any individual's payoff increases other individuals' incentives to experiment with that reform, due to a positive voting externality.     

Insurability and Mitigation of Flood Losses in Private Households in Germany

In Germany, flood insurance is provided by private insurers as a supplement to building or contents insurance. This article presents the results of a survey of insurance companies with regard to eligibility conditions for flood insurance changes after August 2002, when a severe flood caused 1.8 billion euro of insured losses in the Elbe and the Danube catchment areas, and the general role of insurance in flood risk management in Germany. Besides insurance coverage, governmental funding and public donations played an important role in loss compensation after the August 2002 flood. Therefore, this article also analyzes flood loss compensation, risk awareness, and mitigation in insured and uninsured private households. Insured households received loss compensation earlier. They also showed slightly better risk awareness and mitigation strategies. Appropriate incentives should be combined with flood insurance in order to strengthen future private flood loss mitigation. However, there is some evidence that the surveyed insurance companies do little to encourage precautionary measures. To overcome this problem, flood hazards and mitigation strategies should be better communicated to both insurance companies and property owners.