OBJECTIVE To determine whether an approach that assesses patient capabilities for self-management and then tailors coaching support based on this assessment would be more effective in improving outcomes than the usual disease management approach. STUDY DESIGN A quasi-experimental pre-post design was used, with an intervention group coached with a tailored approach and a control group coached ...

OBJECTIVES To develop a propensity score-based risk adjustment method to estimate the performance of 20 physician groups and to compare performance rankings using our method to a standard hierarchical regression-based risk adjustment method. DATA SOURCES/STUDY SETTING Mailed survey of patients from 20 California physician groups between July 1998 and February 1999. STUDY DESIGN A cross-sect...

Teachers and instructors assign students homework of varying lengths. There is considerable evidence that factors such as cognitive load play a role in student performance and learning, but there has not been sufficient study of how these phenomena play out in the specific case of the length of homework. In this paper, we study the impact of assignment size on student performance. This paper re...

This study seeks to address the mixed findings of prior studies regarding the effect of online brand community on customer value. Based on the regulatory focus theory, we hypothesize that participation in a brand community tend to increase both visit and purchase frequencies of customers with promotion-focus; on the contrary, the same would typically decrease visit and purchase frequencies of c...

I first wish to thank Dr Austin for an important paper on the use of propensity score methods in practice. It follows a series of papers by Dr Austin highlighting issues that applied researchers face in using propensity score methods—an area of research that deserves more attention. As Dr Austin shows, there has been considerable misuse and misunderstanding of propensity score methods. Papers s...

Compared to high school graduates, adolescents who drop out of school are more likely to have a range of negative outcomes, including lower verbal capacities; however, the true nature of this association is not well-understood. Dropping out of school could have an important effect on reducing verbal skills, or the link between dropping out of school and diminished verbal skills could be a spuri...

In a nonrandomized or observational study, propensity scores may be used to balance observed covariates and trajectory groups may be used to control baseline or pretreatment measures of outcome. The trajectory groups also aid in characterizing classes of subjects for whom no good matches are available and to define substantively interesting groups between which treatment effects may vary. These...

Using recent data from the Chinese manufacturing industry and the generalised propensity score, this paper establishes economically significant causal effects of foreign acquisition on domestic and export markets dynamics. JEL classification: F23, G28, C24

This paper explores the effects of overseas activity on parent firm employment in a panel of Taiwan’s large, listed firms during 2000-2005. Propensity score matching estimates of discrete effects suggest that employment growth did not differ significantly between new parents and firms with no overseas operations. Generalized method of moments’ estimates of marginal effects for all firms indicat...