STUDY DESIGN A proof of concept case study. OBJECTIVE To introduce and evaluate a method for identifying what constitutes a minimal clinically important difference (MCID) in the SF-36 Physical Function scale at the patient level. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA MCID has become increasingly important to researchers interested in evaluating patient care. Over the last 30 years, an array of approac...

One of us has previously argued that the Church-Turing Thesis (CTT), contra Elliot Mendelson, is not provable, and is — in light of the mind’s ability to effortlessly hypercompute — moreover false. But a new, more serious challenge has appeared on the scene: an attempt by Peter Smith to prove CTT. His reasoning is an ingenious “squeezing argument” that makes crucial use of Kolmogorov-Uspenskii ...

Information Systems (IS) research frequently uses survey data to measure the interplay between technological systems and human beings. Researchers have developed sophisticated procedures to build and validate multi-item scales that measure latent constructs. Most studies use classical test theory (CTT), which suffers from several theoretical shortcomings. We discuss these problems and present i...

This discussion was sparked by an editorial critique by Sniderman et al regarding the 2010 Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ (CTT) meta-analysis that suggested a statin ‘‘event’’ benefit from maximal lowering of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels. There are two issues that deserve further attention: the components of the CTT study end points and, most importantly, the issue of reduction ...

Currently, many models are used to capture functional software requirements. However, the Software Engineering community has faded interaction requirements into the background, dealing with interface mainly in design time. A sound and MDA-compliant software development methodology, called OO-Method, is extended in this work to bridge this gap. The issue is to define a methodology for capturing ...

Cultural differences in time attitudes and their effect on timed neuropsychological test performance were examined in matched non-clinical samples of 100 Russian and American adult volunteers using 8 tests that were previously reported to be relatively free of cultural bias: Color Trails Test (CTT); Ruff Figural Fluency Test (RFFT); Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT); and Tower of London-Drexe...

Sickle cell anemia (SCA) is an inherited hemolytic anemia with compensatory reticulocytosis. Recent studies have shown that increased levels of reticulocytosis during infancy are associated with increased hospitalizations for SCA sequelae as well as cerebrovascular pathologies. In this study, absolute reticulocyte counts (ARC) measured prior to transfusion were analysed among a cohort of 29 ped...