A health assessment tool for multiple risk factors for obesity: psychometric testing and age differences in UK adults

Abstract Objective. Although many individual health behaviours (e.g. diet/activity) have been implicated in the current rise in obesity levels, their confounding or cumulative effects have yet to be established. This study psychometrically tested a previously piloted comprehensive measure of obesity risk factors, designed to assess their relative importance at individual and population levels. Methods. A user-friendly, self-report questionnaire, completed by 359 adult volunteers (71% female, age range 18-81 years), was subjected to exploratory factor analysis and related to Body Mass Index (BMI) and age. Results. The final solution had 74 items and showed a clear factor structure, with 5 dietary and 5 activity factors, plus 8 unrelated factors covering dieting behaviour, alcohol consumption, sleep, and varied developmental influences. Younger respondents generally reported unhealthier behaviours. Once age was controlled for, less healthy eating, more emotional eating, higher amounts eaten, less physical activity, more use of mechanised transport, and more/less successful dieting behaviour were all strongly related to higher BMI, with lesser associations for more TV watching and less parental encouragement to be active. Conclusion. This easy-to-use self-report measure of multiple risk factors showed good psychometric properties and has merit in determining the contribution of varied factors in the tendency to overweight and obesity. Practice Implications. The finding that younger adults generally reported less healthy dietary and activity behaviour indicates a pressing need for early intervention

E-Learning course development in Moodle

Moodle is a software package for producing internet-based courses and websites. It is an ongoing development project designed to support a social constructionist framework of education. There are several possibilities to create a new curriculum in Moodle. We use the basic activities to create a course, but we can use some complementary tools too. There are about 200 modules and blocks which are available from moodle.org website. We use for example AutoView Presenter which allows you to put video on-line with synchronized slides. A web based editing interface is used to configure the video/slide sources and to set the slide trigger times. Beside this module we test and use some modules, which can be very useful in material development

Starting An Electronic Journal In Law

Starting and operating an electronic journal is similar to starting and operating any journal; it is only the actual “mailing” of an electronic journal that is easier. The author discusses his experience in starting the Journal of Online Law, an electronic journal dealing with the legal issues of cyberspace. He describes his experience in addressing questions such as whether to charge for access, how to gain visibility for the journal, what type of articles make the most sense for electronic publication, which forms of electronic distribution make the most sense, and other issues

Hypertext

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Windows 95 Virus Reported... And More Microsoft Word Macro Viruses; Technology Alert, Vol. 96, No. 1, March 1996

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aicpa_news/2863/thumbnail.jp

Quality of human-computer interaction - results of a national usability survey of hospital-IT in Germany

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Due to the increasing functionality of medical information systems, it is hard to imagine day to day work in hospitals without IT support. Therefore, the design of dialogues between humans and information systems is one of the most important issues to be addressed in health care. This survey presents an analysis of the current quality level of human-computer interaction of healthcare-IT in German hospitals, focused on the users' point of view.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>To evaluate the usability of clinical-IT according to the design principles of EN ISO 9241-10 the IsoMetrics Inventory, an assessment tool, was used. The focus of this paper has been put on suitability for task, training effort and conformity with user expectations, differentiated by information systems. Effectiveness has been evaluated with the focus on interoperability and functionality of different IT systems.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>4521 persons from 371 hospitals visited the start page of the study, while 1003 persons from 158 hospitals completed the questionnaire. The results show relevant variations between different information systems.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Specialised information systems with defined functionality received better assessments than clinical information systems in general. This could be attributed to the improved customisation of these specialised systems for specific working environments. The results can be used as reference data for evaluation and benchmarking of human computer engineering in clinical health IT context for future studies.</p

UNICODE

We review coding of multi-language text in digital form using Unicode standard, with special attention to UTF-8 variant, which is the most convenient variant for coding latin text. We also give a short tutorial for using UTF-8 in Microsoft Word, Netscape Composer and text editor Kate. Standard Unicode fonts are recommended so that the texts can be easily transfered from a computer to another one or for publishing on Internet