A blinded, randomized, controlled trial assessing conservative management strategies for frozen shoulder

BACKGROUND: There is little evidence for the optimal form of nonoperative treatment in the management of frozen shoulder. This study assesses the efficacy of current physiotherapy strategies. METHODS: All primary care referrals of frozen shoulder to our physiotherapy department were included during a 12-month period. Of these referrals, 17% met the inclusion criteria for primary idiopathic frozen shoulder. The 75 patients were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups: group exercise class, individual physiotherapy, and home exercises alone. A single independent physiotherapist, who was blinded to the treatment groups, made all assessments. Range of motion, Constant score, Oxford Shoulder Score, Short Form 36, and Hospital Anxiety and Disability Scale (HADS) outcome measures were performed at baseline, 6 weeks, 6 months, and 1 year. RESULTS: The exercise class group improved from a mean Constant score of 39.8 at baseline to 71.4 at 6 weeks and 88.1 at 1 year. There was a significant improvement in shoulder symptoms on Oxford and Constant scores (P < .001). This improvement was greater than with individual physiotherapy or home exercises alone (P < .001). The improvement in range of motion was significantly greater in both physiotherapy groups over home exercises (P < .001). HADS scores significantly improved during the course of treatment (P < .001). The improvement in HADS anxiety score was significantly greater in both physiotherapy intervention groups than in home exercises alone. CONCLUSIONS: A hospital-based exercise class can produce a rapid recovery from a frozen shoulder with a minimum number of visits to the hospital and is more effective than individual physiotherapy or a home exercise program

Textual Classication of SEC Comment Letters

The purpose of this study is to identify important SEC comment letters and examine the mechanisms by which they affect firm value. The SEC periodically reviews public-company financial statements, issuing comment letters in response to disclosure deficiencies, to ensure that investors are provided with material information, and to prevent fraud. Given that comment letters consist of unstructured text, statistical text classification may be an effective technique to identify comment letter importance. The information in comment letters is distributed over several separate filings and they are not widely cited by the press or analysts as information sources, which may result in investor inattention and underreaction to their disclosure. I utilize negative abnormal returns following comment letter disclosure as the primary indicator of comment letter importance, and develop a Naive Bayesian classification model that signals important comment letters from their text features that are associated with the indicator. In a holdout sample, the text classification model correctly identifies important comment letters between 10 and 40 percent better than chance. The average out-of-sample abnormal return for firms with signaled comment letters is -5.8 percent during the 90 days post-disclosure, but only when the comment letters were viewed on EDGAR. Signaled comment letters are associated with lower persistence of profits and increased material restatements in the year following comment letter disclosure

World marketing : a multinational approach

xi, 391 p. ; 24 cm

Attitudes Toward Advertising: A Multinational Study

Advertising is emerging as one of the most controversial functions of business. This study surveys an international sample of consumerists, students, academicians, and managers to determine differences in their attitudes toward advertising. The strongest differences exist between managers and consumerists.© 1982 JIBS. Journal of International Business Studies (1982) 13, 121–129