Scholen op rapport:Een reactie op het Trouw-onderzoek naar schoolprestaties

In het najaar van 1997 maakte Trouw in een bijlage de schoolprestaties van alle scholen voor voortgezet onderwijs in Nederland openbaar (Agerbeek, Hageman, Kreulen & Lakmaker, 1997). Geordend naar provincie en schooltype publiceerde het dagblad voor elke school het percentage 'onvertraagd geslaagden' (een schatting van het percentage leerlingen dat het eindexamen haalt zonder in het voorlaatste leerjaar te zijn blijven zitten), het percentage uitvallers en zittenblijvers op de school in de jaren daarvoor en het gemiddelde van de examencijfers voor Nederlands, Engels en Wiskunde A. Deze gegevens werden voor VBO, MAVO, HAVO en VWO weergegeven. Met deze gegevens berekende de onderwijssocioloog prof.dr J. Dronkers ten slotte een rapportcijfer. Behalve de voorgaande prestatiematen werd in die berekening ook het percentage allochtonen betrokken. Door dit percentage mee te wegen probeerde Trouw te voorkomen dat scholen met een zwarte leerlingenpopulatie als vanzelf tot de slechtste worden gerekend

Applications of the experience sampling method (ESM) in paediatric healthcare:a systematic review

Background: With the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) participants are asked to provide self-reports of their symptoms, feelings, thoughts and behaviours in daily life. This preregistered systematic review assessed how ESM is being used to monitor emotional well-being, somatic health, fatigue and pain in children and adolescents with a chronic somatic illness.Methods: Databases were searched from inception. Studies were selected if they included children or adolescents aged 0–25 years with a chronic somatic illness and used ESM focussing on mental health or psychosocial wellbeing, biopsychosocial factors and/or somatic health. Two reviewers extracted data of the final 47 papers, describing 48 studies.Results: Most studies evaluated what factors influence medical or psychological symptoms and how symptoms influence each other. Another common purpose was to study the feasibility of ESM or ESM as part of an app or intervention. Study methods were heterogeneous and most studies lack adequate reporting of ESM applications and results.Conclusions: While ESM holds great potential for providing results and feedback to patients and caregivers, little use is being made of this option. Future studies should consider what they report in their studies, conduct a priori power analyses and how ESM can be embedded in clinical practice. Impact: While ESM has many clinical applications, it is currently mostly used for research purposes.Current studies using ESM are heterogeneous and lack consistent, high-quality reporting.There is great potential in ESM for providing patients and parents with personalised feedback.</p

"Getting sicker quicker": does living in a more deprived neighbourhood mean your health deteriorates faster?

Data from the longitudinal West of Scotland Twenty-07 Study: Health in the Community was used to examine whether, over a 20 year period, the self-reported health of people living in deprived areas became poorer faster compared to those living in more affluent areas. Three cohorts (born in the early 1930s, 1950s and 1970s) are included, covering 60 years of the life span. Using multilevel growth curve models, a 40% probability of reporting poor health was predicted among residents of more deprived areas at an earlier age (66) compared to those living in more affluent areas (83). Wider area differences were seen for men than for women. Our findings indicate that attempts to reduce area differences in health should start young but also continue throughout the lifespan

Street connectivity and obesity in Glasgow, Scotland : impact of age, sex and socioeconomic position

This study investigated associations of street connectivity with body mass index (BMI), and whether these associations varied by sex, age and socioeconomic position, amongst adults in Glasgow, Scotland. Data on socio-demographic variables, height and weight were collected from 1062 participants in the Greater Glasgow Health and Well-being Study, and linked with neighbourhood-level census and geo-referenced data on area level deprivation and street connectivity. Results of multilevel models showed that, after adjustment for individual level covariates, street connectivity was not significantly associated with either BMI or BMI category; nor were there any significant interactions between age, sex or socioeconomic position and street connectivity

Morphological variants of silent bared-teeth displays have different social interaction outcomes in crested macaques (Macaca nigra)

Objectives: While it has been demonstrated that even subtle variation in human facial expressions can lead to significant changes in the meaning and function of expressions, relatively few studies have examined primate facial expressions using similarly objective and rigorous analysis. Construction of primate facial expression repertoires may, therefore, be oversimplified, with expressions often arbitrarily pooled and/or split into subjective pigeonholes. Our objective is to assess whether subtle variation in primate facial expressions is linked to variation in function, and hence to inform future attempts to quantify complexity of facial communication. Materials and Methods: We used Macaque Facial Action Coding System, an anatomically based and hence more objective tool, to quantify “silent bared‐teeth” (SBT) expressions produced by wild crested macaques engaging in spontaneous behavior, and utilized discriminant analysis and bootstrapping analysis to look for morphological differences between SBT produced in four different contexts, defined by the outcome of interactions: Affiliation, Copulation, Play, and Submission. Results: We found that SBT produced in these contexts could be distinguished at significantly above‐chance rates, indicating that the expressions produced in these four contexts differ morphologically. We identified the specific facial movements that were typically used in each context, and found that the variability and intensity of facial movements also varied between contexts. Discussion: These results indicate that nonhuman primate facial expressions share the human characteristic of exhibiting meaningful subtle differences. Complexity of facial communication may not be accurately represented simply by building repertoires of distinct expressions, so further work should attempt to take this subtle variability into account