Postgraduate Statistics Centre:HEFCE Final Self Evaluation Report

The PSC is a subject-specific CETL that focuses entirely on postgraduate statistics education, encompassing all postgraduate teaching and learning activities within the Department of Maths and Statistics. Within the wider community the multi-disciplinary and multi-faceted issues facing PG education are wide ranging and challenging. The CETL initiative, and our membership of it, has enabled us broaden our horizons and gain a wider perspective, experience and appreciate a sense of community, and reflect upon and question current practice

Practitioner Safety and the Application of Learning Theory related to injury risk in Equine Physiotherapy: a Worldwide Survey

In the equine physiotherapy profession, similarly to the equine veterinary profession, there may be a high risk of occupational injury and preventive strategies, such as the application of learning theory (LT), may mitigate workplace injury frequency. The purpose of this study was to identify the frequency of occupational injury among equine physiotherapists and investigate the relationship between injury rate and knowledge of LT. An online survey was distributed, receiving 64 valid responses: of these, 51 were qualified veterinary physiotherapists working with equines and their data were taken forward for analysis. The mean injury frequency was 0.59±1 per year, with 36 respondents reporting at least one injury during their career. The most common site ofinjury for practitioners was the lower limb (n=22) and the most common type of injury was bruising (n=32). Knowledge of LT was poor. There was a moderate positive correlation (r=0.37, 95%CI[0.10,0.58], p<0.01) between veterinary physiotherapists’ theoretical knowledge scores and their self-evaluation of LT terminology scores. There was no significant correlation between scenario-based and theoretical LT scores and injury frequency. However, there was a weak negative correlation (r=-0.31, 95%CI[-0.54,- 0.04], p<0.05) between self-evaluation of LT terminology scores and injury frequency. Due to the small number of responses, results from the present study are not representative of the target population. However, results nonetheless highlight a trend of high injury rates and low levels of understanding of equine learning. This indicates the urgent need of research into better prevention and safety-enhancing strategies

Exploring the need to mean : a multimodal analysis of a child's use of semiotic resources in the mediation of symbolic meanings

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN052071 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Peer pressure and family smoking habits influence smoking uptake in teenage boys attending school: multilevel modeling of survey data.

Introduction: Among young teens, about one in five smokes worldwide. Adolescents spend a considerable amount of their time in school, and the school environment is therefore important for child health practices and outcomes. Objectives: We aimed to investigate the impact on smoking behavior of the school environment and the personal characteristics of male teenage students attending schools in Pakistan, taking into account the survey sampling structure. Methods: A two-stage cluster sampling with stratification was employed, and we interviewed 772 male secondary school students. We adopted random effect and generalizing estimating equation models. Results: Peer pressure in particular had a strong influence on adolescents smoking; those whose friends smoked were up to 6 times more likely to smoke. Family smoking was also significantly associated with adolescents smoking, but those students whose mother was educated were 50% less likely to smoke. The fitted random effect model indicated that the between school variability was significant (p-value \u3c 0.01), indicating differences in smoking habits between schools. A random coefficient model showed that variability among schools was not significantly different for public and private schools. Conclusion: Public health campaigns for smoking cessation should target not only the individual but also the families of adolescents attending schools

Multilevel modeling of binary outcomes with three-level complex health survey data.

Complex survey designs often involve unequal selection probabilities of clus-ters or units within clusters. When estimating models for complex survey data, scaled weights are incorporated into the likelihood, producing a pseudo likeli-hood. In a 3-level weighted analysis for a binary outcome, we implemented two methods for scaling the sampling weights in the National Health Survey of Pa-kistan (NHSP). For NHSP with health care utilization as a binary outcome we found age, gender, household (HH) goods, urban/rural status, community de-velopment index, province and marital status as significant predictors of health care utilization (p-value \u3c 0.05). The variance of the random intercepts using scaling method 1 is estimated as 0.0961 (standard error 0.0339) for PSU level, and 0.2726 (standard error 0.0995) for household level respectively. Both esti-mates are significantly different from zero (p-value \u3c 0.05) and indicate consid-erable heterogeneity in health care utilization with respect to households and PSUs. The results of the NHSP data analysis showed that all three analyses, weighted (two scaling methods) and un-weighted, converged to almost identical results with few exceptions. This may have occurred because of the large num-ber of 3rd and 2nd level clusters and relatively small ICC. We performed a sim-ulation study to assess the effect of varying prevalence and intra-class correla-tion coefficients (ICCs) on bias of fixed effect parameters and variance components of a multilevel pseudo maximum likelihood (weighted) analysis. The simulation results showed that the performance of the scaled weighted estimators is satisfactory for both scaling methods. Incorporating simulation into the analysis of complex multilevel surveys allows the integrity of the results to be tested and is recommended as good practice

A systematic review of observational studies, demonstrating smoking among school going adolescents

Objective: To characterize the methods of design and analysis currently adopted in survey research of school-based observational studies for smoking, and to identify the common pitfalls made by researchers.Methods: The systematic review was conducted in 2009 and consisted of observational studies in school settings published between January 2005 and January 2009. Smoking status was the main outcome of interest. Following Cochrane style, five steps were followed: setting selection criteria for studies and conducting a literature search; review of abstracts; review of complete articles; data extraction and quality assessment of included studies; and, finally, synthesis of studies.Results: Of the 292 abstracts retrieved, 45 (15.4%) articles were selected for the final review. Inconsistencies were found in the definition of smoking behaviour which impeded generalisability. Individual-level factors had importance, but environmental level factors were also important in studying the aetiology of smoking. Results showed that studies inappropriately reported sample size estimation and important confounding factors. Hierarchical linear modelling, random effects modelling and structural equation modelling were employed in comparatively few studies.Conclusions: There were concerns regarding data analysis of complex surveys. Fifty five percent of reviewed studies ignored environmental effects which may have produced unreliable inferences. Multi-level analysis assisted in understanding school-level effects

Development and psychometric testing of the online Adolescent Diabetes Needs Assessment Tool (ADNAT)

Supplementary information published since the original article was published.This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a published work that appeared in final form in World Biomedical Frontiers. To access the final edited and published work see http://biomedfrontiers.org/diabetes-obesity-2015-1-21/.World Biomedical Frontiers provides a platform for the exchange of the latest research progress, including strategic and emerging research areas such as diabetes. Their aim is to accelerate understanding of human health and improvetreatment of a variety of human diseases. Our article, published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing, was selected for their web based publication. It provides an abstract plus supplementary information on the research work associated with ADNAT

Pilot and feasibility studies : extending the conceptual framework

Acknowledgements Not applicable. Funding No specific funding was received for this work.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Role of corticosteroids in Functional Endoscopic Sinus Surgery - a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: The aim of our study is to systematically review the existing evidence on the role of corticosteroids in patients undergoing functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS).  Methodology: Systematic search of MEDLINE (1950- 2014), EMBASE (1980-2014), metaRegister, Cochrane Library and ISI conference proceedings was carried out.  Results: Eighteen randomised controlled trials with 1309 patients were included. Use of local and/or systemic corticosteroids with FESS was reported in four categories; operative, anaesthesia related, post-operative outcomes and risk of recurrence. Metaanalysis for operative outcomes demonstrated that, mean operative time (MD -10.70 minutes; 95% CI -15.86, -5.55; P <0.0001) and mean estimated blood loss (MD -28.32 mls; 95% CI -40.93, -15.72; P <0.0001) was significantly lower; and surgical field quality (MD -0.81; 95% CI -1.32, -0.30; P = 0.002) was significantly better in corticosteroid group. Meta-analysis showed that post-operative endoscopic scores (SMD -0.39; 95% CI -0.60, -0.17; P = 0.0004) were significantly better in corticosteroid group compared to no corticosteroid group. There was no increase in risk of sinusitis (RR 0.64; 95% CI 0.32, 1.30; P = 0.22) between use of corticosteroids and no corticosteroids; There was no significant difference in recurrence risk of chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) in mixed population studies (RR 0.77; 95% CI 0.35, 1.70; P = 0.52) between the two groups but analysis of studies reporting on chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (CRSwNP) (RR 0.64;95% CI 0.45,0.91;P=0.01) showed significant difference in favour of the corticosteroid group.  Conclusion: Pre-operative use of local and/or systemic corticosteroids in FESS, results in significantly reduced blood loss, shorter operative time and improved surgical field quality. Studies are limited on the intra-operative use of corticosteroids to reduce postoperative pain. Postoperative corticosteroids improve postoperative endoscopic scores in CRS and recurrence rates in cases of CRSwNP

Pilot trials in physical activity journals:a review of reporting and editorial policy

Background: Since the early 2000s, a number of publications in the medical literature have highlighted inadequacies in the design, conduct and reporting of pilot trials. This work led to two notable publications in 2016: a conceptual framework for defining feasibility studies and an extension to the CONSORT 2010 statement to include pilot trials. It was hoped that these publications would educate researchers, leading to better use of pilot trials and thus more rigorously planned and informed randomised controlled trials. The aim of the present work is to evaluate the impact of these publications in the field of physical activity by reviewing the literature pre- and post-2016. This first article presents the pre-2016 review of the reporting and the current editorial policy applied to pilot trials published in physical activity journals. Methods: Fourteen physical activity journals were screened for pilot and feasibility studies published between 2012 and 2015. The CONSORT 2010 extension to pilot and feasibility studies was used as a framework to assess the reporting quality of the studies. Editors of the eligible physical activity journals were canvassed regarding their editorial policy for pilot and feasibility studies. Results: Thirty-one articles across five journals met the eligibility criteria. These articles fell into three distinct categories: trials that were carried out in preparation for a future definitive trial (23%), trials that evaluated the feasibility of a novel intervention but did not explicitly address a future definitive trial (23%) and trials that did not have any clear objectives to address feasibility (55%). Editors from all five journals stated that they generally do not accept pilot trials, and none gave reference to the CONSORT 2010 extension as a guideline for submissions. Conclusion: The result that over half of the studies did not have feasibility objectives is in line with previous research findings, demonstrating that these findings are not being disseminated effectively to researchers in the field of physical activity. The low standard of reporting across most reviewed articles and the neglect of the extended CONSORT 2010 statement by the journal editors highlight the need to actively disseminate these guidelines to ensure their impact