Electoral bias at the 2015 general election: reducing Labour’s electoral advantage

Electoral bias results in an asymmetrical seat distribution between parties with similar vote shares. Over recent British general elections Labour held an advantage because it efficiently converted votes into seats. Following the 2015 election result this advantage has reduced considerably, principally because Labour’s vote distribution saw it accumulate more ineffective votes, particularly where electoral support was not converted into seats. By contrast, the vote distribution of the Conservative party is now superior to that of Labour because it acquired fewer wasted votes although Labour retains a modest advantage overall because it benefits from inequalities in electorate size and differences in voter turnout. Features of the 2015 election, however, raise general methodological challenges for decomposing electoral bias. The analysis, therefore, considers the effect of substituting the Liberal Democrats as the third party with the United Kingdom Independence Party. It also examines the outcome in Scotland separately from that in England and Wales. Following this analysis it becomes clear that the method for decomposing electoral bias requires clearer guidelines for its application in specific settings

Supporting people with type 2 diabetes in effective use of their medicine through mobile health technology integrated with clinical care (SuMMiT-D Feasibility): a randomised feasibility trial protocol

Introduction: Type 2 diabetes is common, affecting over 400 million people worldwide. Risk of serious complications can be reduced through use of effective treatments and active self-management. However, people are often concerned about starting new medicines and face difficulties in taking them regularly. Use of brief messages to provide education and support self-management, delivered through mobile phone-based text-messages can be an effective tool for some long-term conditions. We have developed messages aiming to support patients’ self-management of type 2 diabetes in the use of medications and other aspects of self-management, underpinned by theory and evidence. The aim of this trial is to determine the feasibility of a large-scale clinical trial to test the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the intervention, compared to usual care. Methods and analysis: The feasibility trial will be a multi-centre individually randomised, controlled trial in primary care recruiting adults (≥35 years) with type 2 diabetes in England. Consenting participants will be randomised to receive short text-messages three times a week with messages designed to produce change in medication adherence or non-health related messages for six months. The aims are to test recruitment methods, retention to the study, the feasibility of data collection and the mobile-phone and web-based processes of a proposed definitive trial and to refine the text messaging intervention. The primary outcome is the rate of recruitment to randomisation of participants to the trial. Data, including patient reported measures, will be collected online at baseline and the end of the six-month follow-up period. With 200 participants (100 in each group), this trial is powered to estimate 80% follow up within 95% confidence intervals of 73.8% to 85.3%. The analysis will follow a pre-specified plan. Ethics and Dissemination: Ethics approval was obtained from the West of Scotland Research Ethics Committee 05. The results will be disseminated through conference presentations, peer-reviewed journals and will be published on the trial website: www.summit-d.org.</p

Exploring constituency-level estimates for the 2017 British general election

Most opinion polls conducted during British general election campaigns report on each party’s estimated national vote share. Although of considerable interest, these data do not put the spotlight on the marginal seats, the constituencies targeted by the parties for intensive canvassing; these are where the contest for a majority in the House of Commons is won and lost. There have been some polls covering those constituencies as a whole, but very few of individual constituencies so there was very little reporting of the outcome for each party in those individual constituencies. That changed with the 2017 general election, when three analysts published estimates on the internet of each party’s vote share separately for each constituency and with those data predicted which party would win each seat. This paper explores the veracity of those estimates, finding that although in general terms they accurately represented the relative position of each constituency in the share of each party’s votes, nevertheless their estimates of which marginal seats would be won by each were not as accurate. The implications of such polls, especially as their predictive ability is improved, is discussed

Optimising an intervention to support home-living older adults at risk of malnutrition: a qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: In the UK, about 14% of community-dwelling adults aged 65 and over are estimated to be at risk of malnutrition. Screening older adults in primary care and treating those at risk may help to reduce malnutrition risk, reduce the resulting need for healthcare use and improve quality of life. Interventions are needed to raise older adults' risk awareness, offer relevant and meaningful strategies to address risk and support general practices to deliver treatment and support. METHODS: Using the Person-based Approach and input from Patient and Public Involvement representatives, we developed the 'Eat well, feel well, stay well' intervention. The intervention was optimised using qualitative data from think aloud and semi-structured process evaluation interviews with 23 and 18 older adults respectively. Positive and negative comments were extracted to inform rapid iterative modifications to support engagement with the intervention. Data were then analysed thematically and final adjustments made, to optimise the meaningfulness of the intervention for the target population. RESULTS: Participants' comments were generally positive. This paper focuses predominantly on participants' negative reactions, to illustrate the changes needed to ensure that intervention materials were optimally relevant and meaningful to older adults. Key factors that undermined engagement included: resistance to the recommended nutritional intake among those with reduced appetite or eating difficulties, particularly frequent eating and high energy options; reluctance to gain weight; and a perception that advice did not align with participants' specific personal preferences and eating difficulties. We addressed these issues by adjusting the communication of eating goals to be more closely aligned with older adults' beliefs about good nutrition, and acceptable and feasible eating patterns. We also adjusted the suggested tips and strategies to fit better with older adults' everyday activities, values and beliefs. CONCLUSIONS: Using iterative qualitative methods facilitated the identification of key behavioural and contextual elements that supported engagement, and issues that undermined older adults' engagement with intervention content. This informed crucial revisions to the intervention content that enabled us to maximise the meaningfulness, relevance and feasibility of the key messages and suggested strategies to address malnutrition risk, and therefore optimise engagement with the intervention and the behavioural advice it provided

Lanthanide-based time-resolved luminescence immunoassays

The sensitive and specific detection of analytes such as proteins in biological samples is critical for a variety of applications, for example disease diagnosis. In immunoassays a signal in response to the concentration of analyte present is generated by use of antibodies labeled with radioisotopes, luminophores, or enzymes. All immunoassays suffer to some extent from the problem of the background signal observed in the absence of analyte, which limits the sensitivity and dynamic range that can be achieved. This is especially the case for homogeneous immunoassays and surface measurements on tissue sections and membranes, which typically have a high background because of sample autofluorescence. One way of minimizing background in immunoassays involves the use of lanthanide chelate labels. Luminescent lanthanide complexes have exceedingly long-lived luminescence in comparison with conventional fluorophores, enabling the short-lived background interferences to be removed via time-gated acquisition and delivering greater assay sensitivity and a broader dynamic range. This review highlights the potential of using lanthanide luminescence to design sensitive and specific immunoassays. Techniques for labeling biomolecules with lanthanide chelate tags are discussed, with aspects of chelate design. Microtitre plate-based heterogeneous and homogeneous assays are reviewed and compared in terms of sensitivity, dynamic range, and convenience. The great potential of surface-based time-resolved imaging techniques for biomolecules on gels, membranes, and tissue sections using lanthanide tracers in proteomics applications is also emphasized

Small-firm growth and public policy in Northern Ireland: making the difference?

The authors describe an investigation into the regional dimension to the process of small-firm growth and development in the United Kingdom in the 1990s. Recent trends in the growth performance of small manufacturing and service-sector firms are presented for the UK regions and an attempt is made to establish if there are regional variations in the set of factors which may determine faster growth. In particular, a detailed examination of the impact of public policy assistance to small firms in Northern Ireland, as delivered by the Local Enterprise Development Unit -- the small-business agency for the region -- is undertaken in an attempt to measure more precisely the contribution of the policy environment to small-firm growth within one region of the United Kingdom.