Leveraging Social Media to Promote EvidenceBased Continuing Medical Education

Importance New dissemination methods are needed to engage physicians in evidence-based continuing medical education (CME). Objective To examine the effectiveness of social media in engaging physicians in non-industry-sponsored CME. Design We tested the effect of different media platforms (e-mail, Facebook, paid Facebook and Twitter), CME topics, and different “hooks” (e.g., Q&A, clinical pearl and best evidence) on driving clicks to a landing site featuring non-industry sponsored CME. We modelled the effects of social media platform, CME topic, and hook using negative binomial regression on clicks to a single landing site. We used clicks to landing site adjusted for exposure and message number to calculate rate ratios. To understand how physicians interact with CME content on social media, we also conducted interviews with 10 physicians. Setting The National Physicians Alliance (NPA) membership. Participants NPA e-mail recipients, Facebook followers and friends, and Twitter followers. Main Outcomes and Measures Clicks to the NPA’s CME landing site. Results On average, 4,544 recipients received each message. Messages generated a total of 592 clicks to the landing site, for a rate of 5.4 clicks per 1000 recipients exposed. There were 5.4 clicks from e-mail, 11.9 clicks from Facebook, 5.5 clicks from paid Facebook, and 6.9 clicks from Twitter to the landing site for 1000 physicians exposed to each of 4 selected CME modules. A Facebook post generated 2.3x as many clicks to the landing site as did an e-mail after controlling for participant exposure, hook type and CME topic (p Conclusions Social media has a modest impact on driving traffic to evidence-based CME options. Facebook had a superior effect on driving physician web traffic to evidence-based CME compared to other social media platforms and email

Big data for monitoring educational systems

This report considers “how advances in big data are likely to transform the context and methodology of monitoring educational systems within a long-term perspective (10-30 years) and impact the evidence based policy development in the sector”, big data are “large amounts of different types of data produced with high velocity from a high number of various types of sources.” Five independent experts were commissioned by Ecorys, responding to themes of: students' privacy, educational equity and efficiency, student tracking, assessment and skills. The experts were asked to consider the “macro perspective on governance on educational systems at all levels from primary, secondary education and tertiary – the latter covering all aspects of tertiary from further, to higher, and to VET”, prioritising primary and secondary levels of education

Collecting multiple data linkage consents in a mixed mode survey: evidence and lessons learnt from next steps

Linking survey responses with administrative data is a promising practice to increase the range of research questions to be explored, at a limited interview burden, both for respondents and interviewers. This paper describes the protocol for asking consent to data linkage on nine different sources in a large-scale nationally representative survey of young adults in England: the Next Steps Age 25 Survey. Evidence from preparatory qualitative research, piloting and from the main stage of the study is presented. This research constitutes a novel contribution to the literature, discussing the practicalities of implementing a data linkage protocol asking consent both retrospectively and prospectively, on multiple domains, and in the context of a mixed-mode survey

Following the Mobile Student: Can We Develop the Capacity for a Comprehensive Database to Assess Student Progression?

Presents a study of state-level databases on postsecondary student retention and completion rates and the feasibility of tracking students across state lines. Outlines challenges and recommendations, including establishing a common reporting standard

A transdiagnostic perspective on early mental health problems - From adversity, digital markers, and putative mechanisms to a hybrid ecological momentary intervention approach

In this thesis, I adopted a transdiagnostic perspective on early mental health problems and pursued three overarching goals. First, I aimed to investigate digital markers in the prediction of clinical outcomes. Second, I aimed to examine how early adversity may combine and interact with putative candidate mechanisms in the development of psychopathology. Third, I aimed at the development of a hybrid transdiagnostic intervention for enhancing resilience in youth with early mental health problems. I aimed to explore its reach, putative mechanisms of change involved, and personalised intervention trajectories including context factors (i.e., what works for whom under which circumstances?). In line with the first goal, Chapter II presented the first study, which examined the predictive value of momentary manifestations of negative symptoms as digital markers for clinical outcomes in individuals at ultra-high risk for psychosis using an experience sampling design. I found evidence for momentary manifestations of negative symptoms, especially social anhedonia, to predict clinical outcomes. Higher levels of momentary manifestations of negative symptoms were associated with higher levels of illness severity and poorer functioning at 1- and 2-year follow-up. This approach offers important insights into service users’ symptoms in the context of their daily life, which are relevant for research and practice. Moreover, subjective experiences of negative symptoms, especially social anhedonia, in daily life may be a promising target for future intervention approaches in the early stages of psychosis. Addressing the second aim, Chapters III and IV presented investigations of stress reactivity and threat anticipation as putative mechanisms linking early adversity with psychopathology. In Chapter III, I examined stress reactivity as a putative mechanism linking childhood trauma with clinical outcomes in individuals at ultra-high risk for psychosis. Replicating previous findings, childhood trauma modified the effect of daily stressors on negative affect and psychotic experiences. Individuals exposed to higher levels of childhood trauma showed more intense psychotic experiences and stronger increases in negative affect in response to minor daily stressors. In addition, there was some evidence suggestive of the predictive value of stress reactivity for clinical outcomes at follow-up. Some evidence for partial mediation of the association of childhood trauma and clinical outcomes via stress reactivity emerged. Taken together, these findings added evidence to the mediated synergy model and highlighted stress reactivity as a promising target mechanism for ecological momentary interventions. In Chapter IV, I investigated the role of threat anticipation in the development of psychopathology. I found evidence that threat anticipation and experiences of early adversity were associated with psychopathology. In addition, 184 I observed mediation effects for the association between early adversity and psychopathology via pathways through threat anticipation. This suggests the relevance of threat anticipation as a putative transdiagnostic mechanism linking early adversity with psychopathology that may be targeted by prevention and intervention approaches. In line with the third goal, Chapter V presented an intervention manual for a hybrid compassion-focused intervention targeting putative transdiagnostic candidate mechanisms such as stress reactivity and threat anticipation in youth with early mental health problems (i.e., EMIcompass) and provided promising initial evidence on the intervention’s reach. In Chapter VI, I explored putative therapeutic mechanisms of change in the EMIcompass intervention. I did not detect initial signals of a mediation of the effect of experimental condition on clinical outcomes at follow-up via putative therapeutic mechanisms. However, results show that, if targeted successfully, change in self-compassion and emotion regulation may be promising targets for intervention and prevention approaches. To explore personalised intervention trajectories including context factors, Chapter VII presented a realist evaluation of the implementation of EMIcompass. Qualitative results indicated that the EMIcompass intervention worked by strengthening participants’ soothing system and improved their well-being. In addition, there was evidence indicating that the intervention may even improve the functioning of participants’ drive system. The digital delivery format was perceived as facilitating the translation into daily life and lowering the burden of, and barriers to, treatment. The findings may inform the development and implementation of future digital mental health interventions in general and future versions of EMIcompass in particular

Impact in networks and ecosystems: building case studies that make a difference

open accessThis toolkit aims to support the building up of case studies that show the impact of project activities aiming to promote innovation and entrepreneurship. The case studies respond to the challenge of understanding what kinds of interventions work in the Southern African region, where, and why. The toolkit has a specific focus on entrepreneurial ecosystems and proposes a method of mapping out the actors and their relationships over time. The aim is to understand the changes that take place in the ecosystems. These changes are seen to be indicators of impact as increased connectivity and activity in ecosystems are key enablers of innovation. Innovations usually happen together with matching social and institutional adjustments, facilitating the translation of inventions into new or improved products and services. Similarly, the processes supporting entrepreneurship are guided by policies implemented in the common framework provided by innovation systems. Overall, policies related to systems of innovation are by nature networking policies applied throughout the socioeconomic framework of society to pool scarce resources and make various sectors work in coordination with each other. Most participating SAIS countries already have some kinds of identifiable systems of innovation in place both on national and regional levels, but the lack of appropriate institutions, policies, financial instruments, human resources, and support systems, together with underdeveloped markets, create inefficiencies and gaps in systemic cooperation and collaboration. In other words, we do not always know what works and what does not. On another level, engaging users and intermediaries at the local level and driving the development of local innovation ecosystems within which local culture, especially in urban settings, has evident impact on how collaboration and competition is both seen and done. In this complex environment, organisations supporting entrepreneurship and innovation often find it difficult to create or apply relevant knowledge and appropriate networking tools, approaches, and methods needed to put their processes to work for broader developmental goals. To further enable these organisations’ work, it is necessary to understand what works and why in a given environment. Enhanced local and regional cooperation promoted by SAIS Innovation Fund projects can generate new data on this little-explored area in Southern Africa. Data-driven knowledge on entrepreneurship and innovation support best practices as well as effective and efficient management of entrepreneurial ecosystems can support replication and inform policymaking, leading thus to a wider impact than just that of the immediate reported projects and initiatives

Longitudinal visualization for exploratory analysis of multiple sclerosis lesions

In multiple sclerosis (MS), the amount of brain damage, anatomical location, shape, and changes are important aspects that help medical researchers and clinicians to understand the temporal patterns of the disease. Interactive visualization for longitudinal MS data can support studies aimed at exploratory analysis of lesion and healthy tissue topology. Existing visualizations in this context comprise bar charts and summary measures, such as absolute numbers and volumes to summarize lesion trajectories over time, as well as summary measures such as volume changes. These techniques can work well for datasets having dual time point comparisons. For frequent follow-up scans, understanding patterns from multimodal data is difficult without suitable visualization approaches. As a solution, we propose a visualization application, wherein we present lesion exploration tools through interactive visualizations that are suitable for large time-series data. In addition to various volumetric and temporal exploration facilities, we include an interactive stacked area graph with other integrated features that enable comparison of lesion features, such as intensity or volume change. We derive the input data for the longitudinal visualizations from automated lesion tracking. For cases with a larger number of follow-ups, our visualization design can provide useful summary information while allowing medical researchers and clinicians to study features at lower granularities. We demonstrate the utility of our visualization on simulated datasets through an evaluation with domain experts.publishedVersio

Hazing experiences during the first year of college: associations with childhood bullying and other victimization exposures

This exploratory study aimed to answer three research questions about the relationship between childhood victimization and being hazed during college. Secondary data analysis was conducted with a sample of first-year college students who completed a web-based survey during their fall and spring semesters. Forms of childhood victimization measured in this study include: bullying victimization, peer victimization (multiple forms and length), and exposure to other forms of victimization (e.g., parental abuse, dating abuse). Results support the hypothesis that students with a victimization history are more likely be hazed during college. Specifically, a chronic victimization history – exposure to multiple forms of peer victimization, longer peer victimization, and other forms of childhood victimization – was associated with an increased odds of being hazed during college. Results did not support the hypothesis that a sense of college belongingness would moderate the relationship between past victimization and hazing during college. There was partial support for the hypothesis that a victimization history would put students at risk for perceived negative effects of hazing. Childhood physical dating abuse, sexual assault, and exposure to other forms of childhood victimization were all positively associated with perceived negative consequences of hazing. Lastly, results found that exposure to other forms of childhood victimization moderates the relationship between being hazed during college and depression. Specifically, those with prior exposure to other forms of childhood victimization who are also hazed report lower depression scores than those with this victimization history who do not enter hazing initiations. These findings lend themselves to future research to better understand the relationships found between childhood victimization and hazing initiations during college. These findings also have practical implications for understanding the trajectory of previously victimized students. There are a number of limitations of the current study that can be addressed in future research

Voice parameters predict sex-specific body morphology in men and women

Studies of several mammalian species confirm that formant frequencies (vocal tract resonances) predict height and weight better than does fundamental frequency (F0, perceived as pitch) in same-sex adults due to differential anatomical constraints. However, our recent meta-analysis (Pisanski et al., 2014, Animal Behaviour, 95, 89–99) indicated that formants and F0 could explain no more than 10% and 2% of the variance in human height, respectively, controlling for sex and age. Here, we examined whether other voice parameters, many of which are affected by sex hormones, can indicate additional variance in human body size or shape, and whether these relationships differ between the sexes. Using a cross-cultural sample of 700 men and women, we examined relationships among 19 voice parameters (minimum–maximum F0, mean F0, F0 variability, formant-based vocal tract length estimates, shimmer, jitter, harmonics-to-noise ratio) and eight indices of body size or shape (height, weight, body mass index, hip, waist and chest circumferences, waist-to-hip ratio, chest-to-hip ratio). Our results confirm that formant measures explain the most variance in heights and weights of men and women, whereas shimmer, jitter and harmonics-to-noise ratio do not indicate height, weight or body mass index in either sex. In contrast, these perturbation and noise parameters, in addition to F0 range and variability, explained more variance in body shape than did formants or mean F0, particularly among men. Shimmer or jitter explained the most variance in men's hip circumferences (12%) and chest-to-hip ratios (6%), whereas harmonics-to-noise ratio and formants explained the most variance in women's waist-to-hip ratios (11%), and significantly more than in men's waist-to-hip ratios. Our study represents the most comprehensive analysis of vocal indicators of human body size to date and offers a foundation for future research examining the hormonal mechanisms of voice production in humans and perceptual playback experiments