Mark I. Appelbaum

Health-related quality of life in inflammatory bowel disease: functional status and patient worries and concerns

The assessment of health-related quality of life may be an adjunct to understanding the chronic illness experience and its effects on health outcomes. In this study, we evaluated health-related quality of life of 150 patients with inflammatory bowel disease (63 ulcerative colitis, 87 Crohns disease). We used a standardized measure, the Sickness Impact Profile, and a questionnaire we developed that elicits and prioritizes the disease-related worries and concerns of patients with IBD. Our preliminary data indicate that: (1) IBD patients experience moderate functional impairment more in the social and psychological than in the physical dimensions; (2) Crohns disease patients report psychosocial dysfunction to a greater degree than ulcerative colitis patients; (3) IBD patients report greatest concerns about having surgery, degree of energy, and body image issues such as having an ostomy bag; and (4) functional status and patient concerns correlate better with other measures of health status and previous health care utilization than the physicians rating of disease activity. We believe that questionnaires measuring health-related quality of life (HRQOL) can be used in research and patient care to extend the clinical assessment of patients with IBD. Further work is needed to determine the role of HRQOL relative to disease activity and other physician-based assessments in predicting health outcomes.

Adolescent and older mothers: Comparison between prenatal maternal variables and newborn interaction measures☆

Abstract It is commonly believed that adolescent pregnancy results in greater risk for the young mother and her infant than does pregnancy that occurs at a later age. In order to gain a better understanding of these differences, prenatal and newborn variables were compared for adolescent and nonadolescent mothers. Data are presented and compared from an on-going longitudinal study of risk and protective factors tar adolescent mothers and their infants and a study exploring risk factors for nonadolescent mothers and their infants using comparable measures. One hundred and thirty adolescent mothers and 86 married primiparous non-adolescent mothers were followed. The results indicated that measures of birth weight, gestational age, and 1- and 5-min Apgar scores did not differ between the two groups. Maternal psychosocial characteristics, however, did differ. Adolescent mothers reported being less happy about being pregnant and had less social support. Adolescent mothers also reported less support from the father of the infant. During a newborn feeding interaction, the adolescent mothers vocalized less to their infants than nonadolescent mothers. Implications of the findings for prediction of parenting practices and preventive intervention are discussed.

Association-dissociation patterns of United States Olympic Marathon Trial contestants

The association-dissociation cognitive patterns of United States Olympic Marathon Trial contestants were investigated on the basis of responses to the Running Styles Questionnaire. The night prior to the Olympic Trials, 32 subjects responded to 12 multiple-choice-type questions and 6 open-ended questions that probed the type of cognitions processed by the athletes at different stages of the race. Discriminant function analysis resulted in a significant multivariate solution (p <.01), with 5 of the 12 multiple-choice questions maximizing the separation of athletes into groups of top- and lower-place finishers. The composite of these 5 questions suggested that top finishers employed cognitive strategies that utilized both associative and dissociative techniques. Lower finishers demonstrated a composite that indicated the early adoption and maintenance of a dissociative strategy. On the basis of the multivariate solution, athletes were classified to appropriate group membership with 71.88% overall accuracy. The results tend to support the contention that cognitive strategies employed during marathon racing are related to the participants performance level.

Variance Stabilizing Transformations and the Power of the F Test.

The effect of the variance stabilizing transformations on the significance level and power of the F test, applied to Binomial and Poisson variables, was examined by a Monte Carlo study. The results indicate that the significance level is not affected by the transformations and that in most cases the power is not systematically increased by them,

Longitudinal Development of Conservation Skills in Learning Disabled Children

A three-year longitudinal investigation was conducted on the development of conservation skills in learning disabled (LD) children. Six measures of conservation (space, number, substance, weight, continuous and discontinuous quantity) from the Concept Assessment Kit were administered to 31 newly identified LD students and 33 normally achieving children (NLD) during each of three years. Results indicated that the LD group demonstrated a developmental delay in attaining the stage of concrete operations compared to the NLD group. However, when this stage was achieved, the LD group appeared to acquire specific concepts at the same rate as normally achieving children. For the LD children, total conservation scores and age were more important predictors of academic achievement than was verbal intelligence during all three years of the study whereas, for the NLD group, this was true only during the first year. It appeared that delayed transition between preoperational and concrete operational thought may be an important factor in understanding the continued school failure of learning disabled children.

Balancing - Analysis of Variance by Another Name:

In Report 7 (1971) of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, an analytic technique known as balancing was introduced. The stated purpose of this technique is the elimination of confounding in multifactor survey studies in which some attributes are not equally represented in all cells of the survey sample design. The likely impact of the NAEP reports is great, and it is vital that the nature of the analyses and their relationships to other known analytic techniques be clearly understood. This report shows that the estimation procedure used in balancing is the equivalent of that employed in the nonorthogonal analysis of variance in an additive model. The nature of weighting schemes for the definition of marginal populations is considered in detail as well as the implications of these various schemes to interpretation of results. The results on weighting schemes and interpretations apply to both balancing and a much broader class of analyses.

Statistics, data analysis and Psychometrika: Major developments

Approximately 15% of all papers appearing inPsychometrika during the period 1960–1984 have been statistical or data analytic in nature. While these papers cover a very wide range of issues and are technically quite similar to those appearing in other major statistical journals, collectively they possess features which make them identifiablyPsychometrika.