Informal Female Caregivers of Older Adults with Dementia in Taiwan

Family care givers providing a major portion of care giving often experience stress related to the negative consequences for their health. Female care givers often more heavily involved care giving activities than males. Care givers’ gender studies have seldom conducted in Taiwan. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship of demographic factors and coping on health of female care givers of older adults with dementia in Taiwan. In addition, whether coping mediated or moderated the relationship between stress and care giver’s health was also examined. Lazarus and Folkman’s Stress model guided this study. Using a secondary data analysis method, this study examined data collected from the family care givers of older adults with dementia (2002). One hundred and three female care givers were analyzed by applying Pearson correlation, simple and multiple regression analysis. The findings showed care givers who are younger, more income, and with helpers had better health. Care givers who had less income, without helpers, and caring for care recipients with more behavioral problems had more depressive symptoms. In addition, mediating effect of avoidance coping was supported in this study. The data analysis from this study will provide a basis for nurses to develop interventions that minimize the negative impacts on female care givers

Nonparametric Estimation of the Bivariate Recurrence Time Distribution

This paper considers statistical models in which two different types of events, such as the diagnosis of a disease and the remission of the disease, occur alternately over time and are observed subject to right censoring. We propose nonparametric estimators for the joint distribution of bivariate recurrence times and the marginal distribution of the first recurrence time. In general, the marginal distribution of the second recurrence time cannot be estimated due to an identifiability problem, but a conditional distribution of the second recurrence time can be estimated non-parametrically. In literature, statistical methods have been developed to estimate the joint distribution of bivariate recurrence times based on data of the first pair of censored bivariate recurrence times. These methods are efficient in the current model because recurrence times of higher orders are not used. Asymptotic properties of the estimators are established. Numerical studies demonstrate the estimator performs well with practical sample sizes. We apply the proposed method to a Denmark psychiatric case register data set for illustration of the methods and theory

Joint Modeling and Estimation for Recurrent Event Processes and Failure Time Data

Recurrent event data are commonly encountered in longitudinal follow-up studies related to biomedical science, econometrics, reliability, and demography. In many studies, recurrent events serve as important measurements for evaluating disease progression, health deterioration, or insurance risk. When analyzing recurrent event data, an independent censoring condition is typically required for the construction of statistical methods. Nevertheless, in some situations, the terminating time for observing recurrent events could be correlated with the recurrent event process and, as a result, the assumption of independent censoring is violated. In this paper, we consider joint modeling of a recurrent event process and a failure time in which a common subject-specific latent variable is used to model the association between the intensity of the recurrent event process and the hazard of the failure time. The proposed joint model is flexible in that no parametric assumptions on the distributions of censoring times and latent variables are made and, under the model, informative censoring is allowed for observing both the recurrent events and failure times. We propose a ‘borrow-strength estimation procedure’ by first estimating the value of the latent variable from recurrent event data, and next using the estimated value in the failure time model. Some interesting implications and trajectories of the proposed model will be presented. Properties of the regression parameter estimates and the estimated baseline cumulative hazard functions are also studied

Study of the Basic Characteristics of an Interactive TV Service

The iTV service was too conceptually nebulous to readily comprehend. It was variously mistaken as referring to a network television service and a digital television service. To avoid further setbacks, it is very important that we clarify the basic characteristics of iTV service for the benefit of the fields of information technology, MIS, broadcasting, commerce and so on. After conducting literature reviews and interviews, we were able to delineate the basic characteristics of iTV service as follows:1. The contents of iTV service; 2.The supply and use process, and components of the iTV service

A Practical Case Study of the Interactive TV Service as a Time-Critical Product

In this paper, we conducted a case study of time-critical goods - NG goods. We expected the study to integrate the field of information management and the TV broadcasting field, thereby creating a new wave of potential for the information management field after e-commerce. We suggest two perspectives germane to industry development: the development of the whole industry, and, the operation of the individual companie

Analyzing Panel Count Data with Informative Observation Times

In this paper, we study panel count data with informative observation times. We assume nonparametric and semiparametric proportional rate models for the underlying recurrent event process, where the form of the baseline rate function is left unspecified and a subject-specific frailty variable inflates or deflates the rate function multiplicatively. The proposed models allow the recurrent event processes and observation times to be correlated through their connections with the unobserved frailty; moreover, the distributions of both the frailty variable and observation times are considered as nuisance parameters. The baseline rate function and the regression parameters are estimated by maximizing a conditional likelihood function of observed event counts and solving estimation equations. Large sample properties of the proposed estimators are studied. Numerical studies demonstrate that the proposed estimation procedures perform well for moderate sample sizes. An application to a bladder tumor study is presented to illustrate the use of the proposed methods

Kernel Estimation of Rate Function for Recurrent Event Data

Recurrent event data are largely characterized by the rate function but smoothing techniques for estimating the rate function have never been rigorously developed or studied in statistical literature. This paper considers the moment and least squares methods for estimating the rate function from recurrent event data. With an independent censoring assumption on the recurrent event process, we study statistical properties of the proposed estimators and propose bootstrap procedures for the bandwidth selection and for the approximation of confidence intervals in the estimation of the occurrence rate function. It is identified that the moment method without resmoothing via a smaller bandwidth will produce curve with nicks occurring at the censoring times, whereas there is no such problem with the least squares method. Furthermore, the asymptotic variance of the least squares estimator is shown to be smaller under regularity conditions. However, in the implementation of the bootstrap procedures, the moment method is computationally more efficient than the least squares method because the former approach uses condensed bootstrap data. The performance of the proposed procedures is studied through Monte Carlo simulations and an epidemiological example on intravenous drug users

EFFECTS OF BACKPACK LOADS ON NECK-TRUNK MUSCLE ACTIVATION AMONG OFFICE WORKERS

The main purposes of this study were to investigate the effect of weight carriage on necktrunk muscle activation during standing and walking among office workers and to compare electromyography activation between healthy and symptomatic office workers. Twenty-one participants were recruited. Three load trials (0%, 10%, and 15% BW) and two conditions (standing and walking) were encountered. Repeated measure ANOVA was used to test main effect of load and condition on kinetic data. There was a significant condition*load interaction on right trapezius. Significantly increasing activation of right abdominis was found as carrying 15% BW. There was a significant decrease on activation of left erector spinae while carrying 10% BW. Considering to electromyography data, we suggest the backpack load under 10% BW was suitable for office workers

Semiparametric regression analysis for alternating recurrent event data

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142558/1/sim7563_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142558/2/sim7563.pd