Self-Care Instruments to Measure Nutrition Practices in Children and Parents: Psychometric Analysis.

The purposes of this study were to evaluate the psychometric properties of English and Spanish instruments that measure the nutrition behavior and practices of children and their parents. Orem's self-care deficit nursing theory was used in this methodological study. A convenience sample of 333 children and 262 mothers participated from two schools in Washington, D.

The Association Between Hunter-Killed Deer and Lyme Disease in New Jersey, 2000-2014.

Years when the deer population is robust during the autumn hunting season may point toward an elevated risk of Lyme disease (LD) in the human population two summers later. We applied overdispersed Poisson regression models to county-specific data from New Jersey for each year from 2000 to 2014. The average relative risk of LD for each additional hunter-killed deer per square mile was 1.

Demonstration of two types of fatigue in subjects with chronic liver disease using factor analysis.

Purpose: The purpose of this investigation was to determine if it was possible to separate fatigue self-reports into two distinct types of fatigue symptom clusters in research subjects with chronic liver disease (CLD). It was hypothesized that when items from the Medical Outcomes Study Short-Form (SF-36v2) are combined with items from the Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS), these distinct factors will emerge.

Methods: Confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses from data collected in a prospective, natural history study of CLD patients were conducted.

Inpatient healthcare provider bypassing by women and their children in urban Bo, Sierra Leone.

Introduction: Bypassing refers to a person's decision to seek care at a healthcare facility that is not the nearest one of its type to the person's home.

Methods: This study examined inpatient care facility bypassing in urban Bo, Sierra Leone using data from 1,980 women with children 15 years of age and younger who were interviewed in 2010-2011. The locations of residential structures and hospitals were identified using a geographic information system (GIS), and the road distances from participating households to the nearest and preferred inpatient care facilities were measured.

Current and future health care professionals attitudes toward and knowledge of statistics: How confidence influences learning.

Background: Health care professionals require some understanding of statistics to successfully implement evidence based practice. Developing competency in statistical reasoning is necessary for students training in health care administration, research, and clinical care. Recently, the interest in healthcare professional's attitudes toward statistics has increased substantially due to evidence that these attitudes can hinder professionalism developing an understanding of statistical concepts.

Psychometric evaluation of the nurses' attitudes toward eICU scale.

The eICU technology system has been implemented nationwide to facilitate efficient and safe care for patients. The purpose of this study was to provide psychometric evidence of the reliability and validity of an instrument, the Nurses' Attitudes Toward eICU Scale (NATES). The study involved 117 registered nurses working in critical care units that had not yet implemented eICU technology.

Measurement of substance abuse treatment outcomes over time.

There are many different ways of calculating the impact of treatment on drug use; percentage of positive drug tests, probability of drug use, percentage of patients abstaining from any use, total number of days of use, daily probability of use and average days till next use, are some examples reported in the literature. We prefer average days till next use because (1) it allows intermittent drug use and relapse; (2) it fits the client's count of drug-free days, and (3) it simultaneously accounts for both tests results and time between tests. We show by way of an example, how conclusions arrived at using average days till next use are likely to be different from other measures in analysis of recent data from impact of online treatment on drug use.

Impact of online counseling on drug use: a pilot study.

Purpose: To examine the effect of online counseling abuse counseling on drug use among underserved patients.

Methods: Subjects were recruited from an Indian Reservation in Eagle Butte, South Dakota; a family court in Newark, New Jersey; a probation office in Alexandria, Virginia; and a co-occurring disorders treatment clinic in Washington, District of Columbia. Subjects were predominantly poor, undereducated, unemployed, court involved, or diagnosed with co-occurring psychiatric disorders.

Childhood obesity study: a pilot study of the effect of the nutrition education program Color My Pyramid.

The need for successful nutrition interventions is critical as the prevalence of childhood obesity increases. Thus, this pilot project examines the effect of a nutrition education program, Color My Pyramid, on children's nutrition knowledge, self-care practices, activity levels, and nutrition status. Using a pretest-posttest, quasiexperimental design, 126 fourth- and fifth-grade students from experimental and control schools are compared.

Two decades of nurse-led research on smoking during pregnancy and postpartum: concept development to intervention trials.

Tobacco use during pregnancy and postpartum is a leading cause of preventable morbidities for women and their infants. Over the past two decades, nursing research has addressed this recalcitrant clinical problem from a variety of conceptual and methodological perspectives. The 64 published studies (1988-2009) that met inclusion criteria for this systematic review represent the full research trajectory from concept development to intervention testing.

Health care research: alternative approaches to study design and data analysis.

In determining intervention effects, quality improvement researchers typically use statistical testing--Fisher's "significance testing" and/or Neyman and Pearson's "hypothesis testing." Such tests are employed in an effort to demonstrate whether or not a statistically and practically significant difference exists when comparing experimental and comparison group(s). Although power analysis is often not considered when these tests are applied, this article postulates potential benefits of including power analysis in the early stages of a study's design.

Self-experiments and analytical relapse prevention.

Patients give many reasons for why they have not kept up with their resolutions; research shows that many of these causal attributions are wrong. This article provides a tool to help patients sort out causes of and constraints on their behavior, in general, and exercise, in particular. Patient's diary data can be analyzed to flag erroneous causal attributions, and thus assist patients to understand their behavior.

Description of practice as an ambulatory care nurse: psychometric properties of a practice-analysis survey.

Changes within nursing demand that a specialty conduct periodic, appropriate practice analyses to continually validate itself against preset standards. This study explicates practice analysis methods using ambulatory care nursing as an exemplar. Data derived from a focus group technique were used to develop a survey that was completed by 499 ambulatory care nurses.

Statistical and nonstatistical significance: implications for health care researchers.

Quality improvement professionals have to decide whether a change has led to improvement. This is typically done through testing the statistical significance of the findings. In this article, we explore controversies surrounding statistical significance testing with attention to contemporary criticism of bad practice resulting from the misuse of statistical significance testing.

Costs and benefits of combining probation and substance abuse treatment.

Aims Of The Study: We compared seamless combination of probation and treatment (where the probation officer is co-located with treatment provider or is actively engaged in treatment) to traditional probation where treatment is left to the client's choice.

Methods: Clients were randomly assigned to either seamless or traditional probation. We used a decision analytic approach which had two advantages: First it separated estimation of probability of adverse events (e.

Postpartum tobacco use: developing evidence for practice.

Most women who quit smoking during pregnancy return to tobacco use within 6 months after delivery. Findings demonstrate that minimal intervention effectiveness exists with strategies to prevent postpartum smoking relapse. This article provides a synthesis of current research on postpartum tobacco use.

Simulated environment is not appropriate.

In the Spring 2005 issue of Quality Management in Health Care, Borckand et al examined the performance of Tukey's chart in a simulated environment. Unfortunately, the simulated environment does not reflect the type of settings where Tukey's chart has been proposed to be most effective. Tukey's charts are ideally used on relatively small data sets.

Construct validity and reliability of scores on scales to measure the impairment of health-related quality of life in persons with asthma.

The purpose of this study was to test the reliability, validity, and effectiveness of a health-related quality of life (HRQOL) instrument--the MiniAQLQ--among persons with asthma who were using a web-based intervention for guided self-management (www.MyAsthma.com).

Activity based costing of probation with and without substance abuse treatment: a case study.

Background: Since many offenders have drug problems, investigators have proposed that drug testing and treatment should be an integral part of probation. In 1994, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) funded a demonstration project designed to integrate drug treatment with traditional supervision services. As part of this demonstration a new procedure called 'seamless' probation was set up in which treatment providers were co-located with probation officers and probation officers coordinated offenders' participation in treatment.