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To date, there is no valid and reliable instrument to specifically evaluate married adolescent women's sexual and reproductive health (SRH) needs. Hence, the aim of this study was to develop and evaluate the psychometric properties of a questionnaire for assessing married adolescent women (MAW)'s SRH needs. The current exploratory sequential mixed method study was performed in two phases. In the first phase, a preliminary questionnaire was developed based on in-depth interviews with 34 MAW and four key informants as well as a comprehensive literature review. In the second phase, validity of the questionnaire was assessed using face, content, and construct validity and reliability of the questionnaire was assessed using internal consistency and test–retest reliability. Based on qualitative content analysis and literature review, 137 items were extracted. After several modifications of the generated items, a 108-item questionnaire was prepared for the psychometric process. After checking face and content validity, 85 items remained in the study. In the exploratory factor analysis, 11 items were removed and the remaining 74 items were categorised into nine factors. Cronbach's alpha coefficient and the intraclass correlation coefficient were found to be 0.878 and 0.99 for the whole scale, respectively. What is already known on this subject? Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) needs of married adolescent women (MAW) are different from those of married adult women or unmarried, sexually active adolescents. However, there are to date no valid and reliable instruments to specifically evaluate the SRH needs of this group of women. Whatdothe results of this study add? The final version of questionnaire consists of 74 items in nine domains including need to improve MAW's sexual quality of life, promote MAW's SRH self-care, improve MAW's SRH self-efficacy, increase MAW's SRH knowledge, increase husband's involvement in MAW's SRH, improve the performance of health care providers, strengthen the family support to married adolescent women, improve family involvement in SRH education of MAW, and provide specific premarital counselling to MAW. Whatarethe implicationsof these findings for clinical practice and/or future research? The 74-item questionnaire has acceptable validity and reliability. Therefore, it can be used by researchers and policymakers as an appropriate instrument for assessing MAW's SRH needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Count data have emerged in many applied research areas. In recent years, there has been a considerable interest in models for count data. In modelling such data, it is common to face a large frequency of zeroes. The data are regarded as zero-inflated when the frequency of observed zeroes is larger than what is expected from a theoretical distribution such as Poisson distribution, as a standard model for analysing count data. Data analysis, using the simple Poisson model, may lead to over-dispersion. Several classes of different mixture models were proposed for handling zero-inflated data. But they do not apply to cases when inflated counts happen at some other points, in addition to zero. In these cases, a doubly-inflated Poisson model has been suggested which only be used for cross-sectional data and cannot consider correlations between observations. However, correlated count data have a large application, especially in the health and medical fields. The present study aims to introduce a Doubly-Inflated Poisson models with random effect for correlated doubly-inflated data. Then, the best performance of the proposed method is shown via different simulation scenarios. Finally, the proposed model is applied to a dental study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This simulation study aims at investigating the performance of maximum likelihood and weighted least-square estimation approaches in growth curve models with categorical data. The goodness-of-fit indices were compared with a number of scenarios (different trajectories, sample sizes, replications, and number of categories). The results show that when the number of categories and replications are small, using weighted least-square estimating methods leads to better goodness-of-fit indices. However, when the number of categories and replications are large, both maximum likelihood and weighted least squares in estimating methods will result in similar fit indices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sexual life of couples and their needs during pregnancy receive little attention in practice. The aim of this study was to evaluate an educational intervention delivered to pregnant couples to improve their sexual function and satisfaction. This quasiexperimental study was conducted on 128 couples, allocated into two groups of intervention (group A: couples, group B: pregnant women) and one control group (C). Postintervention, the mean of the total score of sexual function and satisfaction of the couples was significantly higher in the intervention groups compared with the control group (p < 0.05). It seems sexuality education specific for prenatal care would be effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Surgery is one of the best choices for the treatment of hydatidosis. To prevent the secondary infection, it is essential to use effective scolicidal agents during surgery for hydatid cyst. Up to now, no effective and safe agent has been identified for this purpose. Berberis vulgaris called 'Zereshk' in Persian has been traditionally used as a herbal remedy for the treatment of different complaints. Many studies have shown that Berberis vulgaris has antibacterial, antifungal, and antiparasitic effects. Methods: In our study, the scolicidal effect of barberry with different concentrations (0.5, 1, 2, and 4 mg/ml diluted form) and at different exposure times (5, 15, and 30 min) was evaluated. For this purpose, we obtained sheep liver hydatid cysts from a slaughterhouse. Viability of protoscolices was assessed by 0.1% Eosin staining. Normal saline and hypertonic saline were used as negative and positive controls, respectively. Results: All the different concentrations of Berberis vulgaris aqueous extracts had scolicidal effect. The strongest effect was observed to be in 4 mg/ml concentration, which acted as positive control. Scolicidal activity of 2 mg/ml dilution was close to 4 mg/ml and the least scolicidal effect was observed in 0.5 mg/ml. Scolicidal activity of extracts had significant differentiation between 5th and 30th min of exposure. Conclusion: The scolicidal activity was very effective in low concentration (4 mg/ml) and short exposure time (5 min). Therefore, after being examined in vivo and additional experiments, it may be used as a suitable and effective scolicidal in surgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the analysis of correlated ordered data, mixed-effect models are frequently used to control the subject heterogeneity effects. A common assumption in fitting these models is the normality of random effects. In many cases, this is unrealistic, making the estimation results unreliable. This paper considers several flexible models for random effects and investigates their properties in the model fitting. We adopt a proportional odds logistic regression model and incorporate the skewed version of the normal, Student's t and slash distributions for the effects. Stochastic representations for various flexible distributions are proposed afterwards based on the mixing strategy approach. This reduces the computational burden being performed by the McMC technique. Furthermore, this paper addresses the identifiability restrictions and suggests a procedure to handle this issue. We analyze a real data set taken from an ophthalmic clinical trial. Model selection is performed by suitable Bayesian model selection criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recently, the data analysts pay more attention to the assessment of rater agreement, especially in areas of medical sciences. In this context, the statistical indices such as kappa and weighted kappa are the most common choices. These indices are simple to calculate and interpret, although, they fail to describe the structure of agreement, particularly when the available outcome has an ordinal nature. In the previous decades, statisticians suggested more efficient statistical tools such as diagonal parameter, linear by linear association and agreement plus linear by linear association models for describing the structure of rater agreement. In these models, the equal interval scores are the common choice for the levels of the ordinal scales. In this manuscript, we show that choosing the common equal interval scores does not necessarily lead to the best fit and propose a modification using a power transformation for the ordinal scores. We also use two different data sets (IOTN and ovarian masses data) to illustrate our suggestion more clearly. In addition, we utilize the category distinguishability concept for interpreting the model parameter estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many areas of medical research, especially in studies that involve paired organs, a bivariate ordered categorical response should be analyzed. Using a bivariate continuous distribution as the latent variable is an interesting strategy for analyzing these data sets. In this context, the bivariate standard normal distribution, which leads to the bivariate cumulative probit regression model, is the most common choice. In this paper, we introduce another latent variable regression model for modeling bivariate ordered categorical responses. This model may be an appropriate alternative for the bivariate cumulative probit regression model, when postulating a symmetric form for marginal or joint distribution of response data does not appear to be a valid assumption. We also develop the necessary numerical procedure to obtain the maximum likelihood estimates of the model parameters. To illustrate the proposed model, we analyze data from an epidemiologic study to identify some of the most important risk indicators of periodontal disease among students 15–19 years in Tehran, Iran. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]