BACKGROUND no research has investigated how older people's use of NHS Direct, the 24-h telephone health advice and information service in England and Wales, varies according to geographical location and deprivation. OBJECTIVES to describe the geographic pattern of older people's use of NHS Direct and examine the relationship between service use and deprivation. DESIGN descriptive, explorato...

To determine whether leaving messages on answering machines would aid control recruitment via random-digit telephone dialing, a randomized trial was conducted during 1992-1994 involving 1,323 western Washington households with answering machines. For the experimental group, a message was left informing them about the study and promising a call-back; for the control group, no message was left. L...

Instructional improvement initiatives in many districts include content-focused coaching as a primary form of job-embedded support for teachers. However, the current coaching literature provides little guidance about the types of activities in which coaches should engage teachers in order to support their development of ambitious instructional practices. Furthermore, when researchers do propose...

To be suitable for informing digital behavior change interventions, theories and models of behavior change need to capture individual variation and changes over time. The aim of this paper is to provide recommendations for development of models and theories that are informed by, and can inform, digital behavior change interventions based on discussions by international experts, including behavi...

The Governance and Social Development Resource Centre (GSDRC) provides cutting-edge knowledge services on demand and online and aims to help reduce poverty by informing policy and practice in relation to governance, conflict and social development issues. The Norwegian Peacebuilding Centre (Noref, Norsk Ressurssenter for Fredsbygging) is a resource centre integrating knowledge and experience to...

In a recent discussion, Walter Glannon discusses a number of ways we might try to minimise harm to patients who experience intraoperative awareness. In this response, I direct attention to a possibility that deserves further attention. It might be that a kind of psychological intervention--namely, informing patients of the possibility of intraoperative awareness and of what to expect in such a ...

This paper explores how the evidence-based practice and quality improvement movements are informing our understanding of what counts as quality patient care. Implicit in the debate is that we have understood and can manage the concept of patient safety. Using a true case study, the paper will illustrate how a clearer, more integrated understanding of safety, evidence-based practice and quality ...

Research by Engelhardt, Bailey and Ferreira (2006) suggests that speakers avoid under-informativeness and listeners penalise it, but that neither of these behaviours apply to overinformativeness. We argue that what may appear as lack of sensitivity to over-informativeness is in fact preference for information that, even though it is not contributing to the unique identification of a referent, i...