In this tutorial, we describe a new framework for representing and synthesizing knowledge from clinical trials involving multiple outcome indicators. The framework offers a formal approach to aggregating clinical evidence. Based on the available evidence, arguments are generated for claiming that one treatment is superior, or equivalent, to another. Evidence comes from randomized clinical trial...

The paper shows the contribution that two different multiple criteria decision aiding (MCDA) methods could provide in the field of strategic decisions and urban and territorial planning. In particular, the analytic network process and the dominance-based rough set approach have been considered and discussed in the work with reference to their role in supporting such decision-making processes, t...

Egocentered networks are common in social science research. Here, the unit of analysis is a respondent (ego) together with his/her personal network (alters). Usually, several variables are measured to describe the relationship between egos and alters. In this paper, the aim is to estimate the reliability and validity of the averages of these measures by the multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) approac...

A circumplex model of affect has recently gained tentative acceptance by prominent researchers investigating the structure of dispositional affect. The present study examines the issue of construct validity of several existing measures of affect and their fit with the circumplex model. A traditional multitrait-multimethod matrix approach is utilized first, followed by a confirmatory factor anal...

BACKGROUND Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) has received much attention in recent years. HRQOL indicators have been used to track population trends, identify health disparities, and monitor progress in achieving national health objectives for 2010. Prior studies have examined health risks and HRQOL at the national level as well as at the state level. This paper examines multiple indicator...

This study explores underlying latent construct/s of gambling behaviour, and identifies indicators of "unhealthy gambling". Data were collected from Youth'07 a nationally representative sample of New Zealand secondary school students (N = 9107). Exploratory factor analyses, item-response theory analyses, multiple indicators-multiple causes, and differential item functioning analyses were used t...

This paper introduces a new functional approach to describe an expression for the gradient of mutual information with respect to the system parameters in general stochastic systems. In this approach the system input can be dependent on the system parameters in general cases. As an application of this model, it allows us to express the roles of interference and feedback and their interactions in...

Summarising the complex data generated by multiple cross sectional quality indicators in a way that patients, clinicians, managers and policymakers find useful is challenging. A common approach is aggregation to create summary measures such as star ratings and balanced score cards, but these may conceal the detail needed to focus quality improvement. We propose an alternative way of summarising...

background: the clinical course of multiple sclerosis (ms) evolves over many years. its prognosis is highly variable among affected individuals, i.e. while some suffer from early severe disabilities, others remain ambulatory and functional for many years. we used multiple sclerosis severity score (msss) and the new classification for ms severity herbert et al. introduced in 2006 according to ms...