OBJECTIVE To identify evaluations of interventions that target multiple risk factors in high-risk young people, describe their characteristics, critique their methodological quality and summarise their effectiveness. METHODS A search of the literature published between 2009 and 2014 identified 13 evaluations of interventions that targeted multiple risk factors, compared to 95 evaluations that...

AIM The aim of this study was to explore the logistical and methodological strengths and weaknesses of some of the more common research designs which can be used to evaluate the impact of system- or population-level approaches for reducing alcohol-related harms. METHOD This paper identifies studies that have evaluated system or population approaches to reduce alcohol-related harms. It highlig...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate dynamic food demand in urban China, with use of a complete dynamic demand system DLES-LA/DAIDS, which pushes forward the techniques of demand analysis. Design/methodology/approach – We employ a transitionary demand process and develop a new approach of complete demand system with a two-stage dynamic budgeting: an additively separable dynamic...

Introduction: Assessment of ethics issues is an important part of health technology assessments (HTA). However, in terms of existence of quality assessment tools, ethics for HTA is methodologically underdeveloped in comparison to other areas of HTA, such as clinical or cost effectiveness. Objective: To methodologically advance ethics for HTA by: (1) proposing and elaborating Q-SEA, the first in...

BACKGROUND Refugees with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) often present with complicated traumatic symptoms, prolonged and repeated exposure to traumatic events, acculturation, and social problems. A consensus about suitability of psychosocial treatments for refugees does not exist. Never the less there is a need to review the state of knowledge about effective treatments for traumatized re...

AIMS To analyze the association between psychosocial working conditions and burnout and its core component emotional exhaustion, a systematic literature review was undertaken including cohort studies, case-control studies, and randomized controlled trials. METHODS The literature search in Medline and PsycInfo was based on a defined search string and strict exclusion and inclusion criteria. Ev...

Two different pathogenetic mechanisms are proposed for colorectal cancers. One, the so-called "classic pathway", is the most common and depends on multiple additive mutational events (germline and/or somatic) in tumor suppressor genes and oncogenes, frequently involving chromosomal deletions in key genomic regions. Methodologically this pathway is recognizable by the phenomenon of loss of heter...

The development of molecular signatures for the prediction of time-to-event outcomes is a methodologically challenging task in bioinformatics and biostatistics. Although there are numerous approaches for the derivation of marker combinations and their evaluation, the underlying methodology often suffers from the problem that different optimization criteria are mixed during the feature selection...

This article introduces a novel observational ambulatory monitoring method called the electronically activated recorder (EAR). The EAR is a digital audio recorder that runs on a handheld computer and periodically and unobtrusively records snippets of ambient sounds from participants' momentary environments. In tracking moment-to-moment ambient sounds, it yields acoustic logs of people's days as...

BACKGROUND Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) has demonstrated efficacy in treating mood and eating disorders. This article critically reviews outcome research testing IPT for anxiety disorders, a diagnostic area where cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has dominated research and treatment. METHODS A literature search identified six open and five controlled trials of IPT for social anxiety dis...