Overcoming challenges to data quality in the ASPREE clinical trial

© 2019 The Author(s). Background: Large-scale studies risk generating inaccurate and missing data due to the complexity of data collection. Technology has the potential to improve data quality by providing operational support to data collectors. However, this potential is under-explored in community-based trials. The Aspirin in reducing events in the elderly (ASPREE) trial developed a data suite that was specifically designed to support data collectors: the ASPREE Web Accessible Relational Database (AWARD). This paper describes AWARD and the impact of system design on data quality. Methods: AWARD's operational requirements, conceptual design, key challenges and design solutions for data quality are presented. Impact of design features is assessed through comparison of baseline data collected prior to implementation of key functionality (n = 1000) with data collected post implementation (n = 18,114). Overall data quality is assessed according to data category. Results: At baseline, implementation of user-driven functionality reduced staff error (from 0.3% to 0.01%), out-of-range data entry (from 0.14% to 0.04%) and protocol deviations (from 0.4% to 0.08%). In the longitudinal data set, which contained more than 39 million data values collected within AWARD, 96.6% of data values were entered within specified query range or found to be accurate upon querying. The remaining data were missing (3.4%). Participant non-attendance at scheduled study activity was the most common cause of missing data. Costs associated with cleaning data in ASPREE were lower than expected compared with reports from other trials. Conclusions: Clinical trials undertake complex operational activity in order to collect data, but technology rarely provides sufficient support. We find the AWARD suite provides proof of principle that designing technology to support data collectors can mitigate known causes of poor data quality and produce higher-quality data. Health information technology (IT) products that support the conduct of scheduled activity in addition to traditional data entry will enhance community-based clinical trials. A standardised framework for reporting data quality would aid comparisons across clinical trials

A wider Europe? The view from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine

On the evidence of national surveys conducted between 2000 and 2006, there is a declining sense of European self-identity in the three Slavic post-Soviet republics of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Attitudes towards the European Union and the possibility of membership are broadly supportive, but with a substantial proportion who find it difficult to express a view, and substantial proportions are poorly informed in comparison with the general public in EU member or prospective member countries. Those who are better informed are more likely to favour EU membership and vice versa. Generally, socioeconomic characteristics (except for age and region) are relatively poor predictors of support for EU membership as compared with attitudinal variables. But ‘Europeanness’ should not be seen as a given, and much will depend on whether EU member countries emphasize what is common to east and west or establish ‘new dividing lines’ in place of those of the cold war

The role of dynamical polarization of the ligand to metal charge transfer excitations in {\em ab initio} determination of effective exchange parameters

The role of the bridging ligand on the effective Heisenberg coupling parameters is analyzed in detail. This analysis strongly suggests that the ligand-to-metal charge transfer excitations are responsible for a large part of the final value of the magnetic coupling constant. This permits to suggest a new variant of the Difference Dedicated Configuration Interaction (DDCI) method, presently one of the most accurate and reliable for the evaluation of magnetic effective interactions. This new method treats the bridging ligand orbitals mediating the interaction at the same level than the magnetic orbitals and preserves the high quality of the DDCI results while being much less computationally demanding. The numerical accuracy of the new approach is illustrated on various systems with one or two magnetic electrons per magnetic center. The fact that accurate results can be obtained using a rather reduced configuration interaction space opens the possibility to study more complex systems with many magnetic centers and/or many electrons per center.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Professionalism, Golf Coaching and a Master of Science Degree: A commentary

As a point of reference I congratulate Simon Jenkins on tackling the issue of professionalism in coaching. As he points out coaching is not a profession, but this does not mean that coaching would not benefit from going through a professionalization process. As things stand I find that the stimulus article unpacks some critically important issues of professionalism, broadly within the context of golf coaching. However, I am not sure enough is made of understanding what professional (golf) coaching actually is nor how the development of a professional golf coach can be facilitated by a Master of Science Degree (M.Sc.). I will focus my commentary on these two issues

Advances in ab-initio theory of Multiferroics. Materials and mechanisms: modelling and understanding

Within the broad class of multiferroics (compounds showing a coexistence of magnetism and ferroelectricity), we focus on the subclass of "improper electronic ferroelectrics", i.e. correlated materials where electronic degrees of freedom (such as spin, charge or orbital) drive ferroelectricity. In particular, in spin-induced ferroelectrics, there is not only a {\em coexistence} of the two intriguing magnetic and dipolar orders; rather, there is such an intimate link that one drives the other, suggesting a giant magnetoelectric coupling. Via first-principles approaches based on density functional theory, we review the microscopic mechanisms at the basis of multiferroicity in several compounds, ranging from transition metal oxides to organic multiferroics (MFs) to organic-inorganic hybrids (i.e. metal-organic frameworks, MOFs)Comment: 22 pages, 9 figure

Soil-landscape and climatic relationships in the middle Miocene of the Madrid Basin

The Miocene alluvial-lacustrine sequences of the Madrid Basin, Spain, formed in highly varied landscapes. The presence of various types of palaeosols allows assessment of the effects of local and external factors onsedimentation, pedogenesis and geomorphological development. In the northern, more arid, tectonicallyactive arca, soils were weakly developed in aggrading alluvial fans, dominated by mass flows. reflecting high sedimentation rates. In more distal parts of the fans and in playa lakes calcretes and dolocretes developed: the former were associated with Mg-poor fan sediments whitc: the latter formed on Mg-rich lake clays exposed during minar lake lowstands. The nonh-east part of the basin had a less arid climate. Alluvial fans in this area were dominated by stream Aood deposits, sourced by carbonate terrains. Floodplain and freshwater lakc deposits formed in distal areas. The high local supply of calcium carbonate may have contributed to the preferential developmenl on calcretes on the fans. Both the fan and floodplain palaeosols exhibit pedofacies relationships and more mature soils developed in settings more distant from the sediment sources. Palaeosols also developed on pond and lake margin carbonates, and led to the formation of palustrine limestones. The spatial distributions and stratigraphies of palaeosols in the Madrid Basin alluvial fans suggest that soil formation was controlled by local factors. These palaeosols differ from those seen in Quatemary fans. Which are characterized by climatically induced periods of stability and instability

Wholesale pricing in a small open economy

This paper addresses the empirical analysis of wholesale profit margins using data of the Dutch wholesale sector, 1986. At the heart of the analysis is the typical nature of wholesale production: wholesalers do not produce a tangible product, but offer a service capacity. This has an immediate impact on the identification, interprelation and measurement of determinants of profit variations. A model is set up to explain variations in wholesale profit margins, which is inspired by two widely applied approaches to industry pricing: the behavioural mark-up model and the marginalist price-cost model

Cichlid biogeography: comment and review

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72313/1/j.1467-2979.2004.00148.x.pd