An Inquiry into the Efficacy of a Complementary Training Session for Telephone Survey Interviewers

Un examen de l’efficacité de la formation complémentaire pour les interviewers d’enquêtes téléphoniques : Cet article présente une expérience faite à l’agence d’enquêtes responsable pour l’enquête canadiennne de 2004 sur la consommation de drogues (N=14.000) après une courte séance de formation cognitive. Un total de 79 intervieweurs y ont participé représentant 2.436 journées-intervieweur de travail, avec des intervieweurs travaillant un maximum de 65 jours : l'enquête de terrain a duré 109 jours. Nous avons conçu une séance d’une heure centrée sur l’acquisition des connaissances dans deux secteurs : l'échantillonnage et la sélection dans le foyer d'une part, et les raisons de refus d'autre part. L’évolution quotidienne des performances des intervieweurs, dont les trajectoires basés sur des groupes ont été analysées, nous ont permis d’identifier les intervieweurs à performances basses (n=25) et hautes (n=42) deux semaines avant la formation. La séance de formation était à l’intention des intervieweurs à performances basses ou des nouveaux intervieweurs. Parmi ces intervieweurs, tous ceux qui travaillaient le jour de la séance (n=18) ont participé à l'une des trois séances de formation. Les retombées de la formation ont été évaluées dans trois secteurs : connaissances acquises et attitudes (via une questionnaires rempli deux semaines plus tard), rétention de connaissances et performances. Les résultats montrent pour les intervieweurs participants (a) qu’ils trouvaient que la formation les avaient aidés à comprendre l’échantillonnage et les raisons de refus, (b) qu'ils sentaient plus que les intervieweurs à hautes performances que leur performances s'étaient améliorées depuis le début du projet, (c) qu'ils avaient tendance à continuer plus longtemps à travailler sur les projet qu’un groupe de contrôle, et (d) qu'ils ont amélioré leur performance de .04 par jour après la formation, par rapport à.015 par jour avant la formation, atteignant presque la performance des intervieweurs à hautes performanceThis article presents an experiment in which a short cognitive training session was given at the private pollster conducting the 2004 Canadian Addiction Survey of 14,000 people. Overall, 79 interviewers worked on the project for a total of 2,436 interviewer-days, interviewers worked a maximum of 65 days, and the survey was in the field for 109 days. We devised a one-hour training session that focused on knowledge acquisition in two areas: sampling and selection within household, and reasons for refusals. The evolution of interviewers’ daily performance, analyzed using group-based trajectory analysis, allowed us to identify low (n=25) and high (n=42) performers two weeks before training. The training session was aimed at low performers and newly hired interviewers. Among these, all the interviewers working on training day (n=18) attended one of the three training sessions. The impact of the training was assessed in three areas: knowledge acquisition and attitudes (through a post-training questionnaire two weeks later), retention, and performance. The results show that trained interviewers a) felt that the training helped them understand sampling and the reasons for refusals b) were more likely than high performers to feel that their performance had improved since the beginning of the project, c) were likely to go on working on the project after training longer than the control group, and d) improved their performance by .04 per day after training, compared with .015 per day before training, almost reaching the performance of high performers

A Mindfulness-Based Intervention for Students With Psychiatric Disorders in a Special Education Curriculum: A Series of n-of-1 Trials on Internalized and Externalized Symptoms

Background: Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) constitute a promising option to alleviate psychological symptoms in students with psychiatric disorders.Objective: This study evaluated the impact of a MBI on psychological symptoms of elementary school students with psychiatric disorders in a special education curriculum.Method: A series of n-of-1 trials with an experimental A-B-A design and 10 assessment time-points was used. Participants were two special education classrooms of elementary school students (Group A, n = 7; Group B, n = 6; ntotal = 13) and their teachers.Results: Analyses showed that, at follow-up, students from Group A reported significant decreases in inattention and a trend (p = 0.051) was observed in anxiety symptoms, whereas their teacher reported only deteriorating anxiety scores. No significant results were found in students from Group B.Conclusion: Results from this study show substantial variation between students, tested cohorts and raters of internalizing and externalizing symptoms and behaviors. Therefore, the conservative conclusion from such variation can only be that more research is needed, as no firm conclusion as to the utility of MBIs for such groups of children with special education needs can be established

Zodiacal Exoplanets In Time (ZEIT) I: A Neptune-sized planet orbiting an M4.5 dwarf in the Hyades Star Cluster

Studying the properties of young planetary systems can shed light on how the dynamics and structure of planets evolve during their most formative years. Recent K2 observations of nearby young clusters (10–800 Myr) have facilitated the discovery of such planetary systems. Here we report the discovery of a Neptune-sized planet transiting an M4.5 dwarf (K2-25) in the Hyades cluster (650–800 Myr). The light curve shows a strong periodic signal at 1.88 days, which we attribute to spot coverage and rotation. We confirm that the planet host is a member of the Hyades by measuring the radial velocity of the system with the high-resolution near-infrared spectrograph Immersion Grating Infrared Spectrometer. This enables us to calculate a distance based on K2-25's kinematics and membership to the Hyades, which in turn provides a stellar radius and mass to ≃ 5%–10%, better than what is currently possible for most Kepler M dwarfs (12%–20%). We use the derived stellar density as a prior on fitting the K2 transit photometry, which provides weak constraints on eccentricity. Utilizing a combination of adaptive optics imaging and high-resolution spectra, we rule out the possibility that the signal is due to a bound or background eclipsing binary, confirming the transits' planetary origin. K2-25b has a radius (3.43}_(-0.31)^(+0.95)R_⊕) much larger than older Kepler planets with similar orbital periods (3.485 days) and host-star masses (0.29 M_⊙). This suggests that close-in planets lose some of their atmospheres past the first few hundred million years. Additional transiting planets around the Hyades, Pleiades, and Praesepe clusters from K2 will help confirm whether this planet is atypical or representative of other close-in planets of similar age

Use Of Xpert For The Diagnosis Of Pulmonary Tuberculosis In Severely Malnourished Hospitalized Malawian Children

Pulmonary tuberculosis contributes to increased morbidity and mortality in severely malnourished children in endemic settings. Despite high clinical suspicion, few tuberculosis prevalence estimates exist in malnourished African children. Diagnostics such as Xpert MTB/RIF may help to determine pulmonary tuberculosis prevalence, however its performance in severely malnourished children is largely unknown

Kepler eclipsing binary stars. VII. the catalogue of eclipsing binaries found in the entire Kepler data set

The primary Kepler Mission provided nearly continuous monitoring of ~200,000 objects with unprecedented photometric precision. We present the final catalog of eclipsing binary systems within the 105 deg2 Kepler field of view. This release incorporates the full extent of the data from the primary mission (Q0-Q17 Data Release). As a result, new systems have been added, additional false positives have been removed, ephemerides and principal parameters have been recomputed, classifications have been revised to rely on analytical models, and eclipse timing variations have been computed for each system. We identify several classes of systems including those that exhibit tertiary eclipse events, systems that show clear evidence of additional bodies, heartbeat systems, systems with changing eclipse depths, and systems exhibiting only one eclipse event over the duration of the mission. We have updated the period and galactic latitude distribution diagrams and included a catalog completeness evaluation. The total number of identified eclipsing and ellipsoidal binary systems in the Kepler field of view has increased to 2878, 1.3% of all observed Kepler targets

TIC 168789840: A Sextuply-Eclipsing Sextuple Star System

We report the discovery of a sextuply-eclipsing sextuple star system from TESS data, TIC 168789840, also known as TYC 7037-89-1, the first known sextuple system consisting of three eclipsing binaries. The target was observed in Sectors 4 and 5 during Cycle 1, with lightcurves extracted from TESS Full Frame Image data. It was also previously observed by the WASP survey and ASAS-SN. The system consists of three gravitationally-bound eclipsing binaries in a hierarchical structure of an inner quadruple system with an outer binary subsystem. Follow-up observations from several different observatories were conducted as a means of determining additional parameters. The system was resolved by speckle interferometry with a 0."42 separation between the inner quadruple and outer binary, inferring an estimated outer period of ~2 kyr. It was determined that the fainter of the two resolved components is an 8.217 day eclipsing binary, which orbits the inner quadruple that contains two eclipsing binaries with periods of 1.570 days and 1.306 days. MCMC analysis of the stellar parameters has shown that the three binaries of TIC 168789840 are "triplets", as each binary is quite similar to the others in terms of mass, radius, and Teff. As a consequence of its rare composition, structure, and orientation, this object can provide important new insight into the formation, dynamics, and evolution of multiple star systems. Future observations could reveal if the intermediate and outer orbital planes are all aligned with the planes of the three inner eclipsing binaries