Wisdom of the expert crowd prediction of response for 3 neurology randomized trials.

Objective: To explore the accuracy of combined neurology expert forecasts in predicting primary endpoints for trials.

Methods: We identified one major randomized trial each in stroke, multiple sclerosis (MS), and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) that was closing within 6 months. After recruiting a sample of neurology experts for each disease, we elicited forecasts for the primary endpoint outcomes in the trial placebo and treatment arms.

Comparing physicians personal prevention practices and their recommendations to patients.

Background: Hypothetical choice studies suggest that physicians often take more risk for themselves than on their patient's behalf.

Objective: To examine if physicians recommend more screening tests than they personally undergo in the real-world context of breast cancer screening.

Design: Within-subjects survey.

The psychology of intelligence analysis: drivers of prediction accuracy in world politics.

This article extends psychological methods and concepts into a domain that is as profoundly consequential as it is poorly understood: intelligence analysis. We report findings from a geopolitical forecasting tournament that assessed the accuracy of more than 150,000 forecasts of 743 participants on 199 events occurring over 2 years. Participants were above average in intelligence and political knowledge relative to the general population.

CAD or MAD? Anger (not disgust) as the predominant response to pathogen-free violations of the divinity code.

The CAD triad hypothesis (Rozin, Lowery, Imada, & Haidt, 1999) stipulates that, cross-culturally, people feel anger for violations of autonomy, contempt for violations of community, and disgust for violations of divinity. Although the disgust-divinity link has received some measure of empirical support, the results have been difficult to interpret in light of several conceptual and design flaws. Taking a revised methodological approach, including use of newly validated (Study 1), pathogen-free violations of the divinity code, we found (Study 2) little evidence of disgust-related phenomenology (nausea, gagging, loss of appetite) or action tendency (desire to move away), but much evidence of anger-linked desire to retaliate, as a major component of individuals' projected response to "pure" (pathogen-free) violations of the divinity code.

Putting Health Back Into Health Insurance Choice.

What are the barriers to voluntary take-up of high-deductible plans? We address this question using a large-scale employer survey conducted after an open-enrollment period in which a new high-deductible plan was first introduced. Only 3% of the employees chose this plan, despite the respondents' recognition of its financial advantages. Employees who believed that the high-deductible plan provided access to top physicians in the area were three times more likely to choose it than employees who did not share this belief.

Psychological strategies for winning a geopolitical forecasting tournament.

Five university-based research groups competed to recruit forecasters, elicit their predictions, and aggregate those predictions to assign the most accurate probabilities to events in a 2-year geopolitical forecasting tournament. Our group tested and found support for three psychological drivers of accuracy: training, teaming, and tracking. Probability training corrected cognitive biases, encouraged forecasters to use reference classes, and provided forecasters with heuristics, such as averaging when multiple estimates were available.

Are culturally specific measures of trauma-related anxiety and depression needed? The case of Sri Lanka.

The hypothesis that psychometric instruments incorporating local idioms of distress predict functional impairment in a non-Western, war-affected population above and beyond translations of already established instruments was tested. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted on the War-Related Psychological and Behavioral Problems section of the Penn/RESIST/Peradeniya War Problems Questionnaire (PRPWPQ; N. Jayawickreme, Jayawickreme, Goonasekera, & Foa, 2009), a measure that incorporates local idioms of distress, using data from 197 individuals living in Northern and Eastern Sri Lanka.

Direct costs associated with initiating NPH insulin versus glargine in patients with type 2 diabetes: a retrospective database analysis.

Aims: To compare total costs and risk of hypoglycemia in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) initiated on NPH insulin versus glargine in a real-world setting.

Methods: This study used claims data (10/2001 to 06/2005) from a privately insured U.S.

Cost utility of adalimumab versus infliximab maintenance therapies in the United States for moderately to severely active Crohn's disease.

Objective: To determine and compare the cost utilities of the tumour necrosis factor (TNF) antagonists adalimumab and infliximab as maintenance therapies for patients in the US with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease.

Methods: Maintenance regimens of adalimumab (40 mg every other week) and infliximab (5 mg/kg) were compared using primary data from the CHARM and published data from the ACCENT I clinical trials. Differences in study samples were minimized by matching and weighting baseline characteristics (Crohn's Disease Activity Index score, age and sex) between the patient groups using the primary clinical trial data.

Resource utilization and costs of schizophrenia patients treated with olanzapine versus quetiapine in a Medicaid population.

Objective: Compare annual health-care costs and resource utilization associated with olanzapine versus quetiapine for treating schizophrenia in a Medicaid population.

Methods: Adult schizophrenia patients were selected from deidentified Pennsylvania Medicaid claims database (1999–2003). Included patients were continuously enrolled and initiated with olanzapine or quetiapine monotherapy after a 90-day washout period.

Comparing the treatment patterns of patients with schizophrenia treated with olanzapine and quetiapine in the Pennsylvania Medicaid population.

Objective: Compare treatment patterns for patients with schizophrenia treated with olanzapine versus quetiapine in the Pennsylvania Medicaid population.

Methods: Patients (18-64 years) with a diagnosis of schizophrenia (ICD-9-CM: 295.xx) and treated with olanzapine or quetiapine were identified from the Pennsylvania Medicaid claims database (1999-2003).