Background The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of two methods of detecting differential item functioning (DIF) in the presence of multilevel data and polytomously scored items. The assessment of DIF with multilevel data (e.g., patients nested within hospitals, hospitals nested within districts) from large-scale assessment programs has received considerable attention but ...

BACKGROUND Rasch analysis with a focus on Differential Item Functioning (DIF) is increasingly used for examination of psychometric properties of health outcome measures. To take account of DIF in order to retain precision of measurement, split of DIF-items into separate sample specific items has become a frequently used technique. The purpose of the paper is to present and summarise recent adva...

Consistent and heritable individual differences in reaction to challenges, often referred to as stress coping styles, have been extensively documented in vertebrates. In fish, selection for divergent post-stress plasma cortisol levels in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) has yielded a low (LR) and a high responsive (HR) strain. A suite of behavioural traits is associated with this physiologic...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to compare the long-term outcome of patients with a solitary large (> 5 cm) hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) stage A who received liver resection (LR) or transarterial chemoembolization (TACE). METHODS Our study examined 128 patients treated by LR and 90 treated by TACE. To reduce bias in patient selection, we conducte...

–The aim of this study was to compare the acute effects of low-intensity (LI) resistance exercise (RE) with continuous blood flow restriction (CBFR) and intermittent blood flow restriction (IBFR) on systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and mean arterial pressure (MAP). After a one-repetition maximum test, 10 normotensive recreationally trained men performed three exper...

Using the 2003 SEC regulations (following Sarbanes–Oxley Act) on board independence as an identification for externally imposed governance changes, I compare its influence firm performance to effect of voluntarily conducted adjustments. use publicly listed US firms between 1998 and 2009. In a triple-difference (dif-in-dif-in-dif) analysis setting, explicitly interact dictated change in with ide...

Eta squared is a popular effect size, but contains positive bias. Bootstrapping can be used to remove the bias from eta squared. Compared epsilon and omega squared, bootstrap correction does not make distributional assumption, it easy implement. A real example computer simulations are included illustrate its application. The bias-corrected shows very...