Barbara Rochen Renner

Arthritis Patients' Reactions to Unavoidable Social Comparisons

Seventy-two women with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) were randomly assigned to view a depiction of a woman having either very mild or very severe RA and coping either quite weal or quite poorly with the illness. Subjects rated the womans arthritis severity, her coping with RA, their own arthritis severity, and their own coping with RA. These ratings provided an indirect assessment of how subjects evaluated themselves relative to the stimulus woman. In addition, subjects compared their RA severity and coping directly with the stimulus womans. In the direct comparisons, subjects who saw the good coper did not acknowledge her coping superiority, despite having done so on the indirect assessment. No effects were obtained for the severity condition. These findings suggest that individuals extract self-enhancing information from social comparisons, even when the comparison target and dimension are constrained and the targets status is superior

Development and evaluation of musculoskeletal performance measures for an objective structured clinical examination

This report describes the design, development, pilot testing, and use of a set of four checklists for evaluating selected features of the clinical musculoskeletal examination. The preparation of observational raters to use the checklists in the context of an objective structured clinical examination is also discussed. Data from 480 medical student evaluations over 3 years show that the checklists yield highly reliable data. The checklist data do not correlate with measures of medical student aptitude or with demographic factors. This suggests that the clinically oriented checklists measure a unique feature of medical student achievement.

Reference Managers that Support Collaborative Research: Dreaming of the Perfect Fit

Abstract Reference or citation managers aid in capturing and managing citations and associated full text, tracking references and citing them properly in manuscripts, and creating bibliographies. With more features than ever, selecting the most appropriate reference manager can be overwhelming for users and librarians. One common situation in which librarians are asked for advice involves building shared libraries of references to support collaborative group work. This project developed a structured evaluation for comparison of several common citation managers and prototypical use cases to help match features with user needs, preferences, and workflows. As products evolve and needs change, is there a “perfect fit”?

Low-Tech Scavenger Hunt Model for Student Orientation

ABSTRACT Scavenger hunts are an effective, fun way of orienting new students to the library. The low-tech nature and small scale of the scavenger hunt program described here might be more suitable for health sciences libraries than other models, particularly for libraries with small staffs. This model also includes a unique optional element useful for library marketing. This article describes the methods used, shares reactions of program participants, and provides suggestions for those considering orienting students in this way.

Listening to YOUR HEALTH: Librarians and Physicians Collaborating on the Radio and Online

The Chapel Hill campus of the University of North Carolina (UNC) is home to the University of North Carolina’s (UNC) NC Memorial Hospital, NC Children’s Hospital, NC Women’s Hospital, NC Neurosciences Hospital, and NC Cancer Hospital. UNC’s Health Affairs schools provide training for several health professions: Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing, Pharmacy, Public Health, and Allied Health Sciences. The Health Sciences Library (HSL), located at the center of the Health Affairs campus, has served all of these institutions as they grew in size and scope. As an academic library, the focus has primarily been on the information needs of the faculty, students, researchers, clinicians, and other health care practitioners. However, serving the health information needs of the public has been a stated part of the library’s mission for over a decade. HSL is open to the public, and many local residents use the library’s resources, especially the computers and Internet access. HSL had a small Consumer

The Effects of Unequal Covariances on the Tukey WSD Test

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of violating the assumption of homogeneity of covariance for the Tukey WSD test on the familywise rate of Type I error, when all other assumptions of the test were met. Determinations of the empirical significance level were made using computerized Monte Carlo simulations varying the number of treatment groups (k = 3 and 5), sample size (n = 5, 15, and 25), and degree of covariance heterogeneity (none, moderate, and high). For each of the resulting 18 combinations, 10,000 separate data sets were generated and analyzed at nominal α = .01 and .05 using the Tukey WSD procedure for all pairwise comparisons of means. For the conditions investigated in this study, degree of covariance heterogeneity showed a consistent effect on the empirical significance level. As the degree of covariance heterogeneity was increased, the empirical significance levels increased beyond the nominal levels. In general, different combinations of sample size and number of treatments produced no consistent effect on the empirical significance level.