While manual tracing is the method of choice in measuring hippocampal volume, its time intensive nature and proneness to human error make automated methods attractive, especially when applied to large samples. Few studies have systematically compared the performance of the two techniques. In this study, we measured hippocampal volumes in a large (N = 403) population-based sample of individuals ...

The importance of power and sample size estimation for study design and analysis.

A population average regression model is proposed to assess the marginal effects of covariates on the cumulative incidence function when there is dependence across individuals within a cluster in the competing risks setting. This method extends the Fine-Gray proportional hazards model for the subdistribution to situations, where individuals within a cluster may be correlated due to unobserved s...

Some quality control schemes have been developed when several related quality characteristics are to be monitored. The familiar multivariate process monitoring and control procedure is the Hotelling’s T 2 control chart for monitoring the mean vector of the process. It is a direct analog of the univariate shewhart x̄ chart. As in the case of univariate, the ARL improvements are very important par...

BACKGROUND Systematic review and meta-analysis currently underpin much of evidence-based medicine. Such methodologies bring order to previous research, but future research planning remains relatively incoherent and inefficient. METHODS To outline a framework for evaluation of health interventions, aimed at increasing coherence and efficiency through i) making better use of information contain...

The importance of assessing fidelity has been emphasized recently with increasingly sophisticated definitions, assessment procedures, and integration of fidelity data into analyses of outcomes. Fidelity is often measured through observation and coding of instructional sessions either live or by video. However, little guidance has been provided about how to determine the number of observations n...

This review basically provided a conceptual framework for sample size calculation in epidemiologic studies with various designs and outcomes. The formula requirement of sample size was drawn based on statistical principles for both descriptive and comparative studies. The required sample size was estimated and presented graphically with different effect sizes and power of statistical test at 95...