Search results for "Study"
showing 10 items of 15483 documents
Passing the test of motherhood? Self‐esteem development and birth experience in the transition to motherhood : A longitudinal mixed methods study in …
2022
Aims To investigate women's childbirth experiences and their relation to self-esteem development in the postpartum year. Design A mixed methods study. Methods Women (N = 125) completed survey questionnaires regarding their self-esteem and childbirth experiences at three time points in 2020–2021: third trimester of pregnancy (T1), 4–8 weeks postpartum (T2) and 1 year postpartum (T3). The survey results were analysed using qualitative thematic and quantitative path analyses with latent change factors. The open-ended answers of the women who demonstrated a change in self-esteem between T2 and T3 were then compared. The STROBE checklist was used as the reporting guideline. Results The quantitat…
A dynamic performance management approach to support local strategic planning
2015
In spite of efforts devoted in the last decades to local strategic planning, such field of research and practice has been frequently characterized by a lack of implementation. We argue here that this phenomenon is due to the limitations of the static and linear approach to local strategic planning in fostering the development of common shared view among policy makers on the relevant system's structure and behavior. By means of a case-study, we illustrate how an approach based on system dynamics modeling applied to Performance Management can be useful to overcome such weaknesses. The proposed approach enhances a better understanding of the causes and effects related to adopted policies, unde…
Systematic conformational search analysis of the SRR and RRR epimers of 7-hydroxymatairesinol
2010
An extensive and systematic conformational search was performed on the two epimers of the natural lignan 7-hydroxymatairesinol (HMR), by means of a home-made Systematic Conformational Search Analysis (SCSA) code, designed to select more and more stable conformers through sequential geometry optimization of trial structures at increasing levels of calculation theory. In the present case, the starting molecular structures were selected by the semi-empirical AM1 method and filtered – i.e. decreased in number by choosing the more stable species – on the basis of their energy calculated by the HF method and the 6-31G(d) basis set. The geometries obtained were further refined by performing densit…
Contributions of mean and shape of blood pressure distribution to worldwide trends and variations in raised blood pressure: A pooled analysis of 1018…
2018
Background: Change in the prevalence of raised blood pressure could be due to both shifts in the entire distribution of blood pressure (representing the combined effects of public health interventions and secular trends) and changes in its high-blood-pressure tail (representing successful clinical interventions to control blood pressure in the hypertensive population). Our aim was to quantify the contributions of these two phenomena to the worldwide trends in the prevalence of raised blood pressure. Methods: We pooled 1018 population-based studies with blood pressure measurements on 88.6 million participants from 1985 to 2016. We first calculated mean systolic blood pressure (SBP), mean dia…
How many longitudinal covariate measurements are needed for risk prediction?
2014
Abstract Objective In epidemiologic follow-up studies, many key covariates, such as smoking, use of medication, blood pressure, and cholesterol, are time varying. Because of practical and financial limitations, time-varying covariates cannot be measured continuously, but only at certain prespecified time points. We study how the number of these longitudinal measurements can be chosen cost-efficiently by evaluating the usefulness of the measurements for risk prediction. Study Design and Setting The usefulness is addressed by measuring the improvement in model discrimination between models using different amounts of longitudinal information. We use simulated follow-up data and the data from t…
Teaching programming by emphasizing self-direction: How did students react to the active role required of them?
2013
Lecturing is known to be a controversial form of teaching. With massed classrooms, in particular, it tends to constrain the active participation of students. One of the remedies applied to programming education is to use technology that can vitalize interaction in the classroom, while another is to base teaching increasingly on programming activities. In this article, we present the first results of an exploratory study, in which we teach programming without lectures, exams, or grades, by heavily emphasizing programming activity, and, in a pedagogical sense, student self-direction. This article investigates how students reacted to the active role required of them and what issues emerged in …
Super-fit and population size reduction in compact Differential Evolution
2011
Although Differential Evolution is an efficient and versatile optimizer, it has a wide margin of improvement. During the latest years much effort of computer scientists studying Differential Evolution has been oriented towards the improvement of the algorithmic paradigm by adding and modifying components. In particular, two modifications lead to important improvements to the original algorithmic performance. The first is the super-fit mechanism, that is the injection at the beginning of the optimization process of a solution previously improved by another algorithm. The second is the progressive reduction of the population size during the evolution of the population. Recently, the algorithm…
Assessing game experience: Heart rate variability, in-game behavior and self-report measures
2014
Assessing game experience by means of recordings of physiological reactions elicited during game play is a technique that has gained popularity in recent years in the field of digital games research. However, since physiological signals are typically linked to several psychological processes, the use of some measures such as cardiac activity or heart rate (HR) remains problematic. The goal of the present study is to investigate to what extent game logs and self-report measures of game experience have a predictive value for heart rate variability during game play. Our results showed that the accurate registration of in-game behaviors by means of game logs carries the potential of providing r…
Internet Adoption at the User Level: Empirical Evidence from The Gambia
2014
The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) are used to investigate technology adoption. However, its application in Sub-Saharan Africa is rare and barely extended to the validation phase. In this paper, we introduce six new moderating factors for UTAUT core determinants and two other direct determinants of Internet adoption. The objective of this approach is to identify relevant elements of Internet adoption at the user level in The Gambia. Moderating factors are interacting terms used when the relationship between independent and dependent variable is weak, inconsistent or non-existent. A case study research design was employed and the data were gathered in Autumn of 20…
Fall Detection Using Location Sensors and Accelerometers
2015
The rapid aging of the world's population is driving the development of pervasive solutions for elder care. These solutions, which often involve fall detection with accelerometers, are accurate in laboratory conditions but can fail in some real-life situations. To overcome this, the authors present the Confidence system, which detects falls mainly with location sensors. A user wears one to four tags. By detecting tag locations with sensors, the system can recognize the user's activity, such as falling and then lying down afterward, as well as the context in terms of the location in the home. The authors used a scenario consisting of events difficult to recognize as falls or nonfalls to comp…