Rapid assessment of communication consistency: sentiment analysis of public health briefings during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: A key component of the initial public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic involved the use of mass media briefings led by public health officials to communicate updates during a time of great uncertainty and rapidly changing information. This study aims to examine the consistency of communications expressed during the public health briefings to generate novel insights about the type, direction, and strength of public health messages. The data source included 131 readily accessible public health briefings alongside the provincial and national new confirmed case counts during the first two waves of rapidly increasing cases during the pandemic in Alberta, Canada.

Advancing discussion of ethics in mixed methods health services research.

Background: To describe the ethical issues and experiences of scientists conducting mixed methods health services research and to advance empirical and conceptual discussion on ethical integrity in mixed methods health research.

Methods: The study was conducted with 64 scholars, faculty and consultants from the NIH-funded Mixed Methods Research Training Program (MMRTP) for the Health Sciences. This was a cross-sectional study.

Assessing competency-based evaluation course impacts: A mixed methods case study.

The contexts in which evaluators develop and apply their expertise are increasingly complex; evaluator education needs to provide robust opportunities to support and assess the progressive, lifelong development of relevant knowledge and skills. This mixed methods case study begins to address the dearth of empirical evidence assessing the impacts and learner experiences of competency-based approaches to evaluator education. A decade-in-the-making doctoral evaluation course based on the Canadian Evaluation Society's Competencies for Canadian Evaluation Practice created an opportune study setting.

Competency-based achievement system: using formative feedback to teach and assess family medicine residents' skills.

Problem Addressed: Family medicine residency programs require innovative means to assess residents' competence in "soft" skills (eg, patient-centred care, communication, and professionalism) and to identify residents who are having difficulty early enough in their residency to provide remedial training.

Objective Of Program: To develop a method to assess residents' competence in various skills and to identify residents who are having difficulty.

Program Description: The Competency-Based Achievement System (CBAS) was designed to measure competence using 3 main principles: formative feedback, guided self-assessment, and regular face-to-face meetings.