Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (IERQ): scale development and psychometric characteristics

Despite the popularity of emotion regulation in the contemporary literature, research has almost exclusively focused on only intrapersonal processes, whereas much less attention has been placed in interpersonal emotion regulation processes. In order to encourage research on interpersonal emotion regulation, we present a series of 4 studies to develop the Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (IERQ). The final scale consists of 20 items with 4 factors containing 5 items each. The 4 factors are: Enhancing Positive Affect; Perspective Taking; Soothing; and Social Modeling. The scale shows excellent psychometric characteristics. Implications for future research are discussed.R01 MH078308 - NIMH NIH HHS; R34 MH086668 - NIMH NIH HHS; R01 AT007257 - NCCIH NIH HHS; R21 MH101567 - NIMH NIH HHS; R34 MH099311 - NIMH NIH HHS; R21 MH102646 - NIMH NIH HHS; K23 MH100259 - NIMH NIH HHS; R01 MH099021 - NIMH NIH HH

Designing and Deploying Online Field Experiments

Online experiments are widely used to compare specific design alternatives, but they can also be used to produce generalizable knowledge and inform strategic decision making. Doing so often requires sophisticated experimental designs, iterative refinement, and careful logging and analysis. Few tools exist that support these needs. We thus introduce a language for online field experiments called PlanOut. PlanOut separates experimental design from application code, allowing the experimenter to concisely describe experimental designs, whether common "A/B tests" and factorial designs, or more complex designs involving conditional logic or multiple experimental units. These latter designs are often useful for understanding causal mechanisms involved in user behaviors. We demonstrate how experiments from the literature can be implemented in PlanOut, and describe two large field experiments conducted on Facebook with PlanOut. For common scenarios in which experiments are run iteratively and in parallel, we introduce a namespaced management system that encourages sound experimental practice.Comment: Proceedings of the 23rd international conference on World wide web, 283-29

Preliminary psychometric characteristics of the critical thinking self-assessment scale

Critical thinking skills (CTS) have been conceptualized as having six core cognitive skills as purported by the American Philosophical Association (APA) through a Delphi survey. The APA report further provided directions for teaching - learning and evaluation of these cognitive skills. This scale construction study was based on the APA critical thinking skills construct definition. Using the APA evaluation directions as a guide, this researcher developed a self assessment scale for measuring the CTS of undergraduate nursing students with the intention of assisting students in developing and improving their thinking skills. The construction of the scale was based on Cronbach’s Generalizability theory, and used Messick’s (1990) unitary concept of construct validity framework for evaluating the psychometric properties of the scale. The researcher developed 196 peer reviewed items for the Critical Thinking Self Assessment Scale (CTSAS) and the scale was subjected to experts’ ratings to establish content relevance and representativeness of the items to the construct. Seventeen experts from different disciplines reviewed the items and rated the items as 3 or 4 if the items defined the construct. Mean, Median, range and Content Validity Index (I-CVI) and Aiken’s Content Validity Coefficient (VIk) were computed to retain, modify or reject the items. The decision criteria for retaining the items included a value of VIk significant at p < 0.05, a value of I-CVI ≥ 0.75, and a range value of < 2.75 for the ‘0 to 5’ rating continuum. Statistical analysis of the item ratings resulted in reducing 196 items to 115. Following the rigorous content validation process, the 115 item CTSAS was tested through two developmental samples; one of 887 undergraduate nursing students from five Colleges of Nursing from Mahatma Gandhi University of Kerala State, India, and the second 144 undergraduate students from the College of Nursing, University of Saskatchewan, Canada. The questionnaire booklet also included an 18 item Need for Cognition Scale (NCS-SF) developed by Cacioppo and Petty (1982) for testing convergent validity of CTSAS. Exploratory data screening for the participants’ responses resulted in the deletion of four items (both the samples showed similar results in these 4 items) and 19 cases from the Indian sample, which were either missing, skewed or outliers. The remaining 111 items were analyzed for internal consistency reliability with both Indian and Canadian samples and stability reliability with the retested Indian sample (251). Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with varimax and oblimin rotations was run for the six core scales separately, which were classified into 16 sub scales, with the Indian sample (868). This resulted in reducing 111 items to 90 items across 14 subscales. Two of the subscales failed to emerge in EFA. The item loadings to factors demonstrated homogeneity and loaded independently with large loading weights. The items loading were mostly consistent with the pre-designated scales. The EFA retained 90 items were fixed in six path diagrams in the Analysis of Moment Structure (AMOS, added program in SPSS-PASW Statistics 18) graphics and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was run with the 144 Canadian sample for each of the core scales to see the model fit. Three of the six core scales demonstrated acceptable goodness of fit indices and the remaining three reached almost reasonable to close fit. The Maximum Likelihood (ML) estimation-minimum discrepancy function-χ2 values were significant for all six core scales. However, the three model fit scales had a ratio of χ2 to degrees of freedom (CMIN / df) < 2 indicating good model fit. The Null hypothesis “not - close fit” (H0 = Ԑ ≥ 0.05) was rejected in favour of the research hypothesis and it may be concluded that fit of the model in the population is close (i.e., Ԑ ≤ 0.05). The fit indices for the three core scales - Interpretation, Evaluation, and Inference, strongly supported the structural fidelity of the three core scales, and it is plausible to replicate similar findings in a comparable population. The results also supported the APA critical thinking construct definition for the three cognitive skills. All the core scales revealed a reliability value ≥ 0.80 for the core scales. Some of the subscales achieved lower levels of correlation, but none were lower than 0.60. The total scale had very good internal consistency reliability; Cronbach α for the Indian sample was 0.961 and for the Canadian sample 0.975, and had high levels of communalities required for reducing the length of the scale. However, EFA and CFA gave strong results indicating further testing and analyzing the scale was necessary to refine the items. The convergent validity of the CTSAS tested with NCS-SF found significant correlations for five of the six core scales. The main limitation of the study was inadequate sample size for performing CFA. The socio-cultural influence on critical thinking was not tested. The study examined only some aspects of Messick’s unitary concept of construct validity for establishing the psychometric of the CTSAS. However, the preliminary psychometrics results of the study were very appealing and the researcher is encouraged to further examine the usability of the scale and ensuring socio-cultural relevance of the CTSAS

Towards tailored medication self-management:needs of and support for patients with limited health literacy

This thesis aims to explore the needs of patients with a chronic disease and limited health literacy regarding medication, self-management and how support for self-management of medication can be tailored to those needs. This thesis demonstrates that patients with limited health literacy can be supported in their medication self-management through tailored health information that is more accessible, understandable, and easier to assess. In addition to providing health information and improving knowledge, medication self-management support should also focus on helping patients to acquire skills and self-confidence. This thesis provides recommendations for the design, content, and strategies of future self-management interventions for this group of patients. It also discusses strategies for reaching patients with limited health literacy and the importance of including them in the design of future interventions. Although healthcare professionals are willing to support medication self-management, a more active delivery approach and training are required to reach patients with limited health literacy

Towards guideline implementation for integrated local health policies:Evaluation of an experimental implementation strategy in regional health services

To enhance implementation of a Guideline for integrated local health policy, a draft implementation strategy (DIS) was developed. It was hypothesized that the DIS would be feasible and effective to enhance the use of a Guideline for integrated local health policy. To examine its feasibility and effectiveness, the DIS was pilot tested simultaneously in two Regional Health Services (RHSs) and compared with the 'care as usual' in two other RHSs that did not receive a predefined strategy for Guideline implementation. The DIS was evaluated in a qualitative way by means of semi-structured individual-and group interviews. We applied the Nutbeam framework for evaluation on: i) program integrity, ii) program reach, iii) program acceptability, and iv) observed change. Comparison of pilot results with the two other RHSs included semi-structured group interviews. Both RHSs conducted implementation largely as planned. The purpose of the Guideline for RHS policy objectives was not discussed at all desired levels. Increased Guideline use was mainly found among health promoters. Comparison with Guideline implementation in the other RHSs revealed information for further evaluation of the DIS. The feasibility and effectiveness of the DIS applied to building blocks which aimed at alignment of goals and ambitions between RHS management and executive disciplines. Possible implications for future application of the DIS are dealt with in the discussion section of this pape

Farm households' preference for cash-based compensation versus livelihood-enhancing programs: A choice experiment to inform avian flu compensation policy in Nigeria

In this paper we attempt to bridge the resilience school of thought and incentive compatibility in livestock disease control policies through a pilot choice experiment study conducted on 104 farm households in the Nasarawa state of Nigeria. The aim of this study was to shed light on farm households' valuation of various compensation plan attributes and trade-offs among these attributes. In the experiment presented here, compensation plan was defined broadly to include not just the traditional attributes, such as the number of days it takes to receive the payment, the compensation rate, and the method of payment, but also more diverse interventions, such as training in biosecurity measures and access to bank loans, which are expected to have longer-term impacts on households' livelihood outcomes. We analyzed the data using various discrete choice models, the best-fitting of which was the random parameter (or mixed) logit model with interactions, which enabled us to capture both unobserved and observed heterogeneity in farm households' preferences for the compensation plan attributes. The results reveal that overall, study households preferred compensation plans that made payment in fewer days, provided facilitated credit access, and offered biosecurity training. Households with better-educated heads and those with lower income levels valued compensation plans that provided credit access and biosecurity training the most. These findings are expected to inform the design of efficient, effective, equitable, and targeted compensation policies, which could not only reduce the livestock disease risk but also improve the resilience of poor farm households' livelihoods against future poultry-related or other idiosyncratic shocks.avian flu, choice experiment method, compensation scheme, conditional logit model, livestock disease, random parameter logit model,

S-FaaS: Trustworthy and Accountable Function-as-a-Service using Intel SGX

Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) is a recent and already very popular paradigm in cloud computing. The function provider need only specify the function to be run, usually in a high-level language like JavaScript, and the service provider orchestrates all the necessary infrastructure and software stacks. The function provider is only billed for the actual computational resources used by the function invocation. Compared to previous cloud paradigms, FaaS requires significantly more fine-grained resource measurement mechanisms, e.g. to measure compute time and memory usage of a single function invocation with sub-second accuracy. Thanks to the short duration and stateless nature of functions, and the availability of multiple open-source frameworks, FaaS enables non-traditional service providers e.g. individuals or data centers with spare capacity. However, this exacerbates the challenge of ensuring that resource consumption is measured accurately and reported reliably. It also raises the issues of ensuring computation is done correctly and minimizing the amount of information leaked to service providers. To address these challenges, we introduce S-FaaS, the first architecture and implementation of FaaS to provide strong security and accountability guarantees backed by Intel SGX. To match the dynamic event-driven nature of FaaS, our design introduces a new key distribution enclave and a novel transitive attestation protocol. A core contribution of S-FaaS is our set of resource measurement mechanisms that securely measure compute time inside an enclave, and actual memory allocations. We have integrated S-FaaS into the popular OpenWhisk FaaS framework. We evaluate the security of our architecture, the accuracy of our resource measurement mechanisms, and the performance of our implementation, showing that our resource measurement mechanisms add less than 6.3% latency on standardized benchmarks

A Sustainable Future In The Implementation Of Clinical Pharmacogenomics

Purpose: The sustainability of clinical pharmacogenomics requires further study of clinical education on the topic, its effects on clinical workflow, and the responsibilities of different providers for its delivery. Tools from the discipline of implementation science were utilized herein to help achieve the purposes of the three studies. The broad purpose of this dissertation is to advance the work of clinical pharmacogenomic implementation through a more rigorous convergence with implementation science. Methods: Three studies constitute the whole of this dissertation. The first is a scoping review that provides a broad characterization of the methods utilized in available peer-revieliterature focusing on provider use of and experience with using pharmacogenomics in practice or the study setting. The second study used semi-structured in-depth interviews to elicit strategies and perspectives from leadership in current implementation programs using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Science (CFIR) Process Domain. The third used a cross-sectional quantitative survey with experimental vignettes to explore the potential for pharmacist-physician collaboration using newly developed implementation science outcomes. Results: The scoping review included 25 studies, with many focused on the interactions of providers with clinical decision support systems and adherence to therapeutic recommendations represented. Results from the interviews were extensive but several highlights included a focus on understanding pharmacogenomic use prior to implementation, high-touch informal communication with providers, and the power of the patient case. The survey analysis revealed that the primary care physicians believe that it is more appropriate to deliver clinical pharmacogenomics when a pharmacist is physically located in a clinic and is responsible for managing and modifying a drug therapy based on these results. Conclusion: These three studies further the convergence of implementation science and genomic medicine, with particular focus on pharmacogenomics and the foundational concept of implementation science, sustainability. The scoping review should provide future researchers with a landscape of available and previously used methodologies for interventional pharmacogenomic studies. The interview results will help new implementers of pharmacogenomics steer around avoidable hurdles or make them easier to address. The survey results showcase the potential for pharmacist-physician collaboration in clinical pharmacogenomics