YouTube as a source of information about orthodontic clear aligners

ABSTRACT Objectives To evaluate the content, reliability, and quality of videos about orthodontic clear aligners on YouTube. Materials and Methods Researchers used the Google Trends website to determine that the most frequently used search term for orthodontic clear aligners on the Internet was: “Invisalign.” A search was then conducted on YouTube using the key word “Invisalign.” From the first 140 results, 100 videos were selected for analysis. A 13-point content score was used to classify poor-content and rich-content videos, and the global quality scale (GQS) was used to examine quality of the videos. To evaluate reliability of the information, a five-question scale was used. The Mann-Whitney U-test, χ2 test, and Pearson correlation coefficients were used for statistical evaluations. Results Of the YouTube videos, 33 were classified as rich content and 67 as poor content. Most videos (73%) were uploaded by laypeople, and most uploaders (71%) were women. The most commonly discussed content was instructions (65%), followed by procedure (57%) and pain (52%). Regarding the GQS, most of the videos were evaluated as moderate quality (51%). Compared with the poor-content video group, the rich-content video group had a significantly higher GQS score (P = .004). There was no significant difference between the poor-content and rich-content groups regarding information reliability (P > .05). Conclusions Video content on YouTube relating to aligner orthodontics was generally insufficient. The quality of videos was moderate, but the reliability of information was generally poor. Specialists should refer patients to reliable sources of information.

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Usability of India’s government statistics1

Statistical Journal of the IAOS ◽

10.3233/sji-200721 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-17

Author(s):

Vikas Kumar

Keyword(s):

National Sample ◽

Poor Quality ◽

Sample Surveys ◽

Sources Of Information ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Jammu And Kashmir ◽

The Poor ◽

Government Statistics

The quality of metadata is a crucial determinant of usability/interpretability of data. This paper draws attention to the poor quality of India’s government statistics and the paucity of metadata necessary to understand the problems. The paper suggests that there has been a decline in India both in terms of the availability and quality of metadata for key government sources of information including maps, decennial population censuses and National Sample Surveys amidst growing sophistication in the understanding of metadata. The poor quality of metadata impairs cross-sectional as well as inter-temporal comparisons and policymaking apart from concealing biases and lapses of government statisticians. The paper draws on the experience of three states – erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur and Nagaland – where government statistics have been affected by serious errors that are not well-understood due to the lack of adequate metadata.

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Depression and Inflammatory Markers in Veterans With Multiple Sclerosis

Biological Research For Nursing ◽

10.1177/10998004211050082 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 109980042110500

Author(s):

Pamela Newland ◽

Yelyzaveta Basan ◽

Ling Chen ◽

Gregory Wu

Keyword(s):

Multiple Sclerosis ◽

Inflammatory Markers ◽

Pearson Correlation ◽

Correlation Coefficients ◽

The United States ◽

Biological Mechanisms ◽

The Central Nervous System ◽

Brain And Spinal Cord ◽

The Brain

Multiple sclerosis (MS), an inflammatory neurodegenerative disease of the central nervous system (CNS), afflicts over one per thousand people in the United States. The pathology of MS typically involves lesions in several regions, including the brain and spinal cord. The manifestation of MS is variable and carries great potential to negatively impact quality of life (QOL). Evidence that inflammatory markers are related to depression in MS is accumulating. However, there are barriers in precisely identifying the biological mechanisms underlying depression and inflammation. Analysis of cytokines provides one promising approach for understanding the mechanisms that may contribute to MS symptoms. Methods: In this pilot study, we measured salivary levels of interleukin (IL)-6, IL-1beta (β), and IL-10 in 24 veterans with MS. Descriptive statistics were reported and Pearson correlation coefficients were obtained between cytokines and depression. Results: The anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10 was significantly negatively associated with depression in veterans with MS (r = −0.47, p = .024). Conclusion: Cytokines may be useful for elucidating biological mechanisms associated with the depression and a measure for nurses caring for veterans with MS.

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Correlations Between Clinical Trial Outcomes Based on Symptoms, Functional Impairments, and Quality of Life in Children and Adolescents With ADHD

Journal of Attention Disorders ◽

10.1177/1087054717723984 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 23 (13) ◽

pp. 1578-1591 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

David R. Coghill ◽

Alain Joseph ◽

Vanja Sikirica ◽

Mark Kosinski ◽

Caleb Bliss ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Quality Of Life ◽

Children And Adolescents ◽

Rating Scale ◽

Controlled Trial ◽

Pearson Correlation ◽

Correlation Coefficients ◽

Parent Report ◽

Functional Impairments ◽

Risk Avoidance

Objective: To assess relationships between treatment-associated changes in measures of ADHD symptoms, functional impairments, and health-related quality of life in children and adolescents with ADHD. Method: Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated post hoc for changes from baseline to endpoint in outcomes of one randomized, placebo- and active-controlled trial of lisdexamfetamine (osmotic-release methylphenidate reference) and one of guanfacine extended-release (atomoxetine reference). Results: Changes in ADHD Rating Scale IV (ADHD-RS-IV) total score generally correlated moderately with changes in Child Health and Illness Profile−Child Edition: Parent Report Form (CHIP-CE:PRF) Achievement and Risk Avoidance ( r ≈ .4), but weakly with Resilience, Satisfaction, and Comfort ( r ≈ .2); and moderately with Weiss Functional Impairment Rating Scale–Parent (WFIRS-P) total score ( r ≈ .5). CHIP-CE:PRF Achievement and Risk Avoidance correlated moderately to strongly with WFIRS-P total score ( r ≈ .6). Conclusion: The ADHD-RS-IV, CHIP-CE:PRF, and WFIRS-P capture distinct but interconnected aspects of treatment response in individuals with ADHD.

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COVID-19 prevention and treatment information on the internet: a systematic analysis and quality assessment

BMJ Open ◽

10.1136/bmjopen-2020-040487 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 10 (9) ◽

pp. e040487 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Ka Siu Fan ◽

Shahi Abdul Ghani ◽

Nikolaos Machairas ◽

Lorenzo Lenti ◽

Ka Hay Fan ◽

...

Keyword(s):

General Public ◽

English Language ◽

Search Term ◽

Sources Of Information ◽

Isolated Populations ◽

Quality Of Information ◽

Eligibility Criteria ◽

Systematic Analysis ◽

Prevention And Treatment

ObjectiveTo evaluate the quality of information regarding the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 available to the general public from all countries.DesignSystematic analysis using the ‘Ensuring Quality Information for Patients’ (EQIP) Tool (score 0–36), Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) benchmark (score 0–4) and the DISCERN Tool (score 16–80) to analyse websites containing information targeted at the general public.Data sourcesTwelve popular search terms, including ‘Coronavirus’, ‘COVID-19 19’, ‘Wuhan virus’, ‘How to treat coronavirus’ and ‘COVID-19 19 Prevention’ were identified by ‘Google AdWords’ and ‘Google Trends’. Unique links from the first 10 pages for each search term were identified and evaluated on its quality of information.Eligibility criteria for selecting studiesAll websites written in the English language, and provides information on prevention or treatment of COVID-19 intended for the general public were considered eligible. Any websites intended for professionals, or specific isolated populations, such as students from one particular school, were excluded, as well as websites with only video content, marketing content, daily caseload update or news dashboard pages with no health information.ResultsOf the 1275 identified websites, 321 (25%) were eligible for analysis. The overall EQIP, JAMA and DISCERN scores were 17.8, 2.7 and 38.0, respectively. Websites originated from 34 countries, with the majority from the USA (55%). News Services (50%) and Government/Health Departments (27%) were the most common sources of information and their information quality varied significantly. Majority of websites discuss prevention alone despite popular search trends of COVID-19 treatment. Websites discussing both prevention and treatment (n=73, 23%) score significantly higher across all tools (p<0.001).ConclusionThis comprehensive assessment of online COVID-19 information using EQIP, JAMA and DISCERN Tools indicate that most websites were inadequate. This necessitates improvements in online resources to facilitate public health measures during the pandemic.

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Orthodontic Treatment Characteristics and Outcomes in an Educational Setting

International Journal of Dentistry ◽

10.1155/2020/8367232 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 2020 ◽

pp. 1-8

Author(s):

T. Al-Jewair ◽

V. Ryan ◽

S. Warunek

Keyword(s):

Treatment Duration ◽

Orthodontic Treatment ◽

Treatment Time ◽

Pearson Correlation ◽

Correlation Coefficients ◽

Educational Setting ◽

Dental Esthetics ◽

Treatment Characteristics ◽

The Mean

Background. To assess and correlate orthodontic treatment characteristics and outcomes in an educational setting. Methods. A total of 287 patients were included. Independent chart reviews were conducted to gather demographic and pretreatment diagnostic information. Posttreatment digital records were graded with the ABO C-R Eval and the CCA methods. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated to determine associations between variables. Results. Of the 287 patients, 122 (42.5%) were male and 165 (57.5%) were female. The total average treatment time was 33.87 ± 10.28 months, with a range from 11 to 75 months. The mean ABO C-R Eval score was 29.10 ± 8.59 points. The parameters with the highest scores were buccolingual inclination and occlusal contacts. The mean CCA score was 3.36 ± 2.05 points. The highest scores were recorded for dental esthetics and management of the periodontium. Higher ABO DI scores were weakly correlated with longer treatment times (r = 0.258; p<0.001). ABO C-R Eval scores showed a weakly significant association with treatment duration (r = 0.162; p=0.006), while CCA scores were moderately associated with treatment duration (r = 0.451; p<0.001). Conclusions. As treatment duration increased, the total ABO C-R Eval and CCA scores tended to increase; thus, quality of treatment outcomes decreased. A significant positive correlation was also found with the ABO DI score and treatment duration.

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Airline Service Quality Dimensions and Customer Loyalty: Empirical Evidence from Air Passengers’ in Lagos State

Czech Journal of Tourism ◽

10.1515/cjot-2016-0009 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 5 (2) ◽

pp. 155-171

Author(s):

Oghojafor Ben Akpoyomare ◽

Ladipo Patrick Kunle Adeosun ◽

Rahim Ajao Ganiyu

Keyword(s):

Service Quality ◽

Customer Loyalty ◽

Pearson Correlation ◽

Sampling Technique ◽

Significant Difference ◽

Lagos State ◽

Flight Frequency ◽

Quality Dimensions ◽

Service Quality Dimensions

Abstract Air travellers are increasingly becoming more demanding in terms of their expectations of the quality of service offered by airline carriers. Hence, operators must improve service delivery to retain their loyalty. This study investigates the relationship between airline service quality dimensions and customer loyalty among air passengers in Lagos state. Causal research design was adopted to examine the aforementioned relationship. Convenience sampling technique was used to survey 600 air travellers. Data collected from the respondents were analysed by using Pearson correlation analysis and Anova. The findings reveal that the service quality and its dimensions are positive and significantly related to each other, overall service quality and customer loyalty. The results of the study indicate no significant difference between customers’ travelling for different motives in their perception of the quality of services. It was also discovered that flight frequency was insignificantly connected to customer loyalty. In line with the above findings, the study concludes that the airline service quality improvement initiatives should begin with recognition of customers’ needs. Correspondingly, airline operators should cultivate strategies to fulfil their service promise along the service quality dimensions, most important to air travellers to enhance customer loyalty.

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Corruption of the Pearson correlation coefficient by measurement error: estimation, bias, and correction under different error models

10.1101/671693 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Edoardo Saccenti ◽

Margriet H. W. B. Hendriks ◽

Age K. Smilde

Keyword(s):

Pearson Correlation ◽

Measurement Techniques ◽

Life Sciences ◽

Real Life ◽

Correlation Coefficients ◽

Gene Expressions ◽

Science Data ◽

Real Life Data ◽

Comprehensive Measurement

ABSTRACTCorrelation coefficients are abundantly used in the life sciences. Their use can be limited to simple exploratory analysis or to construct association networks for visualization but they are also basic ingredients for sophisticated multivariate data analysis methods. It is therefore important to have reliable estimates for correlation coefficients. In modern life sciences, comprehensive measurement techniques are used to measure metabolites, proteins, gene-expressions and other types of data. All these measurement techniques have errors. Whereas in the old days, with simple measurements, the errors were also simple, that is not the case anymore. Errors are heterogeneous, non-constant and not independent. This hampers the quality of the estimated correlation coefficients seriously. We will discuss the different types of errors as present in modern comprehensive life science data and show with theory, simulations and real-life data how these affect the correlation coefficients. We will briefly discuss ways to improve the estimation of such coefficients.

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Translating the Burden of Pollen Allergy Into Numbers: 10-Year Observational Study of Electronically Generated Symptom Data From the Patient’s Hayfever Diary in Austria and Germany

Journal of Medical Internet Research ◽

10.2196/16767 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 22 (2) ◽

pp. e16767 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Katharina Bastl ◽

Maximilian Bastl ◽

Karl-Christian Bergmann ◽

Markus Berger ◽

Uwe Berger

Keyword(s):

Symptom Score ◽

Mobile Apps ◽

Pearson Correlation ◽

Pollen Allergy ◽

Correlation Coefficients ◽

Web Based ◽

Patient’S Hayfever Diary ◽

Significant Difference ◽

Symptom Load ◽

Symptom Load Index

Background Pollen allergies affect a significant proportion of the population globally. At present, Web-based tools such as pollen diaries and mobile apps allow for easy and fast documentation of allergic symptoms via the internet. Objective This study aimed to characterize the users of the Patient’s Hayfever Diary (PHD), a Web-based platform and mobile app, to apply different symptom score calculations for comparison, and to evaluate the contribution of organs and medications to the total score for the first time. Methods The PHD users were filtered with regard to their location in Austria and Germany, significant positive correlation to the respective pollen type (birch/grass), and at least 15 entries in the respective season. Furthermore, 4 different symptom score calculation methods were applied to the datasets from 2009 until 2018, of which 2 were raw symptom scores and 2 were symptom load index (normalized) calculations. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated pairwise for these 4 symptom score calculations. Results Users were mostly male and belonged to the age groups of 21 to 40 years or ≥40 years. User numbers have increased in the last 5 years, especially when mobile apps were made available. The Pearson correlation coefficients showed a significant linear relationship above 0.9 among the 4 symptom score datasets and thus indicated no significant difference between the different methods of symptom score calculation. The nose contributed the most to the symptom score and determined about 40% of the score. Conclusions The exact method of calculation of the symptom score is not critical. All computation methods show the same behavior (increase/decrease during the season). Therefore, the symptom load index is a useful computation method in all fields exploring pollen allergy, and Web-based diaries are a globally applicable tool to monitor the effect of pollen on human health via electronically generated symptom data.

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The Patient’s Denture Assessment (Thai version) is a Valid and Reliable Tool for Evaluating Complete Denture Treatment and Success.

10.21203/rs.3.rs-66159/v1 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Sahaprom Namano ◽

Orapin Komin

Keyword(s):

Pearson Correlation ◽

Treatment Success ◽

Intraclass Correlation ◽

Reliability And Validity ◽

Correlation Coefficients ◽

Complete Denture ◽

Care Clinic ◽

Geriatric Dentistry ◽

Significant Difference ◽

Denture Treatment

Abstract BACKGROUND. Complete tooth losses are still being major problems which resulted in lesser quality of life especially for elderly patients. However, there are still lack of questionnaire to evaluate the treatment outcome from the patient’s aspect. The objective of this study is to evaluate the reliability and validity of the Patient’s Denture Assessment-Thai version (PDA-T), then use this questionnaire to assess patient satisfaction with complete denture treatment. METHODS. The subjects comprised 120 edentulous adult patients (49 men/71 women; average age 70 years-old) from the Prosthodontic and the Geriatric Dentistry and Special Patients Care Clinic at the Faculty of Dentistry, Chulalongkorn University during 2019 March‒2020 March. The patients were divided into two groups: The group experienced (Exper) (n=54) with wearing complete dentures, and the non-experienced (NonExper) group (n=66). The patients used the validated PDA-T to self-assess their treatment at different times. The Exper group completed the questionnaire at t 0 (during treatment), t 0.5 (2‒8-weeks after t 0 ), and t 1 (final follow-up). The NonExper group completed the questionnaire only at t 1 . RESULTS. In the Exper group, Cronbach’s α and average inter-item correlation was 0.95 (range 0.76‒0.95) and 0.47 (range 0.57‒0.83), respectively. The intraclass correlation coefficients (n = 18, 95% confidence interval) were 0.98 overall. The paired t-test (p < 0.05) between t 0 and t 1 indicated a significant difference between t 0 and t 1 in every PDA-T topic, and the effect size was 1.71. In the NonExper group, the Pearson correlation analysis indicated no significant correlation between the patients' demographics and masticatory function. CONCLUSIONS. The reliability and validity of the PDA-T indicate it is a valuable tool for evaluating complete denture treatment. Treatment success affected the patients' satisfaction, but was not associated with the patients’ prior denture experience, sex, or educational level.

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The Effectiveness of Zakat in Developing Muslims in Malaysia

Insaniyat Journal of Islam and Humanities ◽

10.15408/insaniyat.v3i2.11315 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 127-138

Author(s):

Khairul Azhar Meerangani

Keyword(s):

Human Capital ◽

Social Welfare ◽

Equitable Distribution ◽

The Third ◽

The Poor ◽

Optimum Utilization ◽

The Rich ◽

Islamic Faith ◽

Welfare Distribution

Zakat is the third of the five pillars of Islamic faith, relating to wealth and welfare of the society that helps to close the gap between the poor and the rich. The efficient and systematic zakat management is able to propel it’s potential as an instrument of human developments especially among Muslims. The optimum utilization of zakat funds is essential to improving the quality and potential of every Muslim. In Malaysia, zakat is administrated by the Islamic Religious Council (IRC) in every state. The IRC is responsible for determining the beneficiary's qualification and the type of relief that is appropriate based on the background of each recipient so that the relief can be utilized to fulfill their needs. This study aims to assess the potential of zakat in developing the quality of Muslims in Malaysia by highlighting the practice of each IRC in distributing relief to each qualified zakat recipient. The distribution statistics and the form of programs provided by the IRC were analyzed descriptively to see the potential of zakat itself practically in improving the quality of Muslims. The study found that the IRC has provided various programs aimed at improving the quality of asnaf through equitable distribution of economics, social welfare distribution, human capital production and upgrading of education. Thus, every Muslim, especially zakat payers, should take the opportunity to equally engage with the IRC to ensure that zakat funds can be optimized for the developments of Muslims in Malaysia.

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