OBJECTIVE To describe the initial steps in the development and validation of a new self-reported instrument designed to assess daily rhythms of mood symptoms, namely, the Mood Rhythm Instrument. METHODS A multidisciplinary group of experts took part in systematic meetings to plan the construction of the instrument. Clarity of items, their relevance to evaluation of mood states, and the consis...

OBJECTIVE To document the prevalence and characteristics of the use of sun-protective items by Japanese pedestrians during the midday hours of summer weekends. DESIGN Cross-sectional study. SETTING Observations were undertaken at 5 locales in central Tokyo on weekends between 11 am and 2 pm from August 7 through 22, 2010. PARTICIPANTS A total of 2338 Japanese pedestrians, from adolescents...

BACKGROUND Synthesis of patient-reported outcome (PRO) data is hindered by the range of available PRO measures (PROMs) composed of multiple scales and single items with differing terminology and content. The use of core outcome sets, an agreed minimum set of outcomes to be measured and reported in all trials of a specific condition, may improve this issue but methods to select core PRO domains ...

Recommender systems have been extensively studied to present items such as movies, music, and books that are likely of interest to the user. We propose to use correlations among nursing diagnoses, outcomes, and interventions to create a recommender system for constructing nursing care plans. Nursing care plan recommender systems can provide clinical decision support, nursing education, clinical...

Background Professionalism is a pillar of paramedicine. Internationally paramedic curricula emphasize valid assessment of three domains: cognitive, psychomotor, and affective domains (professionalism). Little is reported on competency measures for professionalism specific to paramedicine. Literature suggests that paramedic students, paramedic practitioners, medical directors, and patients belie...

The aim of collaborative filtering is to help users to find items that they should appreciate from huge catalogues. In that field, we can distinguish user-based from item-based approaches. The former is based on the notion of user neighbourhoods while the latter uses item neighbourhoods. The definition of similarity between users and items is a key problem in both approaches. While traditional ...

Dabrowski's (1972) theory of positive disintegration argues that anxiety appears to be the dynamic of self-actualization. A study to assess this hypothesis (Wilkins, Hjelle, & Thompson, 1977) reported that self-actualization was incompatible with chronic, debilitating or neurotic anxiety. The current study further examined the empirical and conceptual relation between anxiety and self-actualiza...

Data, information and knowledge are all represented in a single formalism as “items”. Items contain two types of acceptability measures that measure the invalidity of item instances. Objects are item building operators that also contain two types of acceptability measures. These acceptability measures define a graduated acceptability region for data, information and knowledge. This region repre...

BACKGROUND The Claim Evaluation Tools database contains multiple-choice items for measuring people's ability to apply the key concepts they need to know to be able to assess treatment claims. We assessed items from the database using Rasch analysis to develop an outcome measure to be used in two randomised trials in Uganda. Rasch analysis is a form of psychometric testing relying on Item Respon...