Likert Items: Should(n’t) We Really Care?

One of the controversial methodological topics in the social and behavioral sciences is the (ab)use of Likert Scale items, Likert-type items and ranked ordered response categories. The debate is whether parametric tests can be legitimately conducted on technically ordinal response categories that are represented with numbers. Participants answered survey questions on moral disengagement, where we changed the intervals of seven response categories and tested whether assigning numbers made any difference in two separate studies. The results showed that participants’ ratings were not significantly different with or without numbers. Participants tend to covertly superimpose numbers where none were provided. Also, there were no significant interactions between assignment of numbers and ‘intervalness’. However, ratings were significantly different between two key interval groups. Knowing the assumptions of respondents to these Likert items even without numbers could inform researchers especially if parametric tests are to be conducted

Developing reproducible bioinformatics analysis workflows for heterogeneous computing environments to support African genomics

Background: The Pan-African bioinformatics network, H3ABioNet, comprises 27 research institutions in 17 African countries. H3ABioNet is part of the Human Health and Heredity in Africa program (H3Africa), an African-led research consortium funded by the US National Institutes of Health and the UK Wellcome Trust, aimed at using genomics to study and improve the health of Africans. A key role of H3ABioNet is to support H3Africa projects by building bioinformatics infrastructure such as portable and reproducible bioinformatics workflows for use on heterogeneous African computing environments. Processing and analysis of genomic data is an example of a big data application requiring complex interdependent data analysis workflows. Such bioinformatics workflows take the primary and secondary input data through several computationally-intensive processing steps using different software packages, where some of the outputs form inputs for other steps. Implementing scalable, reproducible, portable and easy-to-use workflows is particularly challenging. Results: H3ABioNet has built four workflows to support (1) the calling of variants from high-throughput sequencing data; (2) the analysis of microbial populations from 16S rDNA sequence data; (3) genotyping and genome-wide association studies; and (4) single nucleotide polymorphism imputation. A week-long hackathon was organized in August 2016 with participants from six African bioinformatics groups, and US and European collaborators. Two of the workflows are built using the Common Workflow Language framework (CWL) and two using Nextflow. All the workflows are containerized for improved portability and reproducibility using Docker, and are publicly available for use by members of the H3Africa consortium and the international research community. Conclusion: The H3ABioNet workflows have been implemented in view of offering ease of use for the end user and high levels of reproducibility and portability, all while following modern state of the art bioinformatics data processing protocols. The H3ABioNet workflows will service the H3Africa consortium projects and are currently in use. All four workflows are also publicly available for research scientists worldwide to use and adapt for their respective needs. The H3ABioNet workflows will help develop bioinformatics capacity and assist genomics research within Africa and serve to increase the scientific output of H3Africa and its Pan-African Bioinformatics Network

Global burden of 288 causes of death and life expectancy decomposition in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations, 1990–2021: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021

BACKGROUND Regular, detailed reporting on population health by underlying cause of death is fundamental for public health decision making. Cause-specific estimates of mortality and the subsequent effects on life expectancy worldwide are valuable metrics to gauge progress in reducing mortality rates. These estimates are particularly important following large-scale mortality spikes, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. When systematically analysed, mortality rates and life expectancy allow comparisons of the consequences of causes of death globally and over time, providing a nuanced understanding of the effect of these causes on global populations. METHODS The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2021 cause-of-death analysis estimated mortality and years of life lost (YLLs) from 288 causes of death by age-sex-location-year in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations for each year from 1990 until 2021. The analysis used 56 604 data sources, including data from vital registration and verbal autopsy as well as surveys, censuses, surveillance systems, and cancer registries, among others. As with previous GBD rounds, cause-specific death rates for most causes were estimated using the Cause of Death Ensemble model-a modelling tool developed for GBD to assess the out-of-sample predictive validity of different statistical models and covariate permutations and combine those results to produce cause-specific mortality estimates-with alternative strategies adapted to model causes with insufficient data, substantial changes in reporting over the study period, or unusual epidemiology. YLLs were computed as the product of the number of deaths for each cause-age-sex-location-year and the standard life expectancy at each age. As part of the modelling process, uncertainty intervals (UIs) were generated using the 2·5th and 97·5th percentiles from a 1000-draw distribution for each metric. We decomposed life expectancy by cause of death, location, and year to show cause-specific effects on life expectancy from 1990 to 2021. We also used the coefficient of variation and the fraction of population affected by 90% of deaths to highlight concentrations of mortality. Findings are reported in counts and age-standardised rates. Methodological improvements for cause-of-death estimates in GBD 2021 include the expansion of under-5-years age group to include four new age groups, enhanced methods to account for stochastic variation of sparse data, and the inclusion of COVID-19 and other pandemic-related mortality-which includes excess mortality associated with the pandemic, excluding COVID-19, lower respiratory infections, measles, malaria, and pertussis. For this analysis, 199 new country-years of vital registration cause-of-death data, 5 country-years of surveillance data, 21 country-years of verbal autopsy data, and 94 country-years of other data types were added to those used in previous GBD rounds. FINDINGS The leading causes of age-standardised deaths globally were the same in 2019 as they were in 1990; in descending order, these were, ischaemic heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lower respiratory infections. In 2021, however, COVID-19 replaced stroke as the second-leading age-standardised cause of death, with 94·0 deaths (95% UI 89·2-100·0) per 100 000 population. The COVID-19 pandemic shifted the rankings of the leading five causes, lowering stroke to the third-leading and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to the fourth-leading position. In 2021, the highest age-standardised death rates from COVID-19 occurred in sub-Saharan Africa (271·0 deaths [250·1-290·7] per 100 000 population) and Latin America and the Caribbean (195·4 deaths [182·1-211·4] per 100 000 population). The lowest age-standardised death rates from COVID-19 were in the high-income super-region (48·1 deaths [47·4-48·8] per 100 000 population) and southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania (23·2 deaths [16·3-37·2] per 100 000 population). Globally, life expectancy steadily improved between 1990 and 2019 for 18 of the 22 investigated causes. Decomposition of global and regional life expectancy showed the positive effect that reductions in deaths from enteric infections, lower respiratory infections, stroke, and neonatal deaths, among others have contributed to improved survival over the study period. However, a net reduction of 1·6 years occurred in global life expectancy between 2019 and 2021, primarily due to increased death rates from COVID-19 and other pandemic-related mortality. Life expectancy was highly variable between super-regions over the study period, with southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania gaining 8·3 years (6·7-9·9) overall, while having the smallest reduction in life expectancy due to COVID-19 (0·4 years). The largest reduction in life expectancy due to COVID-19 occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean (3·6 years). Additionally, 53 of the 288 causes of death were highly concentrated in locations with less than 50% of the global population as of 2021, and these causes of death became progressively more concentrated since 1990, when only 44 causes showed this pattern. The concentration phenomenon is discussed heuristically with respect to enteric and lower respiratory infections, malaria, HIV/AIDS, neonatal disorders, tuberculosis, and measles. INTERPRETATION Long-standing gains in life expectancy and reductions in many of the leading causes of death have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the adverse effects of which were spread unevenly among populations. Despite the pandemic, there has been continued progress in combatting several notable causes of death, leading to improved global life expectancy over the study period. Each of the seven GBD super-regions showed an overall improvement from 1990 and 2021, obscuring the negative effect in the years of the pandemic. Additionally, our findings regarding regional variation in causes of death driving increases in life expectancy hold clear policy utility. Analyses of shifting mortality trends reveal that several causes, once widespread globally, are now increasingly concentrated geographically. These changes in mortality concentration, alongside further investigation of changing risks, interventions, and relevant policy, present an important opportunity to deepen our understanding of mortality-reduction strategies. Examining patterns in mortality concentration might reveal areas where successful public health interventions have been implemented. Translating these successes to locations where certain causes of death remain entrenched can inform policies that work to improve life expectancy for people everywhere. FUNDING Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Normative Motivation in Whistleblowing Decision Making

Whistleblowing presents a conundrum – either the decision is heralded as the ultimate justice or it is perceived as the ultimate betrayal. The opportunity cost of fairness or loyalty occurs within a personal, situational, or cultural contexts. When would an employee decide to report an unethical behavior? This study adopts the theory of planned behavior to manipulate these normative beliefs in addition to the motivations and then measure the intention of whistleblowing in an organizational context. Using a sample of 162 participants, the results showed a significant interaction between the normative beliefs and the motivations as well as a main effect of normative beliefs on the intention of whistleblowing