Counting households containing same-sex couples: an inclusive approach.

Though societal acceptance of same-sex unions has grown, resulting in more inclusive government programs and policies and expanded legal protections, analysts remain uncertain about how to identify and enumerate same-sex households. Presently, the counts available of same-sex households in the United States oftentimes disagree. We show that the origins of these conflicting counts can be traced back to definitional and measurement issues in household surveys.

Nodes of knowledge, managing transfer: Shipbuilding and repair during the transformation from sail to steam.

The core theme of the special issue in which this article appears is the inherent impossibility of confining the knowledge required to build and sustain the instruments of travel to a single space or institution. This is certainly true for the ships that built empires - the large sailing and later steam ships produced by navies and companies in the process of European expansion. Ships traveled between polities and required repairs overseas, taking the construction knowledge and practices with them.

Perioperative population management for primary hip arthroplasty reduces hospital and postacute care utilization while maintaining or improving care quality.

Study Objective: Physician-led multidisciplinary care coordination decreases hospital-associated care needs. We aimed to determine whether such care coordination can show benefits through the posthospital discharge period for elective hip surgery.

Design: Time Series of prospectively recorded and historical data.

Beta-ketothiolase deficiency in a Malaysian infant.

Methylacetoacetyl-coenzyme A thiolase (MAT) deficiency is an autosomal recessive disease caused by a defect of mitochondrial acetoacetyl-CoA thiolase (T2). There is an error of isoleucine catabolism and ketone body utilization due to mutations in the acetyl-Coenzyme A acetyltransferase 1 (ACAT1) gene. We report a case of a 14 months old Sabahan boy with beta deficiency who presented with severe sepsis and ketoacidosis who subsequently recovered.

A Longitudinal Pilot Study for Examining Symptom Reduction in Patients With Cancer in a Palliative Care Program: A Primarily Rural Northeast Texas Population.

Many patients with cancer live in rural areas and research is lacking on the efficacy of palliative care programs in rural community settings. This pilot study was conducted in a primarily rural setting where healthcare professionals delivered palliative care to 52 mostly lower income patients with a variety of cancers. They were assessed for physical, financial, psychosocial and overall symptom intensity at baseline and at three consequent assessments.

Job mobility among parents of children with chronic health conditions: Early effects of the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

We examine the effects of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's (ACA) prohibition of preexisting conditions exclusions for children on job mobility among parents. We use a difference-in-difference approach, comparing pre-post policy changes in job mobility among privately-insured parents of children with chronic health conditions vs. privately-insured parents of healthy children.

Issues of rigor and feasibility when observing the quality of program implementation: a case study.

Program evaluators have paid little attention in the literature to the manner in which measuring the quality of implementation with observations requires tradeoffs between rigor (reliability and validity) and program evaluation feasibility. We present a case example of how we addressed rigor in light of feasibility concerns when developing and conducting observations for measuring the quality of implementation of a small education professional development program. We discuss the results of meta-evaluative analyses of the reliability of the quality observations, and we present conclusions about conducting observations in a rigorous and feasible manner.

Fascia iliaca compartment block reduces morphine requirement pre-operatively for patients with fractured neck of femur.

Introduction: Fascia iliaca compartment block, performed in the emergency department (A&E) in patients presenting with femoral neck fracture, has gained increasing recognition as an adjunctive analgesic. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether fascia iliaca block (FIB) significantly reduced the requirement for systemic opiates in the pre-operative setting.

Materials And Methods: Analgesia requirements for all patients admitted with fractured neck of femur to one unit over a 9-month period were gathered prospectively.

Are patients receiving health promotion advice in the chiropractic teaching clinic setting?: an impact assessment of a brief intervention to increase advising rates and goal setting.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to analyze patient-reported health issues and levels of engagement, discussion of needed lifestyle changes, and goal setting with the patient's intern or staff doctor before and after a brief intervention to increase health-promoting activities in the clinic.

Methods: Patient surveys were developed and administered to outpatients before and after a brief intervention aimed at increasing staff and intern engagement with patients on health promotion measures. Patients self-reported areas of need and levels of engagement by their doctor or intern.

Health promotion practices in two chiropractic teaching clinics: does a review of patient files reflect advice on health promotion?

Purpose: To retrospectively review patient files in two teaching clinics in the United States and to assess the documented attempts to deliver health promotion messages when a chart indicated a need for health promotion or a red-flag condition that could be helped with positive behavioral changes.

Methods: Approximately 100 patient files were randomly selected from each of two separate chiropractic teaching clinics, for patients seen after January 2007. Files were assessed for pertinent family history of diseases, personal medical history, and red-flag conditions of patients that would warrant intervention with health promotion.

The development and validation of The Inquiry Science Observation Coding Sheet.

Evaluation reports increasingly document the degree of program implementation, particularly the extent to which programs adhere to prescribed steps and procedures. Many reports are cursory, however, and few, if any, fully portray the long and winding path taken when developing evaluation instruments, particularly observation instruments. In this article, we describe the development of an observational method for evaluating the degree to which K-12 inquiry science programs are implemented, including the many steps and decisions that occurred during the development, and present evidence for the reliability and validity of the data that we collected with the instrument.

Time away from "smelling the roses": where do mothers raising children with disabilities find the time to work?

Using the Australian Time Use survey (TUS), this study examined time allocation among working parents raising children with disabilities. Findings showed that raising children with disabilities reduced the time working mothers had for leisure activities, but increased the time for socializing activities. Consistent with the literature, the latter effect probably reflects the special need of working mothers raising children with disabilities for strong social networks offering regular support.

Dialogue on private events.

In the fall of 2003, the authors corresponded on the topic of private events on the listserv of the Verbal Behavior Special Interest Group. Extracts from that correspondence raised questions about the role of response amplitude in determining units of analysis, whether private events can be investigated directly, and whether covert behavior differs from other behavior except in amplitude. Most participants took a cautious stance, noting not only conceptual pitfalls and empirical difficulties in the study of private events, but doubting the value of interpretive exercises about them.

Involving program stakeholders in reviews of evaluators' recommendations for program revisions.

Why is the use of stakeholder expertise a sound rationale for involving program staff and beneficiaries in reviewing evaluators' recommendations for program revisions? What procedures might evaluators use for involving these stakeholders in this task? What can we conclude about the likely success of these procedures? This article seeks to address these questions. In the context of educational program evaluation, some of the theoretical and practical issues about the participation of stakeholders in reviewing recommendations are discussed. The participation of program stakeholders for the purpose of tapping their expertise is explained; a recent evaluation, in which program stakeholders reviewed evaluators' recommendations for program revisions, is described; and the implications of the article for stakeholder-based evaluation and practical participatory evaluation are presented.

Replication of a high-probability request sequence with varied interprompt times in a preschool setting.

An intervention for noncompliance consisting of a series of requests promoting a high probability of compliance followed either 5 s or 20 s later by a request with a low probability of compliance was implemented with a preschool child with autism. Results indicated that applications of the request sequence with a shorter interprompt time resulted in higher rates of compliance, and longer interprompt times resulted in near-baseline rates of compliance.

State-level evaluations of school programs funded under the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act.

Although the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act of 1986 and the 1989 Amendments to the Act require states to evaluate their drug-education programs, no guidelines for conducting these evaluations have been produced, and little has been reported on how the states are conducting such evaluations. In this article, the results of a telephone survey on current state-level efforts to evaluate school programs funded under the Act are reported. Some states report studies of the implementation of the program and some report drug- and alcohol-use surveys.

On-line continuous measurement of blood glucose and meal pattern in free-feeding rats: the role of glucose in meal initiation.

Louis-Sylvestre and LeMagnen have suggested that the premeal decline in blood glucose is or reflects a signal for meal initiation in rats. In order to extend and test this hypothesis, a computer controlled system for continuously and concurrently measuring blood glucose and food intake in free-feeding rats was developed. In 18 experiments (with and without intravenous saline infusions), blood glucose declined about 12 minutes prior to meal onset.