Quality of life is becoming recognized increasingly as an important outcome measure which needs to be considered by social workers. However, there does not appear to be a clear consensus about the definition of quality of life. In addition, social workers are likely to experience difficulties choosing and applying an appropriate instrument with which to measure quality of life because of the ma...

The Healthy Families Parenting Inventory (HFPI) is a 63-item outcome measure that was designed to examine change in nine parenting-related domains. The HFPI was developed to respond to the need for an outcome measure for home visitation programs that is relevant to the intervention, sensitive to change, and appropriate with a diverse participant base, and would produce data that are immediately...

OBJECTIVE To assess the extent to which current selection criteria predict success in Sri Lanka's medical schools. METHODS The study sample consisted of all students selected to all six medical schools in two consecutive entry cohorts. The aggregate marks of these students at the General Certificate of Education (GCE) Advanced Level examination, the district of entry, admission category, cand...

Goal attainment scaling (GAS) holds promise as an idiographic approach for measuring outcomes of psychosocial interventions in community settings. GAS has been criticized for untested assumptions of scaling level (i.e., interval or ordinal), inter-individual equivalence and comparability, and reliability of coding across different behavioral observation methods. We tested assumptions of equalit...

BACKGROUND This meta-analysis assessed the equipotency of carbamazepine and lithium prophylaxis in bipolar disorder. METHOD We selected only randomised, double-blind, controlled studies comparing carbamazepine with lithium from a manual and computerised search, and subjected them to a quality inventory. Their statistical results were weighted by their quality score and combined. RESULTS Fou...

OBJECTIVE To examine the effect of an outdoor smokefree law in parks and on beaches on observed smoking in selected venues. METHODS The study involved repeated observations in selected parks and beaches in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The main outcome measure was changes in observed smoking rates in selected venues from prelaw to 12 months postlaw. RESULTS No venue was 100% smokefre...

INTRODUCTION The transition for being a medical student to a full functioning intern is accompanied by considerable stress and sense of unpreparedness. Simulation based workshops were previously reported to be effective in improving the readiness of interns and residents to their daily needed skills but only few programs were implemented on a large scale. METHODS A nationally endorsed and man...

Three studies were undertaken to develop the Positive-Negative Relationship Quality scale (PN-RQ), conceptualizing relationship quality as a bidimensional construct in which the positive qualities of a relationship are treated as distinct from its negative qualities. Analyses in emerging adults (Study 1: N = 1,814), in online respondents (Study 2: N = 787) with a 2-week follow-up, and in a sing...

OBJECTIVE To test the hypothesis that obesity is associated with impaired cognitive outcomes in the pre-school years. METHODS Associations were examined between weight status at age 3-5 years and cognitive performance at age 5 years. Cognitive outcome measures were tests of pattern construction (visuospatial skills), naming vocabulary (expressive language skills), and picture similarity (reas...

CONTEXT Postural stability diminishes with longer activity, which may increase the risk of injury. Tape can increase stability, but this effect diminishes after exercise. OBJECTIVE To investigate the influence of ankle taping on postural stability during soccer-specific activity. PARTICIPANTS 10 male, injury-free, semiprofessional soccer players. INTERVENTION A 45-min treadmill protocol r...