Reliability and validity of an FFQ for South American children and adolescents from the SAYCARE study

Objective:The purpose of this study was to analyse the reliability and validity of a semi-quantitative FFQ to assess food group consumption in South American children and adolescents.Design:The SAYCARE (South American Youth/Child cARdiovascular and Environmental) study is an observational, multicentre, feasibility study performed in a sample of 3-to 18-year-old children and adolescents attending private and public schools from six South American countries. Participants answered the FFQ twice with a two-week interval and three 24-h dietary recalls. Intraclass and Spearman''s correlations, weighted Cohen''s kappa (¿w), percentage of agreement and energy-adjusted Pearson''s correlation coefficients were calculated.Setting:Seven cities in South America (Buenos Aires, Lima, Medelin, Montevideo, Santiago, Sao Paulo and Teresina).Subjects:A sample of 200 children and 244 adolescents for reliability analyses and 252 children and 244 adolescents for validity analyses were included.Results:Depending on the food group, for children and adolescents, reliability analyses resulted in Spearman''s coefficients from 0·47 to 0·73, intraclass correlation coefficients from 0·66 to 0·99, ¿w coefficients from 0·35 to 0·63, and percentage of agreement between 72·75 and 83·52 %. In the same way, validity analyses resulted in Spearman''s coefficients from 0·17 to 0·37, energy-adjusted Pearson''s coefficients from 0·17 to 0·61, ¿w coefficients from 0·09 to 0·24, and percentages of agreement between 45·79 and 67·06 %.Conclusion:The SAYCARE FFQ achieved reasonable reliability and slight-moderate validity for almost all food groups intakes. Accordingly, it can be used for the purpose of ranking the intake of individuals within a population

UCM-MACB 2.0: A Complutense University Virtual Herbarium Project

UCM-MACB 2.0 is the name of a project leaded by a multidisciplinary team composed by university professors, students and collaborators as well as national and foreign visiting professors and researchers under the European Area of Higher Education. This is an e-learning project oriented to training and teaching being available to the general public, students and professionals from different areas on the basis of the plant biology, plant popular uses and their applications. At present, the initial steps of the project have received the financial support of Vicerrectorado de Calidad y Desarrollo, Complutense University of Madrid (PIMCD 3/2010). The target of the project is the developing and configuration of a computer system implementing a virtual herbarium based on plant species from the MACB herbarium (Faculty of Biology, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain). The system also will includes a web page and an IT application (as a client-servant application) to transfer herbarium information to the potential interested community. MACB herbarium sheets will be associated with a set of databases containing the following information: taxonomic information, geographic distribution, specimen photographs, links to external online resources such as educational, scientific and other databases containing freely available molecular data (genomics, proteomics, metabolomics), for instance, GenBank or GenomeNet, PDB , InterPro, Enzyme, Prosite, Pir, TrEMBL, EMBL-Bank, Swiss-prot or NCBI taxonomic data as Taxonomy Browser, GBIF, Species 2000, or Tree of Life, etc. It is important to note that auxiliary information (geographical, ecophysiological, genomics, etc) is one of the main distinguishing features of UCM-MACB 2.0. Furthermore, plant images are enriched with information in multimedia format (MP3 voice) to make available UCM-MACB 2.0 to visually impaired users. In this sense, we plan to cooperate with the Office for the Integration of Persons with Disabilities at the Complutense University of Madrid. Thus, one of the main contributions of this project is that we extend the classical idea of herbarium enriching the usual botanical information with multimedia elements, opening the definition of ‘herbarium sheet’ to new educational and scientific possibilities

¿Cuánto fuman nuestros adolescentes? Estudio epidemiológico sobre consumo de tabaco en Zaragoza

ABSTRACTObjective:To evaluate adolescent smoking habit by health primary care practitioners.Target population: Students of 2nd and 3rd level of High Education (Obligatory Secondary Education).Scenery: 14 High Schools in Zaragoza city.The recruitment was not randomised and students participated voluntary.Professionals: General Practitioners and Pediatricians (staff or registers) of a surgery.Sample: 881 students.Activities: Group antismoking advice, leaflet, five questions inquiry and coximetry.Reevaluation: One year later inquiry and coximetry.Results: Authors report on 18.80% (CI 95% 16.3%-21.6%) of smokers in all the sample. Women smoke more than men,24.60% versus 14%. Smoking is a crescent phenomenon in young women 40% at sixteen years old. 34% of smokers do nohave the intention of smoking next year. Students in Public High Schools smoke more than students in Private and Concert HighSchools, 22.90% versus 13.70%, p=0.003. Otherwise women behave in a similar way in both kinds of schools. Smoker studentare 14.8 years old and no smoker students are 14.2 years old. The pattern consume of men is mainly at weekends.When coxi-metry is upper 5 ppm probability of being a smoker is 80%Objetivo:Analizar el consumo de tabaco en adolescentes de Zaragoza de 2.º y 3.º de ESO.Población diana:Adolescentes de 2.° y 3.° de ESO.Ámbito:Centros escolares. Consejo impartido de forma grupal por profesionales de Atención Primaria. Pediatras ymédicos de familia.Marco:Catorce centros escolares de la ciudad de Zaragoza. Participación voluntaria y no aleatorizada de los Centros.Muestra:881 adolescentes.Actividad realizada:Mediante consejo grupal, material escrito específico, folleto encuesta de cinco preguntas y coxi-metría.Reevaluación:Encuesta y coximetría un año después a los mismos centros cursos 3.° y 4.° de ESO.Resultados:Se objetivó un porcentaje de fumadores de un 18,8% en el total de la muestra (IC 95% 16,3%-21,6%). Lamedia de edad de los fumadores es de 14,8 años y la de los no fumadores 14,2 años. El consumo en las mujeres esmucho mayor que en los hombres, 24,6% frente al 14%. El ascenso en las cifras de consumo es mayor en las muje-res alcanzando porcentajes de un 40% a los 16 años. Un 34% de los 166 fumadores piensan no fumar el próximoaño. Los centros públicos tienen unas cifras de consumo superior al de los concertados y privados conjuntamente,22,9% vs 13,7%, siendo estas diferencias significativas p=0,003. Sin embargo si analizamos el caso de las mujeres de3.° de ESO vemos que estas diferencias son menores y no alcanzan significación estadística. El patrón de consumoen fin de semana es más acentuado para los hombres que para las mujeres. Cuando las lecturas de CO superan losvalores de 5 ppm la probabilidad de ser fumador es de alrededor del 80

Revista electrónica interuniversitaria de formación del profesorado

Monográfico con el título: 'La universidad de la convergencia. Acreditación y certificaciones. Estrategias docentes, tutoriales y evaluadoras de reforma'. Resumen basado en el de la publicaciónEl Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior (EEES) pone el acento en dos cuestiones básicas: el aprendizaje y el trabajo del alumno. Al hilo de ese discurso, se pretende dar a conocer las posibilidades del cuaderno de bitácora como recurso formativo y como instrumento de investigación-acción en el ámbito de la educación universitaria. La bitácora se presenta aquí como un instrumento al servicio de una pedagogía de la esperanza y de la autonomía, frente a la pedagogía de la sumisión, capaz de convertir el aula en un espacio reflexivo, crítico y comunicativo.AragónES