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In 2003, Bloom, Hill, and Riccio (BHR) published an influential paper introducing novel methods for explaining the variation in local impacts observed in multi-site randomized control trials of socio-economic interventions in terms of site-level mediators. This paper seeks to improve upon this previous work by using student-level data to measure site-level mediators and confounders. Development of asymptotic behavior backed up with simulations and an empirical example. Students and training providers. Two simulations and an empirical application to data from an evaluation of the Health Professions Opportunity Grants (HPOG) Program. This empirical analysis involved roughly 6600 participants across 37 local sites. We examine bias and mean square error of estimates of mediation coefficients as well as the true coverage of nominal 95-percent confidence intervals on the mediation coefficients. Simulations suggest that the new methods generally improve the quality of inferences even when there is no confounding. Applying this methodology to the HPOG study shows that program-average FTE months of study by month six was a significant mediator of both career progress and long-term degree/credential receipt. Evaluators can robustify their BHR-style analyses by the use of the methods proposed here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instructor performance plays a critical role in fostering student learning. Unlike the postsecondary level, many states in the United States, have substantially regulated class size in the p-12 education system with the aim of enhancing quality learning. Thus, the purpose of this research paper is to examine the correlation between instructor evaluations and class size in tertiary institutions as the findings can inform regulatory decisions regarding class sizes in postsecondary facilities. The study reviewed 97-course evaluations garnered in the Fall of 2019 from a Midwest University. The feedback of students, undertaking physical, and virtual classes, was considered regarding teachers' performance. Different course evaluations included in the study were adjunct faculty, full-time faculty, graduate level, and undergraduate level course assessments. The research findings depicted a negative correlation between class size and instructor evaluation, positing that teachers teach the same way in smaller classes as they do in larger classes. Nonetheless, the study results showed that the sizes of conventional virtual classes had a lower correlation with course performances compared to traditional face-to-face classes. In the latter, there was more engagement between teachers and students, as the latter appeared to be more active than in online classes. With the technological effect that Covid-19 has brought forth in online learning, population sizes of online classes have changed. Therefore, considering the data used for the research was collected preCovid-19, it is essential that future studies pay considerable focus on the quality of evaluation of virtual classes to help with directing of school budget allocations toward online learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Palliative care is expanding in Africa as the continent faces a rising disease burden. As the specialty takes form, it is important to acknowledge the cultural mores regarding health and disease. Many Africans perceive health as more than the individual's physical body, instead include the spirituality and well-being of family, community and ancestors. Much of living is done with the goal of becoming an ancestor, which is tied to the individual's burial and ceremonies. Despite their importance, conversations about death are often thought to be culturally taboo. This poses a challenge to palliative care which is based on the individual preferences and priorities, usually identified through shared decision-making. Little is known about the end-of-life priorities and preferences in Africa, leading to the research question: What are the end-of-life preferences and priorities for community dwelling adults in Mozambique? This paper examines instruments that can be used to measure end-of-life preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In healthcare and related fields, there is often a gap between research and practice. Scholars have developed frameworks to support dissemination and implementation of best practices, such as the Interactive Systems Framework for Dissemination and Implementation, which shows how scientific innovations are conveyed to practitioners through tools, training, and technical assistance (TA). Underpinning those aspects of the model are evaluation and continuous quality improvement (CQI). However, a recent meta-analysis suggests that the approaches to and outcomes from CQI in healthcare vary considerably, and that more evaluative work is needed. Therefore, this paper describes an assessment of CQI processes within the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's (SAMHSA) Technology Transfer Center (TTC) Network, a large TA/TTC system in the United States comprised of 39 distinct centers. We conducted key informant interviews (n = 71 representing 28 centers in the Network) and three surveys (100% center response rates) focused on CQI, time/effort allocation, and Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) measures. We used data from each of these study components to provide a robust picture of CQI within a TA/TTC system, identifying Network-specific concepts, concerns about conflation of the GPRA data with CQI, and principles that might be studied more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome (22q11.2DS) is the most common microdeletion in humans with over 180 phenotypic expressions. Approximately 30–40% of affected individuals will develop psychosis and 25% meet the criteria for schizophrenia. Despite this, pharmacotherapy for managing psychosis in 22q11.2DS is poorly understood and 22q11.2DS psychosis is frequently labelled as treatment resistant. The objectives of this paper are to evaluate the effectiveness and tolerability of pharmacotherapy for 22q11.2DS psychosis and evaluate the evidence for treatment resistance. Method: A systematic search was performed using CINAHL, The Cochrane Library (Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews; Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials and Cochrane Clinical Answers), EMBASE, PsycINFO, PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science Core Collection from inception to December 2022. It yielded 39 case reports, 6 case series and 1 retrospective study which met the inclusion criteria. Results: Based on the current literature, individuals with 22q11.2DS psychosis experience a greater rate of medical co-morbidities such as cardiac arrhythmias, seizures and movement disorders, which complicate pharmacotherapy. Poor tolerability rather than poor clinical response motivates the switching of antipsychotics, which may explain the labelling of treatment resistance in the literature. Conclusion: There are insufficient data to recommend a single antipsychotic for 22q11.2DS psychosis. Nonetheless, with proactive management of co-morbidities, antipsychotic medication in 22q11.2DS psychosis is an effective treatment commonly resulting in improvement in quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an interpretative phenomenological analysis study of students' experiences with ungrading in the form of reflection-based self-evaluation in a college course. In the landscape of student evaluation, ungrading strategies respond to the limitations of traditional grading systems, particularly with respect to cultivating in-demand skills and capacities, such as adaptability, creative thinking, and self-management. Through in-depth interviews with eight students, this study reports on four experiential themes that characterize the switch to ungrading: de-gamification, or unsettling the "gamified" nature of evaluation in the traditional grading system; time to think and reflect, creating space for review and the deepening of learning; rich communication, or continual feedback between teacher and student; and learning community, in which students felt like they were part of a team effort rather than siloed individuals. Considerations for further research, as well as implementation of ungrading in other courses, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a fruitful tension in ethnomethodological work. On the one hand, real-world data are used to rein in analytical privilege. On the other, conceptual discussions necessarily take place in a more open analytical space. Describing settings in detail and thinking about things in the abstract are both essential components of the ethnomethodological project. What ethnographies might consist in complicates this picture. Garfinkel initially deflated the concept of 'ethnography', using it to refer to how all members of society make sense of their world. Sacks, on the other hand, initially construed his sociological project as a more rigorous form of professional ethnography. Ethnographic methods rightly remain an important tool for ethnomethodological analyses. They provide an empirical grounding for analysis and facilitate 'thinking about things' in a more open manner than some other forms of data. This paper argues that ethnographic analyses more generally can be used as ethnomethodological resources, (re)introducing the idea that others' fieldwork and analyses are legitimate resources for ethnomethodological work. Some materials from Elijah Anderson's classic ethnography A Place on the Corner are used to illustrate the possibilities taking this approach might offer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clearinghouses set standards of scientific quality to vet existing research to determine how "evidence-based" an intervention is. This paper examines 12 educational clearinghouses to describe their effectiveness criteria, to estimate how consistently they rate the same program, and to probe why their judgments differ. All the clearinghouses value random assignment, but they differ in how they treat its implementation, how they weight quasi-experiments, and how they value ancillary causal factors like independent replication and persisting effects. A total of 1359 programs were analyzed over 10 clearinghouses; 83% of them were assessed by a single clearinghouse and, of those rated by more than one, similar ratings were achieved for only about 30% of the programs. This high level of inconsistency seems to be mostly due to clearinghouses disagreeing about whether a high program rating requires effects that are replicated and/or temporally persisting. Clearinghouses exist to identify "evidence-based" programs, but the inconsistency in their recommendations of the same program suggests that identifying "evidence-based" interventions is still more of a policy aspiration than a reliable research practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Microtia is a congenital auricular malformation with a hypoplastic external ear that ranges in severity from a slightly smaller auricle to complete the absence of the auricle. The present study was conducted to identify and analyze the characteristics of microtia-related articles published from 2006 to 2020 by using bibliometric analyses. Method: Microtia-related studies published from 2006 to 2020 were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection database. Keywords, first author, citations, date of publication, and publication journal were extracted and quantitatively analyzed using Bibliographic Item Co-Occurrence Matrix Builder software and the Bibliometric (https://bibliometric.com/app). VOSviewer was used to visualize research and form a network map on keywords and citations. Results: A total of 1031 articles from 2006 to 2020 were included. The number of articles showed an overall trend of growth over time. The United States and China are the top 2 countries in terms of the number of microtia-related articles. From the analysis of keyword clustering, keywords could be mainly divided into 4 clusters in the field of microtia research: surgery, tissue engineering, epidemiology, and rehabilitation including hearing-related treatments, evaluation of effects, and quality of life after surgery. The top 10 most frequently cited papers from 2006 to 2020 were also extracted and analyzed. Conclusion: A bibliometric research of microtia-related articles from 2006 to 2020 was conducted. This study may be helpful to understand the current research status of microtia and find the research trends in this field, thus proposing future directions for microtia research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current views of psychological therapies for trauma typically assume the traumatic event to be in the past. Yet, individuals who live in contexts of ongoing organized violence or experience intimate partner violence (IPV) may continue to be (re)exposed to related traumatic events or have realistic fears of their recurrence. This systematic review considers the effectiveness, feasibility, and adaptations of psychological interventions for individuals living with ongoing threat. PsychINFO, MEDLINE, and EMBASE were searched for articles that examined psychological interventions in contexts of ongoing threat of either IPV or organized violence and used trauma-related outcome measures. The search was conducted according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. Data on study population, ongoing threat setting and design, intervention components, evaluation methods, and outcomes were extracted, and study quality was assessed using the Mixed-Method Appraisal Tool. Eighteen papers featuring 15 trials were included (12 on organized violence and 3 on IPV). For organized violence, most studies showed moderate to large effects in reducing trauma-related symptoms when compared to waitlists. For IPV, findings were varied. Most studies made adaptations related to culture and ongoing threat and found that providing psychological interventions was feasible. The findings, albeit preliminary with mixed methodological quality, showed psychological treatments can be beneficial and should not be withheld in the context of ongoing organized violence and IPV. Clinical and research recommendations are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a reflective, retrospective case study methodology to analyze data from a 10-year University-Community partnership focused on supporting implementation and improvement of a Prenatal-Grade 3 (P3) system in an elementary school. Using a framework for centering equity in Collective Impact approaches, we analyze the steps we took as research partners/program evaluators to address racial and other inequities while highlighting missed opportunities to better center racial equity in the evaluation and P3 Initiative work. Through our analysis, we seek to identify where and how racial inequities surfaced, to describe how systemic racism influenced the evaluation and P3 Initiative process, and how this served to perpetuate the status quo and prevent transformative systems change. Results speak to opportunities for researchers, funders, and policymakers to identify and disrupt conventionally-accepted approaches to educational research and to work more effectively to advance educational equity for children and their families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]