Estimating an NBA player's impact on his team's chances of winning

Traditional NBA player evaluation metrics are based on scoring differential or some pace-adjusted linear combination of box score statistics like points, rebounds, assists, etc. These measures treat performances with the outcome of the game still in question (e.g. tie score with five minutes left) in exactly the same way as they treat performances with the outcome virtually decided (e.g. when one team leads by 30 points with one minute left). Because they ignore the context in which players perform, these measures can result in misleading estimates of how players help their teams win. We instead use a win probability framework for evaluating the impact NBA players have on their teams' chances of winning. We propose a Bayesian linear regression model to estimate an individual player's impact, after controlling for the other players on the court. We introduce several posterior summaries to derive rank-orderings of players within their team and across the league. This allows us to identify highly paid players with low impact relative to their teammates, as well as players whose high impact is not captured by existing metrics.Comment: To appear in the Journal of Quantitative Analysis of Spor

Estimating an NBA Player’s Impact on is Team’s Chances of Winning

Traditional NBA player evaluation metrics are based on scoring differential or some pace-adjusted linear combination of box score statistics like points, rebounds, assists, etc. These measures treat performances with the outcome of the game still in question (e.g. tie score with five minutes left) in exactly the same way as they treat performances with the outcome virtually decided (e.g. when one team leads by 30 points with one minute left). Because they ignore the context in which players perform, these measures can result in misleading estimates of how players help their teams win. We instead use a win probability framework for evaluating the impact NBA players have on their teams’ chances of winning. We propose a Bayesian linear regression model to estimate an individual player’s impact, after controlling for the other players on the court. We introduce several posterior summaries to derive rank-orderings of players within their team and across the league. This allows us to identify highly paid players with low impact relative to their teammates, as well as players whose high impact is not captured by existing metrics

Selective feeding centres in refugee settings: evaluation framework protocol

Selective feeding programs are centres for the treatment of persons suffering from acute malnutrition. Unlike chronic malnutrition, acute malnutrition reflects recent problems. In a crisis situation, wasting is preferred above other indicators because it is sensitive to rapid change, indicates present change, can be used to monitor the impact of interventions and is a good predictor of immediate mortality risk. This paper reviews the current approach being used in the field to evaluate the effectiveness of feeding programs. There is no comprehensive evaluation framework in place to assess the impact of feeding programs on mortality due to malnutrition. Some loose outcome measures, such as the number of children enrolled in a feeding centre, are being used to determine if a feeding centre should continue. In addition, malnutrition prevalence and crude mortality rates determined through nutritional and mortality surveys are used to assess the impact of feeding programs. This procedure does not take into account potential confounding factors that impact on malnutrition prevalence, including access to non-relief foods and the general food ration. Therefore, one could not confidently say that the reduction of malnutrition prevalence is a result of feeding programs. This paper presents an alternative approach to evaluating feeding centres.<br /

Development of a standardised evaluation framework (SEF) for physical activity interventions:Ensuring usability and usefulness

INTRODUCTION: With a range of interventions available for promoting physical activity (PA) and only limited resources, it has become imperative to identify those that are both effective and feasible for real world application. A number of evaluation frameworks have been developed but often fail to be widely implemented due to the level of information required and time needed to complete. The purpose of this study is to develop a standardised evaluation framework (SEF) for PA interventions that is usable in practice but also collects information that enables evidence based decision making among key knowledge users. METHODS: Development of the framework was guided by Nutbeam and Bauman's evaluation cycle, encompassing elements of formative, process, impact and outcome evaluation. The SEF was developed through four stages involving a 1) review of the literature, 2) feedback from key stakeholders, 3) national consultation, and 4) focus groups with a practitioner advisory group. Elements of the Technology Acceptance Model were used to assess the perceived usefulness and usability of the SEF by key stakeholders.†† RESULTS: Twelve relevant evaluation frameworks specific to PA interventions were identified through the literature review. Members of the project team (N = 3) identified commonalities across these frameworks, including general characteristics (N = 12), formative evaluation aspects (N = 5), process evaluation aspects (N = 15), impact evaluation aspects (N = 7) and outcome evaluation aspects (N = 3). Feedback across four stages, including consultations, two focus groups and an online survey provided feedback for creating a more usable and useful SEF. The current framework includes a minimum set of questions (i.e. monitoring template) for coordinators (N = 27) and participants (N = 9) with additional measures available for an in-depth evaluation where necessary. CONCLUSION: I-PARC has seen the creation of a SEF that is moving towards a more usable approach for intervention evaluation in practice. The I-PARC SEF has the potential to be a usable resource to assess current PA interventions and provide knowledge regarding the potential scale up, adaptions or cessation of current practices. Feedback has also suggested a need for an online platform to collect the relevant information, capacity building resources and a support network to help with the use of the I-PARC SEF

Outcome-based Evaluation of Systematic Review Automation

Current methods of evaluating search strategies and automated citation screening for systematic literature reviews typically rely on counting the number of relevant publications (i.e. those to be included in the review) and not relevant publications (i.e. those to be excluded). Significant importance is put into promoting the retrieval of all relevant publications through great attention to recalloriented measures, and demoting the retrieval of non-relevant publications through precision-oriented or cost metrics. This established practice, however, does not accurately reflect the reality of conducting a systematic review, because not all included publications have the same influence on the final outcome of the systematic review. More specifically, if an important publication gets excluded or included, this might significantly change the overall review outcome, while not including or excluding less influential studies may only have a limited impact. However, in terms of evaluation measures, all inclusion and exclusion decisions are treated equally and, therefore, failing to retrieve publications with little to no impact on the review outcome leads to the same decrease in recall as failing to retrieve crucial publications. We propose a new evaluation framework that takes into account the impact of the reported study on the overall systematic review outcome. We demonstrate the framework by extracting review meta-analysis data and estimating outcome effects using predictions from ranking runs on systematic reviews of interventions from CLEF TAR 2019 shared task. We further measure how closely the obtained outcomes are to the outcomes of the original review if the arbitrary rankings were used. We evaluate 74 runs using the proposed framework and compare the results with those obtained using standard IR measures. We find that accounting for the difference in review outcomes leads to a different assessment of the quality of a system than if traditional evaluation measures were used. Our analysis provides new insights into the evaluation of retrieval results in the context of systematic review automation, emphasising the importance of assessing the usefulness of each document beyond binary relevance

Evaluation of a cervical cancer surveillance program at a community health center

Background: Cervical cancer is reportedly the easiest gynecologic cancer to prevent, and measures that have the most impact are regular screening and timely follow-up. Although the Papanicolaou (Pap) test used to screen for cervical cancer has been recognized as one of the most valuable clinical preventive service for women, variation in screening and tracking remain a barrier for some women achieving optimal health. Missed opportunities for care in the form of inadequate follow-up is a patient safety and quality of care issue that can be appropriately addressed through implementation of a tool to be used as a component of a cervical cancer surveillance program. Purpose: The purpose of this quality improvement (QI) project was to develop an evidence-based, tracking tool for cervical cytology screening to facilitate surveillance measures in a community health center. Theoretical Framework: The theoretical framework applied was Donebedian’s quality of care framework that incorporates the Structure-Process-Outcome model. Methods: The study was conducted in five phases over a period of 14 months. After permission was granted to implement the study, the tracking tool was developed with input from the mentor. The final two phases consisted of training, implementation, and evaluation of tool’s effectiveness towards improving practice. A survey questionnaire measuring the staff’s opinion of the tool was administered and verbal feedback regarding perception of the tool’s capability to impact clinical practice was collected. Results: Informal surveys were performed by asking stakeholders to share their attitudes and opinions of the surveillance tool. Conclusion: Consistent evidence-based practice among those charged with providing care is paramount to helping patients achieve their best outcome. Surveillance is an internal process and improving surveillance is pivotal to the goal of optimizing outcomes. The findings of the QI project indicate that through the provision of this evidence-based practice, clinical resource, quality of care will be improved. Additionally, the surveillance tool will be incorporated into clinical practice and used as the official method for tracking abnormal cervical cancer screenings, scheduling follow up care, and tracking patients until resolution of cervical pathology

Perspective on the economic evaluation of deep brain stimulation

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is an example of a disease area experiencing increasing use of deep brain stimulation (DBS) to treat symptoms. PD is a major cause of morbidity and has a substantial economic impact on the patients, their caregivers, the health service, and broader social and community services. The PDSURG Collaborators Group reported that DBS surgery for patients with advanced PD improves motor function and quality of life that medical therapy alone at 1 year but there are surgery related side effects in a minority (Williams et al., 2010). The aim of this paper however is to build upon the knowledge generated from evaluating DBS in PD and to provide a detailed perspective on the economic evaluation of DBS more generally with a view to providing a framework for informative design of DBS economic evaluations. This perspective will outline the key categories of resource use pertinent to DBS beyond the surgical scenario and into the broader aspects of follow-up care, adverse events, repeat procedures, social and community care, patient and carer costs, and will explore the importance of handling capital costs of DBS equipment appropriately as well as including costs occurring in the future. In addition, this perspective article will outline the importance of capturing broader aspects of “outcome” or benefits as compared to those traditional clinical measures used. The key message is the importance of employing a broad “perspective” on the measurement and valuation of costs and benefits as well as the importance of adopting the appropriate time horizon for evaluating the costs and benefits of DBS. In order to do this effectively it may be that alternative methods of economic evaluation in health care to the commonly used cost-effectiveness analysis may have to be used, such as cost-benefit analysis (McIntosh et al., 2010)

Risk Premium, Interest Rate, Inflation and FDI in the Time of Coronavirus: a Case Study of Mena Countries

Purpose:  the purpose of study is estimate the Risk premium, Interest rate, Inflation and FDI in the through of Coronavirus in the MENA countries.   Theoretical framework: The theoretical framework included the study of the main variables, which are risk premium, interest rate, inflation, and foreign direct investment during the Corona virus pandemic.   Design/methodology/approach:  Concentrating on “COVID-19”, as an effective factor on the Foreign direct investment (FDI), I employ data of “MENA (Middle East and Northern Africa)” countries from 2000 to 2021 to investigate the impact of COVID-19, financial and macroeconomic indicators on FDI relying on the analytic research approach of Static panel data regression, including Pooled OLS, Fixed effect (FE), and Random effect (RE) using STATA software as the statistical evaluation tool.   Findings: The outcome, as expected, reveals the significant negative impact of “inflation”, real interest rate” and “COVID-19”, and positive impact of “exchange rate”, and “GDP per capita” on “FDI” in MENA economies.   Research, Practical &amp; Social implications:  This suggests that supporting and handling pandemic situations and improving financial measures by government may lead to higher rate of foreign investment particularly FDI.   Originality/value: The findings of this analysis will be valuable for the “policymakers” to prepare suitable strategies in promoting foreign investment in economies.

Aboriginal Offender Parole Outcomes

This paper outlines an Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) and addresses a current Problem of Practice (PoP) in Aboriginal federal corrections. The Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) is a federal department mandated by the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. Notably, this Act mandates the CSC to be responsive to the special needs of Aboriginal offenders. Aboriginal offenders have long been over-represented within the Canadian corrections system; consequently, there is tremendous pressure on the CSC to address the gap in outcomes between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal offenders. The PoP considers the role of the Aboriginal Initiatives Directorate within CSC and describes the impact of current outcome measures on Aboriginal offenders. Crucially, current outcomes lack accuracy and reliability; thus, they do not adequately consider pertinent success factors that would give Aboriginal offenders comparable outcomes to their non-Aboriginal counterparts. The PoP also identifies factors—both pro-active and reactive— and describes their implications. Specifically, the PoP describes factors that challenge Aboriginal Community Liaison Officers’ efforts to describe incremental progress that Aboriginal offenders achieve on conditional or discretionary release (parole). The current complex political environment, the impact of policies implemented by the previous Conservative federal government (2006-2015), and the increased demand for public accountability heighten the need for new measures that better reflect the successes that Aboriginal offenders do achieve on conditional release. The OIP relies on Cawsey, Deszca & Ingols’ (2016) Change Path Model as a guiding framework and organization change tool to identify solutions. The OIP concludes with an outcome effectiveness evaluation