OBJECTIVE To examine the magnitude of explicit and implicit weight biases compared to biases against other groups; and identify student factors predicting bias in a large national sample of medical students. METHODS A web-based survey was completed by 4,732 1st year medical students from 49 medical schools as part of a longitudinal study of medical education. The survey included a validated m...

Assessment of test bias is important to establish the construct validity of tests. Assessment of differential item functioning (DIF) is an important first step in this process. DIF is present when examinees from different groups have differing probabilities of success on an item, after controlling for overall ability level. Here, we present analysis of DIF in the Cognitive Assessment Screening ...

Background: Macrosomia is a risk factor for adverse maternal and neonatal outcomes and previous studies have reported different prevalence of macrosomia in Iran. We conducted a meta-analysis to estimate the overall prevalence of macrosomia in Iran. Materials and Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted of all published literature pertaining to prevalence rates of macrosomia ...

Background: During the course of disease, particularly of chronic diseases, changes in internal standards cause certain changes in the estimation of quality of life (QOL). These changes indicate the phenomenon of ‘response shift’. The present study aimed at assessing response shift in different scales of QOL in Iranian cancer patients.    Methods: To assess response shift...

The chimeric faces test is a frequently used behavioural test of lateralisation for cognitive processing. Performance on this task is typically quantified in terms of bias towards selecting faces where positive facial emotion is expressed in the viewer's left visual field, indicating right hemisphere dominance for the task. This paper examines an alternative measure that may be extracted from r...

The present study investigated evidence for race-related test bias in cognitive measures used in the baseline assessment of the ACTIVE clinical trial. Test bias against African Americans has been documented in both cognitive aging and early life span studies. Despite significant mean performance differences, Multiple Indicators Multiple Causes (MIMIC) models suggested most differences were at t...

Verification bias can influence the interpretation of the most important screening test for prostate cancer, measurement of prostate-specific antigen (PSA). Such bias arises when the presence or absence of prostate cancer has not been verified by prostate biopsy in all subjects in the screened population. In this issue of the Journal, Punglia et al. report on how verification bias alters the se...

This investigation tracked changes in categorical bias (i.e., placing objects belonging to the same spatial group closer together than they really are) while 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds and adults were learning a set of locations. Participants learned the locations of 20 objects marked by dots on the floor of an open square box divided into quadrants. At test, participants attempted to place the o...

this study investigates issues on efficiency and elasticity of broiler production in peninsular malaysia. data from 296 broiler farms were subjected to sfa, dea and bootstrap methods for technical efficiency; translog and tobit regression analyses to estimate elasticity of production and determinants of efficiency respectively in broiler production. we found that farmers produce mean efficiency...

BACKGROUND A spectrum effect was defined as differences in the sensitivity or specificity of a diagnostic test according to the patient's characteristics or disease features. A spectrum effect can lead to a spectrum bias when subgroup variations in sensitivity or specificity also affect the likelihood ratios and thus post-test probabilities. We propose and illustrate a methodological framework ...