ABSTRACT
Advances in Business Statistics, Methods and Data Collection delivers insights into the latest state of play in producing establishment statistics, obtained from businesses, farms and institutions. Presenting materials and reflecting discussions from the 6th International Conference on Establishment Statistics (ICES-VI), this edited volume provides a broad overview of methodology underlying current establishment statistics from every aspect of the production life cycle while spotlighting innovative and impactful advancements in the development, conduct, and evaluation of modern establishment statistics programs. Highlights include: •Practical discussions on agile, timely, and accurate measurement of rapidly evolving economic phenomena such as globalization, new computer technologies, and the informal sector. •Comprehensive explorations of administrative and new data sources and technologies, covering big (organic) data sources and methods for data integration, linking, machine learning and visualization. •Detailed compilations of statistical programs responses to wide-ranging data collection and production challenges, among others caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. In-depth examinations of business survey questionnaire design, computerization, pretesting methods, experimentation, and paradata. •Methodical presentations of conventional and emerging procedures in survey statistics techniques for establishment statistics, encompassing probability sampling designs and sample coordination, non-probability sampling, missing data treatments, small area estimation and Bayesian methods. Providing a broad overview of most up-to-date science, this book challenges the status quo and prepares researchers for current and future challenges in establishment statistics and methods. Perfect for survey researchers, government statisticians, National Bank employees, economists, and undergraduate and graduate students in survey research and economics, Advances in Business Statistics, Methods and Data Collection will also earn a place in the toolkit of researchers working with data in industries across a variety of fields. © 2023 John Wiley and Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: The multisystem COVID-19 can cause prolonged symptoms requiring rehabilitation. This study describes the creation of a remote COVID-19 rehabilitation assessment tool to allow timely triage, assessment and management. It hypotheses those with post-COVID-19 syndrome, potentially without laboratory confirmation and irrespective of initial disease severity, will have significant rehabilitation needs. METHODS: Cross-sectional study of consecutive patients referred by general practitioners (April-November 2020). Primary outcomes were presence/absence of anticipated sequelae. Binary logistic regression was used to test association between acute presentation and post-COVID-19 symptomatology. RESULTS: 155 patients (n=127 men, n=28 women, median age 39 years, median 13 weeks post-illness) were assessed using the tool. Acute symptoms were most commonly shortness of breath (SOB) (74.2%), fever (73.5%), fatigue (70.3%) and cough (64.5%); and post-acutely, SOB (76.7%), fatigue (70.3%), cough (57.4%) and anxiety/mood disturbance (39.4%). Individuals with a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 were 69% and 63% less likely to have anxiety/mood disturbance and pain, respectively, at 3 months. CONCLUSIONS: Rehabilitation assessment should be offered to all patients suffering post-COVID-19 symptoms, not only those with laboratory confirmation and considered independently from acute illness severity. This tool offers a structure for a remote assessment. Post-COVID-19 programmes should include SOB, fatigue and mood disturbance management.
ABSTRACT
Purpose of Study: Since 1972, Bhutan has followed the philosophy of Gross National Happiness (GNH) - an alternative to GDP which quantifies the holistic wellness of its citizens' as opposed to the production of materials as a metric of the nation's development & prosperity. Nonetheless, the government identified youth and young adult (YYA) mental health to be a major/increasing point of concern from a 2015 national survey, indicating need for a closer look at Bhutan's mental health burden. By exploring YYA perspectives of mental health via an online survey, we hope to inform resource creation, support existing infrastructure, & guide future research. Methods Used: Survey questions were developed via collaboration of Canadian and Bhutanese shareholders to ensure cultural appropriateness and relevance. In all, 11 demographics questions, 17 10-point Likert scale questions, and 7 written answer questions were included in the survey. Students enrolled at university in Thimphu, Bhutan, between the ages of 18-25 inclusive and who are Bhutanese citizens or who have lived the majority of their life in the country were recruited via email. 289 participants consented to & completed the online survey via Qualtrics. Survey responses were quantitatively analyzed in R-Studio, save for written responses still under qualitative analysis in NVivo and not included in this discussion. Summary of Results: On average, YYA indicated feeling sad, anxious, and/or depressed more frequently than they perceived peers/family to feel the same. Strong agreement was seen regarding treatability of mental health conditions (median of 9 on 10-point Likert scale). Environmental factors, adverse childhood experiences, & personal weakness were noted to have detrimental impacts on wellbeing. The majority of respondents indicated positive familial relationships & confidence in parents to understand/support mental health issues, with medians for all family-related 10-point Likert scale questions being above 7.5. Most respondents agreed they were able to get through difficult times and be self-reliant, with all associated 10-point Likert questions having a median over 5 for moderate agreement. A general positive response to using apps or websites as mental health resources was noted. Relating to COVID-19, minimal negative outcomes in terms of diet, anxiety/depression, home life, & substance use were reported. Strong agreement (median of over 7.5 on 10-point Likert scale) was noted with regard to increases in domestic violence as a result of the pandemic. Conclusion(s): Differences between self-ratings and perceptions of others' mental health by Bhutanese YYA indicate a lack of open communication about the topic. Directing resources towards discussions about mental health may be beneficial - especially if technologically accessible. Impacts of the pandemic may continue to develop as Bhutan emerges from lockdown protocols;increasing domestic violence is a primary concern of Bhutanese YYA meriting research.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: In the UK, there have been multiple waves of COVID-19, with a five-tier alert system created to describe the transmission rate and appropriate restrictions. While acute mortality decreased, there continued to be a significant morbidity, with individuals suffering from persistent, life-restricting symptoms for months to years afterwards. A remote rehabilitation tool was created at the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre (DMRC) Stanford Hall to assess post-COVID-19 symptoms and their impact on the UK military.This study aims to understand changes in post-COVID-19 syndrome between wave 1 and wave 2, identify interactions between alert level and symptoms and investigate any predictive nature of acute symptoms for postacute symptomology in a young, physically active population. METHODS: Cross-sectional study of 458 consecutive remote rehabilitation assessments performed at DMRC Stanford Hall between 2 April 2020 and 29 July 2021. Consultations were coded, anonymised, and statistical analysis was performed to determine associations between acute and postacute symptoms, and between symptoms, alert levels and waves. RESULTS: 435 assessments were eligible; 174 in wave 1 and 261 in wave 2. Post-COVID-19 syndrome prevalence reduced from 43% to 2% between the waves. Acutely, widespread pain was more prevalent in wave 2 (p<0.001). Postacutely, there was increased anxiety (p=0.10) in wave 1 and increased sleep disturbance (p<0.001), memory/concentration issues (p<0.001) and shortness of breath/cough (p=0.017) in wave 2. Increasing alert level was associated with increased postacute symptom prevalence (p=0.046), with sleep disturbance increasing at higher alert level (p=0.016). Acute symptoms, including fatigue, sleep disturbance and myalgia, were associated with multiple postacute symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: This study reports the overall prevalence and symptom burden in the UK military in the first two waves of COVID-19. By reporting differences in COVID-19 in different waves and alert level, this study highlights the importance of careful assessment and contextual understanding of acute and postacute illnesses for individual management plans.
ABSTRACT
Background: There is growing concern surrounding high rates of binge drinking and illicit drug use on Canadian university campuses. Furthermore.Univ. Students Face A Range of Barriers to Accessing Evidence-based Substance Use and Mental Hlth. Serv.. Both of These Issues Are of Increased Relevance in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic. the SSHRC UniVenture Consortium Represents A Partnership Across Five Can. Universities Whose Aim Is to Address the Need for Accessible and Evidence-based Substance Use and Mental Hlth. Prev. Serv. on Campuses. to That End, the Consortium Adapted the PreVenture Prog., A Brief Personality-targeted Preventative Intervention Which Has Proven to Be Effective in Reducing Substance Use and Mental Hlth. Prob. among High Sch. Students, Such That It Be: (1) Developmentally Appropriate for First- and Second-Yr. Undergraduate Students and (2) Delivered Virtually. Method(s): the Adapted uniVenture Prog. Was Piloted Across All Five Partner Universities. after Screening for Eligibility Based on Age, Enrolment Status and Elevation on One of Four Personality Dimensions, 604 Students Were Invited to Participate in the Intervention Sessions. Result(s): Low Intervention Uptake (N = 90;14.90%) Suggests Mild-to-moderate Demand for Virtual Interventions, However, High Treatm. Completion Rates (N = 83;92.22%) Suggest High Practicality for Those Who Did Enroll. High Mean Ratings for Satisfaction, (M = 4.87, SD = 1.48), Usefulness (M = 4.97, SD = 1.30), Useability (M = 5.32, SD = 1.19) and Ease of Lrng. (M = 5.57, SD = 1.23) Indicate High Acceptability among Participants. Qualitative Student Responses Indicate Short-term Prom. of Cogn.-Behav. Skills and 1-month Follow-up Outcomes Showed Depressive Symptoms to Decrease Significantly (P 0.001) for All Students from Pre to Post Intervention. Both of These Outcomes Have Been Shown to Predict Longer-term Alcohol Outcomes in Previous Studs.. Conclusion : the Adapted UniVenture Intervention Is Feasible and Acceptable for Undergraduate Students Across Canada, but Strategies to Address Low Intervention Uptake Should Be Considered in the Fut..
ABSTRACT
Many volumes have been devoted to intuitive but misguided ideas about how learning works. This is as true in the use of educational technologies in higher education as it is in other related fields of educational research. As we (hopefully) emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, educational technologies are poised to feature more heavily in post-secondary education into the future. There is a substantial incentive for bad actors to provide oversimplified solutions to complex problems. These neat solutions may seem attractive to sector and institutional leaders looking for solutions to the morass of wicked problems the pandemic has inflamed. The pages of this journal and others provide a venue for world-class research on the use of educational technologies in higher education. Despite this enormous volume of high-quality work, misconceptions and oversimplified notions of learning with technology persist. Much has been made of weird ideas about learning but, with higher education facing an increasingly uncertain digitally-mediated future, there is significant risk that these ideas could have a profound influence on the global higher education sector into the future. © Articles published in the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET) are available under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives Licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Authors retain copyright in their work and grant AJET right of first publication under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on mental health is still being unravelled. It is important to identify which individuals are at greatest risk of worsening symptoms. This study aimed to examine changes in depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms using prospective and retrospective symptom change assessments, and to find and examine the effect of key risk factors. METHOD: Online questionnaires were administered to 34 465 individuals (aged 16 years or above) in April/May 2020 in the UK, recruited from existing cohorts or via social media. Around one-third (n = 12 718) of included participants had prior diagnoses of depression or anxiety and had completed pre-pandemic mental health assessments (between September 2018 and February 2020), allowing prospective investigation of symptom change. RESULTS: Prospective symptom analyses showed small decreases in depression (PHQ-9: -0.43 points) and anxiety [generalised anxiety disorder scale - 7 items (GAD)-7: -0.33 points] and increases in PTSD (PCL-6: 0.22 points). Conversely, retrospective symptom analyses demonstrated significant large increases (PHQ-9: 2.40; GAD-7 = 1.97), with 55% reported worsening mental health since the beginning of the pandemic on a global change rating. Across both prospective and retrospective measures of symptom change, worsening depression, anxiety and PTSD symptoms were associated with prior mental health diagnoses, female gender, young age and unemployed/student status. CONCLUSIONS: We highlight the effect of prior mental health diagnoses on worsening mental health during the pandemic and confirm previously reported sociodemographic risk factors. Discrepancies between prospective and retrospective measures of changes in mental health may be related to recall bias-related underestimation of prior symptom severity.
ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in Britain's biggest debt in over 60 years. But the country also needs to spend over £600 billion to stimulate economic recovery as well as meet its target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. While the UK government's private finance initiative model for procuring public infrastructure has fallen out of favour, private investment can deliver major public benefits if properly managed. This paper highlights both good and bad outcomes of private finance initiatives around the world and suggests how they can best be used to support the UK government's long-term aspirations to 'build back better' and meet its climate targets. The key is to focus on specific projects and to structure deals to provide quality, value for money and longevity. © 2022 ICE Publishing: All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
There is growing support to reverse mass incarceration in the United States, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Little is known about what types and scale of community investments are most effective to support mass decarceration. Using a public health prevention framework, we conducted a scoping review to examine community-based programs that reduced criminal legal involvement. We searched PubMed, Embase and three EBSCO databases from 1990 through September 2019 for all experimental or quasi-experimental studies testing interventions pertaining to education, housing, healthcare, employment, or social support services and how they affected an individual's criminal legal outcomes. Our review identified 53 studies that demonstrated the efficacy of early childhood educational interventions and nurse-family partnership programs, post-secondary education for incarcerated students, navigation programs linking incarcerated people to community resources, and peer support upon release to reduce criminal legal system exposure. In concert with legislative action to end mass incarceration, additional research is needed to test interventions designed to achieve mass decarceration which cross multiple domains, interrogate community-level impacts and ascertain long-term outcomes.
ABSTRACT
Purpose: Although frailty is a modifiable risk factor for morbidity and mortality among kidney transplant (KT) candidates, the optimal duration of effective prehabilitation interventions is unknown. We have previously shown that 8-weeks of supervised exercise is associated with improved frailty parameters, quality of life (QOL), and LE function in patients with advanced CKD, including KT candidates. The objective of this study was to examine whether only 4-weeks of supervised exercise is also associated with improved frailty parameters, QOL, and LE function. Methods: We conducted a prospective, pilot study between 7/2018 and 5/2020 involving adults with ≥ stage 4 CKD who were 1) frail or pre-frail by Fried phenotype and/or 2) had a Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB) score ≤ 10. Quality of life was measured using the Kidney Disease Quality of Life (KDQOL) survey. The intervention consisted of 4-weeks of twice weekly supervised exercise sessions (8 sessions) in our pulmonary rehabilitation unit. Pre- and post-intervention comparisons were made using Wilcoxon signed-rank test for continuous variables and McNemar's test for categorical variables. Results: We enrolled 35 participants of whom 27 (77%) completed the intervention. We excluded two participants whose intervention was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Of the remaining 25 participants, median age was 62 (range 40-87) years, 56% were male, 64% were on dialysis, and 84% had been evaluated for KT. Following the intervention, 67% of participants who were frail at baseline improved their frailty score (n=6/9). No improvement in grip strength was observed. However, multiple other parameters improved significantly, including fatigue, walking time, balance scores, and chair stand scores. (Table Presented) Conclusions: Our pilot study suggests that 4-weeks of supervised exercise is associated with improved fatigue, walking time, balance scores, and chair stand scores among patients with advanced CKD. Longer interventions, however, may be required to modify grip strength. This study provides important preliminary data for future studies aimed at designing effective prehabilitation strategies prior to KT.
ABSTRACT
Trends are important to us as researchers and practitioners in higher education (Boer et al., 2002). Trends influence decisions about funding for research, decisions about organisational infrastructure, and the establishment of new degrees. The dictionary definition of trend is a general direction in which something is developing or changing, and also a fashion. According to these definitions, a trend is both measurable with evidence that confirms the trend’s existence and direction, and at the same time emergent, and sometimes fleeting. There is little in the design of tertiary institutions that encourages a timely response to trends, and yet there are people within universities who invest significant time in providing support for the implementation of new types of technology or pedagogical approaches for teaching and research staff. Outside of university settings, these would be R&D teams – testing the use of the latest technology and figuring out how it could be implemented in new contexts. White papers are often the way that these findings are shared in other areas. In education technology in higher education, we share innovation in practice through conferences and journals as well as online social networks and communities of practice such as Twitter and professional society networking platforms. The sharing of research in the area of education technology is subject to a significant lag for several reasons. Social networks reach some, but not all of the community, and journal articles can sometimes take months to move from submission to publication. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, sharing at conferences has been challenging, but even outside of the current restrictions on travel, conference attendance was reliant on funding from organisations or by individuals. Despite this, research in this field still experiences trends in emerging technology, methodological and theoretical approaches, and pedagogical practice © Articles published in the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET) are available under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives Licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Authors retain copyright in their work and grant AJET right of first publication under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
ABSTRACT
Background: Mirroring the rise in heroin use among older adults, the rate of rise of opioid-related overdose deaths from 2016 to 2017 in Chicago was highest among ages 55-64 (+26.7%) and 65-74 (+95.0%). In Chicago, recent work examining spatial distribution of overdose deaths in adults over 50 showed opioid overdose deaths are geographically clustered. This hyper-local impact creates an opportunity for locationally targeted interventions. Opioid overdose education and community naloxone distribution (OEND) is cost effective, results in reduced opioid-related emergency department visits, and may have a mortality benefit. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the opioid crisis and 2020 was the deadliest year for opioid overdoses in the history of Chicago but many in-person community outreach and training initiatives have paused or been transitioned to virtual platforms due to the pandemic. A video-conferencing based virtual OEND intervention targeting community organizations identified to be within communities with high overdose rates for older adults has the potential to reach this particularly vulnerable population during the limits imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: An existing in-person training for opioid overdose identification and naloxone administration was adapted to a virtual format and revised to include precautions in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g. changes needed to respiratory resuscitation). A protocol was developed for participants to acquire naloxone. Next steps include soliciting curriculum feedback from diverse stakeholders. We then plan to deliver the curriculum to senior housing residents, community-dwelling older adults, and aging services professionals. Program recruitment will be focused in areas with more highly clustered fatal overdoses. A 5-item Likert assessment on participant confidence in responding to overdose will be used for evaluation. Results: The results will be discussed and will include data on number of trainings, attendee types, and post-training survey results. Conclusions: A geographically targeted virtual OEND training represents an innovative means to continue essential outreach aimed at reducing the frequency of fatal opioid overdoses among Chicago's older adults in high-risk communities.