Report to the Childhood Development Initiative on Archiving of C.D.I. Data

This report presents the ethical and legal issues involved in depositing data-sets of research for secondary use in Ireland

Sharing Social Research Data in Ireland: A Practical Tool

Your data is valuable and has an importance outside your own original project. Allowing other researchers to reuse your data maximises the impact of your work, and benefits both the scholarly community and society in general. Sharing your data allows other researchers to use your material in ways you may not have thought of, or may not have been able to do within your research project. It allows other researchers to replicate your findings, to verify your results, test your instruments and compare with other studies. It also allows them to use your work to expand knowledge in important areas. It provides value for money by reducing duplication and advancing knowledge and also has a significant value in education, as it allows both graduate and under-graduate students to develop their skills in qualitative and quantitative research by using high-quality data in their studies, without having to conduct their own surveys.Archiving your data also guarantees its long-term preservation and accessibility. As many research teams are assembled only for individual projects, long-term preservation and access to research data collections can only be guaranteed if they are deposited in an archive which will manage them, ensure access and provide user-support. In addition, the archives will ensure that the datasets do not become obsolescent or corrupted.Finally, increasingly funders require that you make your research data available as a condition of their funding your research, so that other researchers can test your findings, and use your data to extend research in your area. Equally, publishers are also specifying access to research data as a condition for publication

Aspirin compared to enoxaparin or rivaroxaban for thromboprophylaxis following hip and knee replacement.

Background:The risk of venous thromboembolism following major orthopaedic surgery is among the highest for all surgical specialties. Our hospital guidelines for thromboprophylaxis following elective primary total hip or knee replacement are based on American College of Chest Physicians guidance. The most recent change to local guidelines was the introduction of the extended aspirin regimen as standard thromboprophylaxis. Objective: To establish the appropriateness of this regimen by comparing venous thromboembolism rates in patients receiving extended aspirin to previous regimens. Setting The largest dedicated orthopaedic hospital in Ireland. Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study. Data were collected from patient record software. All eligible patients undergoing primary total hip or knee replacement between 1st January 2010 and 30th June 2016 were included. Main outcome measure Venous thromboembolism up to 6 months post-operatively. Results Of the 6548 participants (55.3% female, mean age 65.4 years (± 11.8 years, 55.8% underwent total hip replacement), venous thromboembolism occurred in 65 (0.99%). Venous thromboembolism rate in both the inpatient enoxaparin group (n = 961) and extended aspirin group (n = 3460) was 1.04% and was 0.66% in the modified rivaroxaban group (n = 1212). Non-inferiority analysis showed the extended aspirin regimen to be equivalent to the modified rivaroxaban regimen. History of venous thromboembolism was the only significant demographic risk factor for post-operative venous thromboembolism (0.87% vs. 3.54%, p  = 0.0002). Conclusion: In daily clinical practice, extended aspirin regimen is at least as effective as modified rivaroxaban for preventing clinically important venous thromboembolism among patients undergoing hip or knee arthroplasty who are discharged from the hospital without complications. Aspirin can be considered a safe and effective agent in the prevention of venous thromboembolism after total hip or total knee replacement

A biographical dictionary of the membership of the Irish House of Commons 1640-1641

THESIS 4991.1THESIS 4991.2This thesis examines the membership of the 1640 Irish House of Commons up to November 1641. It identifies 288 men who were members of the House at that time, matches them to their constituencies, where appropriate, and provides biographical information on each of them. It provides similar information on three other men who were returned to the house but either did not take their seats, or the date of whose return remains unknown. Methodology: The methodology involved drawing up the most comprehensive list of m.p.s that was possible, consulting a wide range of published and unpublished sources (genealogical material, educational records, property transactions, collections of letters and papers, parliamentary records and other materials (e.g. the Depositions)) to locate as much information as possible about each m.p. This information was collated into a biographical sketch of each member and also analysed under a variety of headings (ethnic origins, age and place in family, education, previous parliamentary experience and local connections) to provide composite information about the members. The appendix also includes an analysis of Irish parliamentary representation between 1560 and 1640, broken down by constituency, showing the way that representation changed in each area. Findings: The major findings of the thesis lie in the information collected on each member, which combine to form a picture of the Irish political community on the eve of the outbreak of the 1641 rebellion. It was possible to establish the identities of 96.9% of the members and the families of all of the others. This compares well with an earlier study of the 1613 Commons, in which two (0.8%) m.p.s remained unidentified and 8 others (3%) for whom information was available on their families only. It also provides some analysis of the groupings within the parliament e.g. the administration?s clients and supporters, groups of m.p.s of Scottish or Gaelic origin, and groupings associated with other significant figures (e.g. the earl of Cork, Sir William Parsons and the Loftuses). Finally, it was also possible to identify for the first time the constituencies for which a number of prominent m.p.s sat. Most significantly, these included Patrick Darcy, whose return indicates the extraordinary extent of co-operation between the new English and old English / Gaelic political communities in early 1641. The study confirms the strong cohesion of the old English community and its growing closeness to the prominent Gaelic families, and also the developing and heterogeneous local protestant communities throughout Ireland, a phenomenon suggested also by the contents of the Depositions. The study shows high levels of local integration of the m.p.s and a surprisingly high level in the case of the protestants. An overwhelming 91.7% of catholic county members had two or more local connections (property /residence, family connections or local office) and 82.9% of the catholic burgesses had at least two local ties, compared with 91.3% of protestant county members and 42.4% of protestant burgesses

Optimized retrieval of primary care clinical prediction rules from MEDLINE to establish a web-based register

Objectives: Identifying clinical prediction rules (CPRs) for primary care from electronic databases is difficult. This study aims to identify a search filter to optimize retrieval of these to establish a register of CPRs for the Cochrane Primary Health Care field.Study Design and Setting: Thirty primary care journals were manually searched for CPRs. This was compared with electronic search filters using alternative methodologies: (1) textword searching; (2) proximity searching; (3) inclusion terms using specific phrases and truncation; (4) exclusion terms; and (5) combinations of methodologies.Results: We manually searched 6,344 articles, revealing 41 CPRs. Across the 45 search filters, sensitivities ranged from 12% to 98%, whereas specificities ranged from 43% to 100%. There was generally a trade-off between the sensitivity and specificity of each filter (i.e., the number of CPRs and total number of articles retrieved). Combining textword searching with the inclusion terms (using specific phrases) resulted in the highest sensitivity (98%) but lower specificity (59%) than other methods. The associated precision (2%) and accuracy (60%) were also low.Conclusion: The novel use of combining textword searching with inclusion terms was considered the most appropriate for updating a register of primary care CPRs where sensitivity has to be optimized