Searching for patterns in the MeSH vocabulary

NLM revises its MeSH vocabulary annually to reflect changes in biomedical literature and the health sciences community. This study tested two hypotheses about NLM's MeSH vocabulary. The first is that new terms are added to MeSH when their broader terms have an increased number of postings. One examination compared the number of postings for the broader terms of new and existing terms in the current MEDLINE file; the other compared them over time. No significant statistical difference was found in either case. A second hypothesis--that there is a relationship between the patterns of MEDLINE indexing and searching and the organization of the MeSH tree structure--was tested by comparing the distribution of searched terms in the MeSH trees with the distribution of all terms. It was found that certain trees are searched more often than could be predicted by the overall term distribution, while others are searched less frequently than expected. In summary, (1) new terms cannot be predicted by the increase in postings of existing terms, and (2) searchers' and indexers' use of the terms' tree structure does not correlate with the terms' distribution in the MeSH trees.     

End user searching at Indiana University School of Dentistry: tailoring a program for a specific user group.

While many librarians support the concept of end user searching, they fear that large costs will be incurred with the introduction of such a program. This article describes an economical end user training program which was developed at the Indiana University School of Dentistry. End user training at IUSD is fully self-supporting and has been tailored to meet the needs of a very specialized user group.     

CHID: a unique health information and education database

The public's growing interest in health information and the health professions' increasing need to locate health education materials can be answered in part by the new Combined Health Information Database (CHID). This unique database focuses on materials and programs in professional and patient education, general health education, and community risk reduction. Accessible through BRS, CHID suggests sources for procuring brochures, pamphlets, articles, and films on community services, programs at HMOs and hospitals, aspects of coping, and more. CHID is a joint project of six federally funded agencies in the Public Health Service. CHID provides citations with abstracts to major health journals, books, reports, pamphlets, hard-to-find information resources, and to health education programs under way in state and local health departments and other locations.     

Job Analysis for Lkensure and Certfication Exams: Science or Politics?

How might empirical j o b analysis give the appearance of science to a flawed public policy? How do “political” factors have an impact on the development of licensure tests? What are areas for future research and for improvement of prevailing practices in licensure and certification testingy?     

Comparative studies of authoritarian-personality characteristics across culture, language and methods

This research was to determine whether the large differences in scores on the F scale found in previous studies (Bradburn, 1963; Kagitcibasi, 1970; Kinnis, 1977) were due to cultural differences in personality characteristics or due to differences in language and/or structure of measuring instruments.The subjects were three groups of university students from the United States and Turkey. The Turkish/English (T/E) sample attended a Turkish University where all classes were in English. The Turkish/Turkish (T/T) sample attended a Turkish University where all classes were in Turkish. The American/English (A/E) sample attended a Midwestern University.Each of the samples were administered three Scales measuring authoritarian personality characteristics. They were: Rokeach's (1960) Dogmatism scale (D scale) the standard F scale (Adorno et al., 1950) and a multiple choice format of the F scale called A scale (Neel, 1977). For the T/E and A/E subjects these scales were in English and for the T/T subjects in Turkish.For each cultural group the composite scores on each scale were obtained and used for inter-group comparisons through one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Within-group correlations across the three measures, the means and standard deviations of individual items and T tests were also computed. Interculture and language comparisons resulted in two significant differences on both the Dogmatism and F scales. Analysis of group, composite scales shows that these differences are due to disparities between the A/E and T/T culture/language groups. Differences across language and culture groups for the A scale were not significant. The A measure behaves differently from D and F for the two Turkish culture groups. For the A/E group, D, F, and A measures are almost undifferentiable. The results suggest the effect of measurement instruments on inter-cultural differences in inter-measure comparisons. This indicates a response format effect (agreer bias or acquiescence set).