BACKGROUND Allergen-specific immunotherapy (SIT) is a treatment capable of modifying the natural course of allergy, so ensuring good adherence to SIT is fundamental. Up until now there has not existed an instrument specifically developed to measure patient satisfaction with SIT, although its assessment could help us to comprehend better and improve treatment adherence and effectiveness. The aim...

The objective of this study was to synthesize information from literature on measures of the self in young children to create an empirical framework for developing future methods for measuring this construct. For this meta-analysis, all available preschool and early elementary school self-esteem studies were reviewed. Reliability was used as the criterion variable and the predictor variables re...

AIMS Evaluation of the effectiveness of clinical teaching is an important contribution for the quality control of medical teaching. This should be evaluated using a reliable instrument in order to be able to both gauge the status quo and the effects of instruction. In the Stanford Faculty Development Program (SFDP), seven categories have proven to be appropriate: Establishing the Learning Clima...

BACKGROUND In order to make a well-considered decision and give informed consent about renal replacement therapy, potential living kidney donors and recipients should have sufficient understanding of the options and risks. PURPOSE We aimed to explore knowledge about Dialysis & Transplantation (DT) and Living Donation (LD) among prospective living kidney donors and recipients. METHODS Eighty...

This paper describes an inductive rule learning (IRL) technique for classifying questionnaires based on the natural language responses to the open-ended questions frequently found in questionnaire data. These responses are deemed to provide important information to the purpose of the questionnaire. Given that the responses are in the form of unstructured natural language text and that a collect...

The study was designed to investigate the place of job stress in labour turnover of the banking sector in the business environment of Nigerian economy. The study identified some variables of job stress to include work materials, work pressure, personal problems, organisational policies, job security, work environment and institutional policies with a view to improving organisational workforce s...

The development of a questionnaire or a measuring instrument is a laborious and complex process and requires verification of its usefulness before implementation. We present a methodological work on the psychometric characteristics of assessment instruments and analysis of their main features, reliability and validity.

In epidemiological studies of asthma, questionnaires are widely accepted methods of identifying affected subjects. International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) is an international project aiming to determine the prevalence of asthma, allergic rhinitis and eczema in children living in different countries [1]. The written questionnaire includes questions on respiratory symptom...

Dear Sir, Having recently completed the data interpretation of a postal questionnaire of 'all' Otolaryngologists in the British Isles, we read with interest the recent correspondence on the subject of the accuracy of this means of gathering information. (November 1989, 1103), and of the validity of the numbers questioned and responding. Like the correspondents, we also had great difficulty in c...