The book availability study as an objective measure of performance in a health sciences library

In its search for an objective overall diagnostic evaluation, the University of Illinois Library of the Health Sciences' Program Evaluation Committee selected a book availability measure; it is easy to administer and repeat, results are reproducible, and comparable data exist for other academic and health sciences libraries. The study followed the standard methodology in the literature with minor modifications. Patrons searching for particular books were asked to record item(s) needed and the outcome of the search. Library staff members then determined the reasons for failures in obtaining desired items. The results of the study are five performance scores. The first four represent the percentage probability of a library's operating with ideal effectiveness; the last provides an overall performance score. The scores of the Library of the Health Sciences demonstrated no unusual availability problems. The study was easy to implement and provided meaningful, quantitative, and objective data.     

Creating a Web-accessible,point-of-care,team-based information system (PoinTIS): the librarian as publisher

The Internet has created new opportunities for librarians to develop information systems that are readily accessible at the point of care. This paper describes the multiyear process used to justify, fund, design, develop, promote, and evaluate a rehabilitation prototype of a point-of-care, team-based information system (PoinTIS) and train health care providers to use this prototype for their spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury patient care and education activities. PoinTIS is a successful model for librarians in the twenty-first century to serve as publishers of information created or used by their parent organizations and to respond to the opportunities for information dissemination provided by recent technological advances.     

The Impact of Student Perceptions and Characteristics on Teaching Evaluations: A case study in finance education

This study uses an ordered probit model to examine the impact of student characteristics and perceptions of the teaching evaluation process on student ratings. The results indicate that expected grade, ethnic background, gender and age are a significant influence on student ratings. A primary student-based influence on teaching evaluation performance would appear to be the perceived potential outcome of the evaluation in terms of tenure, promotion and salary decisions, and improvements in teaching and staff allocation. The impact of student perceptions and characteristics is also found to vary across the various dimensions of teaching performance with the potential bias being highest for evaluation questions relating to overall performance, and lowest for questions relating to formative assessment and deep learning outcomes.     

Research Design in the Experimental Study of Intellectual Disability

SOME significant problems in the design of research with subjects having an intellectual disability are identified. A lack of agreement on the nature of intellectual disability in relation to brain impairment, and discrepancies in the interpretation of deficits in relation to information processing concepts create problems in the definition of subject groups and interpretation of results. Much of the research uses normal subject groups for comparison, matched with disabled groups for either mental age, chronological age, or both, and this has led to further problems in the criteria and procedures used for matching, particularly for mental age. Further difficulties are encountered in variability both within and between subject groups, affecting reliability of results and making replication of studies difficult. In addition, task demands, particularly in relation to variables other than those under immediate investigation, are not always equivalent for all subject groups. Some suggestions are made for reducing or eliminating the effects of some of these problems in experimental research, and the use of alternative designs which take subject variability into account is recommended.     

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.     

Quiet eye training aids the long-term learning of throwing and catching in children: Preliminary evidence for a predictive control strategy

Abstract

Quiet eye training (QET) may be a more effective method for teaching children to catch than traditional training (TT) methods, but it is unclear if the benefits accrued persist in the long term. Thirty children were randomly allocated into a QET or TT group and, while wearing a mobile eye tracker, underwent baseline testing, training and two retention tests over a period of eight weeks, using a validated throw and catch task. During training, movement-related information was provided to both groups, while the QET group received additional instruction to increase the duration of their targeting fixation (QE1) on the wall prior to the throw, and pursuit tracking (QE2) period on the ball prior to catching. In both immediate (R1) and delayed (R2, six weeks later) retention tests, the QET group had a significantly longer QE1 duration and an earlier and longer QE2 duration, compared to the TT group, who revealed no improvements. A performance advantage was also found for the QET compared to the TT group at both R1 and R2, revealing the relatively robust nature of the visuomotor alterations. Regression analyses suggested that only the duration of QE1 predicted variance in catch success post-training, pointing to the importance of a pre-programming visuomotor strategy for successful throw and catch performance.     

Steel in freight car construction

It has been the custom among designers of freight cars either with underframes of steel or of wood to depend upon the strength of the underframe alone in making computations for a specified carrying capacity, despite the fact that the superstructure in many cases can and does constitute a truss. The author presents the evolution in design of structural steel freight cars, with which he has been closely identified, where the value of the superstructure as a tress has been duly considered as an element of strength and in reducing weight.