scholarly journals A difference that matters: comparisons of structured and semi-structured psychiatric diagnostic interviews in the general population

1999 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 1013-1020 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. S. BRUGHA ◽  
P. E. BEBBINGTON ◽  
R. JENKINS

Psychiatric case-identification in general populations allows us to study both individuals with functional psychiatric disorders and the populations from which they come. The individual level of analysis permits disorders to be related to factors of potential aetiological significance and the study of attributes of the disorders that need to be assessed in non-referred populations (an initially scientific endeavour). At the population level valid case identification can be used to evaluate needs for treatment and the utilization of service resources (a public health project). Thus, prevalence is of interest both to scientists and to those responsible for commissioning and planning services (Brugha et al. 1997; Regier et al. 1998). The quality of case identification techniques and of estimates of prevalence is thus of general concern (Bartlett & Coles, 1998).Structured diagnostic interviews were introduced into general population surveys in the 1970s as a method ‘to enable interviewers to obtain psychiatric diagnoses comparable to those a psychiatrist would obtain’ (Robins et al. 1981). The need to develop reliable standardized measures was partly driven by an earlier generation of prevalence surveys showing rates ranging widely from 10·9% (Pasamanick et al. 1956) to 55% (Leighton et al. 1963) in urban and rural North American communities respectively. If the success of large scale psychiatric epidemiological enquiries using structured diagnostic interviews and standardized classifications is measured in terms of citation rates it would seem difficult to question. But the development of standardized interviews of functional psychiatric disorders has not solved this problem of variability: the current generation of large scale surveys, using structured diagnostic interviews and serving strictly defined classification rules, have generated, for example, 12-month prevalence rates of major depression in the US of 4·2% (Robins & Regier, 1991) and 10·1% (Kessler et al. 1994). This calls into question the validity of the assessments, such that we must reopen the question of what they should be measuring and how they should do it.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Mesoudi

AbstractHow do migration and acculturation (i.e. psychological or behavioral change resulting from migration) affect within- and between-group cultural variation? Here I answer this question by drawing analogies between genetic and cultural evolution. Population genetic models show that migration rapidly breaks down between-group genetic structure. In cultural evolution, however, migrants or their descendants can acculturate to local behaviors via social learning processes such as conformity, potentially preventing migration from eliminating between-group cultural variation. An analysis of the empirical literature on migration suggests that acculturation is common, with second and subsequent migrant generations shifting, sometimes substantially, towards the cultural values of the adopted society. Yet there is little understanding of the individual-level dynamics that underlie these population-level shifts. To explore this formally, I present models quantifying the effect of migration and acculturation on between-group cultural variation, for both neutral and costly cooperative traits. In the models, between-group cultural variation, measured using F statistics, is eliminated by migration and maintained by conformist acculturation. The extent of acculturation is determined by the strength of conformist bias and the number of demonstrators from whom individuals learn. Acculturation is countered by assortation, the tendency for individuals to preferentially interact with culturally-similar others. Unlike neutral traits, cooperative traits can additionally be maintained by payoff-biased social learning, but only in the presence of strong sanctioning institutions. Overall, the models show that surprisingly little conformist acculturation is required to maintain realistic amounts of between-group cultural diversity. While these models provide insight into the potential dynamics of acculturation and migration in cultural evolution, they also highlight the need for more empirical research into the individual-level learning biases that underlie migrant acculturation.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shinya Ito ◽  
Yufei Si ◽  
Alan M. Litke ◽  
David A. Feldheim

AbstractSensory information from different modalities is processed in parallel, and then integrated in associative brain areas to improve object identification and the interpretation of sensory experiences. The Superior Colliculus (SC) is a midbrain structure that plays a critical role in integrating visual, auditory, and somatosensory input to assess saliency and promote action. Although the response properties of the individual SC neurons to visuoauditory stimuli have been characterized, little is known about the spatial and temporal dynamics of the integration at the population level. Here we recorded the response properties of SC neurons to spatially restricted visual and auditory stimuli using large-scale electrophysiology. We then created a general, population-level model that explains the spatial, temporal, and intensity requirements of stimuli needed for sensory integration. We found that the mouse SC contains topographically organized visual and auditory neurons that exhibit nonlinear multisensory integration. We show that nonlinear integration depends on properties of auditory but not visual stimuli. We also find that a heuristically derived nonlinear modulation function reveals conditions required for sensory integration that are consistent with previously proposed models of sensory integration such as spatial matching and the principle of inverse effectiveness.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
José Hernández-Orallo ◽  
Bao Sheng Loe ◽  
Lucy Cheke ◽  
Fernando Martínez-Plumed ◽  
Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh

AbstractSuccess in all sorts of situations is the most classical interpretation of general intelligence. Under limited resources, however, the capability of an agent must necessarily be limited too, and generality needs to be understood as comprehensive performance up to a level of difficulty. The degree of generality then refers to the way an agent’s capability is distributed as a function of task difficulty. This dissects the notion of general intelligence into two non-populational measures, generality and capability, which we apply to individuals and groups of humans, other animals and AI systems, on several cognitive and perceptual tests. Our results indicate that generality and capability can decouple at the individual level: very specialised agents can show high capability and vice versa. The metrics also decouple at the population level, and we rarely see diminishing returns in generality for those groups of high capability. We relate the individual measure of generality to traditional notions of general intelligence and cognitive efficiency in humans, collectives, non-human animals and machines. The choice of the difficulty function now plays a prominent role in this new conception of generality, which brings a quantitative tool for shedding light on long-standing questions about the evolution of general intelligence and the evaluation of progress in Artificial General Intelligence.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chao Li ◽  
Hugh Barclay ◽  
Bernard Roitberg ◽  
Robert Lalonde

Compensatory growth has been observed in forests, and it also appears as a common phenomenon in biology. Though it sometimes takes different names, the essential meanings are the same, describing the accelerated growth of organisms when recovering from a period of unfavorable conditions such as tissue damage at the individual level and partial mortality at the population level. Diverse patterns of compensatory growth have been reported in the literature, ranging from under-, to compensation-induced-equality, and to over-compensation. In this review and synthesis, we provide examples of analogous compensatory growth from different fields, clarify different meanings of it, summarize its current understanding and modeling efforts, and argue that it is possible to develop a state-dependent model under the conceptual framework of compensatory growth, aimed at explaining and predicting diverse observations according to different disturbances and environmental conditions. When properly applied, compensatory growth can benefit different industries and human society in various forms.


2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (29) ◽  
pp. 7545-7550 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin E. Gorsich ◽  
Rampal S. Etienne ◽  
Jan Medlock ◽  
Brianna R. Beechler ◽  
Johannie M. Spaan ◽  
...  

Coinfecting parasites and pathogens remain a leading challenge for global public health due to their consequences for individual-level infection risk and disease progression. However, a clear understanding of the population-level consequences of coinfection is lacking. Here, we constructed a model that includes three individual-level effects of coinfection: mortality, fecundity, and transmission. We used the model to investigate how these individual-level consequences of coinfection scale up to produce population-level infection patterns. To parameterize this model, we conducted a 4-y cohort study in African buffalo to estimate the individual-level effects of coinfection with two bacterial pathogens, bovine tuberculosis (bTB) and brucellosis, across a range of demographic and environmental contexts. At the individual level, our empirical results identified bTB as a risk factor for acquiring brucellosis, but we found no association between brucellosis and the risk of acquiring bTB. Both infections were associated with reductions in survival and neither infection was associated with reductions in fecundity. The model reproduced coinfection patterns in the data and predicted opposite impacts of coinfection at individual and population scales: Whereas bTB facilitated brucellosis infection at the individual level, our model predicted the presence of brucellosis to have a strong negative impact on bTB at the population level. In modeled populations where brucellosis was present, the endemic prevalence and basic reproduction number (R0) of bTB were lower than in populations without brucellosis. Therefore, these results provide a data-driven example of competition between coinfecting pathogens that occurs when one pathogen facilitates secondary infections at the individual level.


2022 ◽  
pp. 250-279
Author(s):  
Ewilly Jie Ying Liew ◽  
Wei Li Peh ◽  
Zhuan Kee Leong

This chapter seeks to examine the influence of public perceptions of trust in people and confidence in institutions on cryptocurrency adoption, taking into account the individual-level demographic factors and the regional-level contextual factors. Data is obtained from three large-scale international surveys and national databases and analyzed using R software. The multivariate results demonstrate that individuals' public perceptions of trust and confidence significantly contribute to cryptocurrency adoption. Lower perceived trust in people and higher perceived confidence in civil service and international regulatory bodies increase cryptocurrency adoption, while perceived confidence in political and financial institutions discourages cryptocurrency adoption. Additionally, the univariate results find significant comparisons of gender and perceived trust differences on the predictors of cryptocurrency adoption. This chapter discusses and provides insights on the social impact and future of cryptocurrency adoption, particularly among the upper- and lower-middle-income countries.


Author(s):  
Emma Rary ◽  
Sarah M. Anderson ◽  
Brandon D. Philbrick ◽  
Tanvi Suresh ◽  
Jasmine Burton

The health of individuals and communities is more interconnected than ever, and emergent technologies have the potential to improve public health monitoring at both the community and individual level. A systematic literature review of peer-reviewed and gray literature from 2000-present was conducted on the use of biosensors in sanitation infrastructure (such as toilets, sewage pipes and septic tanks) to assess individual and population health. 21 relevant papers were identified using PubMed, Embase, Global Health, CDC Stacks and NexisUni databases and a reflexive thematic analysis was conducted. Biosensors are being developed for a range of uses including monitoring illicit drug usage in communities, screening for viruses and diagnosing conditions such as diabetes. Most studies were nonrandomized, small-scale pilot or lab studies. Of the sanitation-related biosensors found in the literature, 11 gathered population-level data, seven provided real-time continuous data and 14 were noted to be more cost-effective than traditional surveillance methods. The most commonly discussed strength of these technologies was their ability to conduct rapid, on-site analysis. The findings demonstrate the potential of this emerging technology and the concept of Smart Sanitation to enhance health monitoring at the individual level (for diagnostics) as well as at the community level (for disease surveillance).


Symmetry ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 739 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Frasnelli ◽  
Giorgio Vallortigara

Lateralization, i.e., the different functional roles played by the left and right sides of the brain, is expressed in two main ways: (1) in single individuals, regardless of a common direction (bias) in the population (aka individual-level lateralization); or (2) in single individuals and in the same direction in most of them, so that the population is biased (aka population-level lateralization). Indeed, lateralization often occurs at the population-level, with 60–90% of individuals showing the same direction (right or left) of bias, depending on species and tasks. It is usually maintained that lateralization can increase the brain’s efficiency. However, this may explain individual-level lateralization, but not population-level lateralization, for individual brain efficiency is unrelated to the direction of the asymmetry in other individuals. From a theoretical point of view, a possible explanation for population-level lateralization is that it may reflect an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) that can develop when individually asymmetrical organisms are under specific selective pressures to coordinate their behavior with that of other asymmetrical organisms. This prediction has been sometimes misunderstood as it is equated with the idea that population-level lateralization should only be present in social species. However, population-level asymmetries have been observed in aggressive and mating displays in so-called “solitary” insects, suggesting that engagement in specific inter-individual interactions rather than “sociality” per se may promote population-level lateralization. Here, we clarify that the nature of inter-individuals interaction can generate evolutionarily stable strategies of lateralization at the individual- or population-level, depending on ecological contexts, showing that individual-level and population-level lateralization should be considered as two aspects of the same continuum.


2010 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörg Baten ◽  
Andreas Böhm

Abstract The average height of children is an indicator of the quality of nutrition and healthcare. In this study, we assess the effect of unemployment and other factors on this variable. In the Eastern German Land of Brandenburg, a dataset of 253,050 preschool height measurements was compiled and complemented with information on parents’ schooling and employment status. Unemployment might have negative psychological effects, with an impact on parental care. Both a panel analysis of districts and an assessment at the individual level yield the result that increasing unemployment, net out-migration and fertility were in fact reducing height.


Behaviour ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 152 (10) ◽  
pp. 1291-1306 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.D. Kelley ◽  
M.M. Humphries ◽  
A.G. McAdam ◽  
Stan Boutin

Both juvenile and adult animals display stable behavioural differences (personality), but lifestyles and niches may change as animals mature, raising the question of whether personality changes across ontogeny. Here, we use a wild population of red squirrels to examine changes in activity and aggression from juvenile to yearling life stages. Personality may change at the individual level (individual stability), population level (mean level stability), and relative to other individuals (differential stability). We calculated all three types of stability, as well as the structural stability of the activity–aggression behavioural syndrome. Within individuals, both activity and aggression scores regressed towards the mean. Differential stability was maintained for activity, but not aggression. Structural stability was maintained; however, the activity–aggression correlation increased in squirrels that gained territories later in the season. These results suggest that personality undergoes some changes as animals mature, and that the ontogeny of personality can be linked to environmental changes.


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