Evaluation in primary prevention: a must, II, The child psychiatry point of view

The evaluation of any antenatal prevention program of child abuse and neglect is limited for statistical and ethical reasons, as shown in the first part of the present study (cf., The obstetrical viewpoint by G. Soumenkoff). The authors propose a child psychiatry model of evaluation. Use of the model is illustrated by a 4-year survey of 374 selected high-risk pregnant women followed in the antenatal out-patient department of St. Pieters Hospital in Brussels. A child psychiatrist worked together with several gynecologists, supporting the high-risk couples as well as their children. Several indirect evaluation methods of the quality of screening and the efficiency of the work are analyzed. Long-term evaluation of the children is an absolute necessity. In order to evaluate this type of approach, a simple questionnaire concerning the quality of life of the children under study was derived from a model used in pediatric oncology by the EORTC and adapted to the problems of abused children. One part was answered by the parents which allowed the researchers to evaluate their perception of the child. The second part was filled out by the sociomedical professionals who followed the child. The combination of these two views is rich in information concerning the patient as well as the parents' attitude toward their child.     

Recent experience of the application of a commercial data base management system (ADABAS) to a scientific data bank (ECDIN)

The ECDIN (Environmental Chemicals Data and Information Network) project started in 1973. During the pilot phase of operation the feasibility of the system was demonstrated using a data base of 4000 compounds and the SIMAS information retrieval system. It was quickly realised that for ECDIN data management was as important as information retrieval and in November 1977, after a study of available software, the ADABAS data base management system was installed at JRC Ispra for ECDIN and other JRC data banks. A design exercise for the ECDIN ADABAS data base has been completed and parts of the existing ECDIN data base have been converted to the new system. The problems encountered and the solutions adopted are discussed. The user interface to ECDIN is still under development. When fully operational ECDIN will be available through EURONET to both casual and specialist users and, in consequence, at least two levels of user interface will be required: (a) a user friendly conversational language designed for the casual user and capable of dealing with the more common types of question, (b) a sophisticated query language capable of answering the more difficult questions, producing “one-off” reports and probably requiring both a specialist knowledge of the data base and a programmer oriented background. The first tentative steps in this direction are described.     

Selective attentional effects of textbook study questions on student learning in science

A selective attentional model used to explain recent mathemagenic and related research findings also predicted that textbook study questions adjunct to a flow diagram focus students' attention more upon questioned information and less upon nonquestioned information. Furthermore, the chances of such dysfunctional selective attention are increased when students are provided with a mere sampling (partial set) of study questions covering only portions of the diagram and are decreased when students are provided with a population (complete set) of questions or a no-question treatment. As predicted, using the Newman-Keuls procedure (p <0.05), the population and no-question treatment groups outperformed the sampling-question group which, in turn, outperformed a placebo-control group. It was concluded that researchers and teachers should be aware that encouraging students to concentrate on selective portions of critical information can result in inadequate processing of such specialized science materials as flow diagrams.