Abstract Purpose In mental health care, patients and their care providers may conceptualize the nature of the disorder and appropriate action in profoundly diferent ways. This may lead to dropout and lack of compliance with the treatments being provided, in particular in young patients with more severe disorders. This study provides detailed information about patient–provider (dis)agreement regarding the care needs of children and adolescents. Methods We used the Camberwell Assessment of Need (CANSAS) to assess the met and unmet needs of 244 patients aged between 6 and 18 years. These needs were assessed from the perspectives of both patients and their care providers. Our primary outcome measure was agreement between the patient and care provider on unmet need. By comparing a general outpatient sample (n=123) with a youth-ACT sample (n=121), we were able to assess the infuence of severity of psychiatric and psychosocial problems on the extent of agreement on patient’s unmet care needs. Results In general, patients reported unmet care needs less often than care providers did. Patients and care providers had the lowest extents of agreement on unmet needs with regard to “mental health problems” (k=0.113) and “information regarding diagnosis/treatment” (k=0.171). Comparison of the two mental healthcare settings highlighted diferences for three-quarters of the unmet care needs that were examined. Agreement was lower in the youth-ACT setting. Conclusions Clarifcation of diferent views on patients’ unmet needs may help reduce nonattendance of appointments, noncompliance, or dropout. Routine assessment of patients’ and care providers’ perceptions of patients’ unmet care needs may also help provide information on areas of disagreement.
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ion of verb agreement by hearing learners of a sign language. During a 2-year period, 14 novel learners of Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) with a spoken language background performed an elicitation task 15 times. Seven deaf native signers and NGT teachers performed the same task to serve as a benchmark group. The results obtained show that for some learners, the verb agreement system of NGT was difficult to master, despite numerous examples in the input. As compared to the benchmark group, learners tended to omit agreement markers on verbs that could be modified, did not always correctly use established locations associated with discourse referents, and made characteristic errors with respect to properties that are important in the expression of agreement (movement and orientation). The outcomes of the study are of value to practitioners in the field, as they are informative with regard to the nature of the learning process during the first stages of learning a sign language.
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In research methodology, epistemology is concerned with the question how humans generate knowledge. In facility management (FM) research, for instance, it deals with the evaluation criteria such as validity and reliability by which researchers discriminate good knowledge from bad. The objective of this paper is to add to the scholarly methodological aspects in FM research. The paper takes a postpositivist stance and pre-supposes that scholars are able to discover what happens in FM through the categorization and scientific measurement of affective responses. It applies a method by which scholars are able to develop good knowledge and by which talented bachelor students are involved in FM research.In this study 26 semi-structured interviews were conducted at nine different organizations in the Netherlands. Interviews, which focused on office environments and productivity, were conducted in pairs by Honours students. This paper reports on methodological issues of this study. Data collection and analysis by different researchers revealed serious threats to validity and reliability. Consequently an interrater agreement (IRA), measuring the degree of agreement between raters, was introduced to reveal and overcome differences in interpretations.In this paper the difficulties of achieving good agreement were considered. Adjustment between raters and clear demarcation of constructs are necessary. A synopsis of usage and reporting of qualitative interview approaches is shown.
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Reliability in decision making about intervention plans is a necessary condition for evidence-based probation work and equal treatment of offenders. Structuring decision making can improve agreement between clinical decision makers. In a former study however, we found that in Dutch probation practice structured risk and needs assessment did not result in acceptable agreement about intervention plans. The Dutch probation services subsequently introduced a tool for support in decision making on intervention plans. This article addresses the question whether the use of this tool results in better agreement between probation officers. A significant and meaningful improvement in agreement was found on all domains of the intervention plan. Implications for probation practice are discussed
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Introducing instruments to structure risk assessment has been shown to improve agreement between probation professionals about the assessment of offenders’ risks and needs. The subsequent decisions about intervention plans, however, are to a large extent still unstructured. This article addresses the question of whether probation officers agree about intervention plans and whether agreement differs between experienced and less experienced probation officers. A group of 44 Dutch probation officers wrote intervention plans for four cases in which the risk and needs assessment was given. Results showed that the overall agreement about the intervention plan is poor. Looking at the different domains of an intervention plan, agreement about the advice on the sanction, conditions, criminogenic needs to be addressed, and programs is fair. On all other domains (instructions, control, intensity of supervision, and goals), agreement is poor. Experience of the probation officers did not influence the agreement about the intervention plans substantially.
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There remains some debate about whether beta power effects observed during sentence comprehension reflect ongoing syntactic unification operations (beta-syntax hypothesis), or instead reflect maintenance or updating of the sentence-level representation (beta-maintenance hypothesis). In this study, we used magnetoencephalography to investigate beta power neural dynamics while participants read relative clause sentences that were initially ambiguous between a subject- or an object-relative reading. An additional condition included a grammatical violation at the disambiguation point in the relative clause sentences. The beta-maintenance hypothesis predicts a decrease in beta power at the disambiguation point for unexpected (and less preferred) object-relative clause sentences and grammatical violations, as both signal a need to update the sentence-level representation. While the beta-syntax hypothesis also predicts a beta power decrease for grammatical violations due to a disruption of syntactic unification operations, it instead predicts an increase in beta power for the object-relative clause condition because syntactic unification at the point of disambiguation becomes more demanding. We observed decreased beta power for both the agreement violation and object-relative clause conditions in typical left hemisphere language regions, which provides compelling support for the beta-maintenance hypothesis. Mid-frontal theta power effects were also present for grammatical violations and object-relative clause sentences, suggesting that violations and unexpected sentence interpretations are registered as conflicts by the brain's domain-general error detection system.
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OBJECTIVE: To investigate the level of agreement of the behavioural mapping method with an accelerometer to measure physical activity of hospitalized patients. DESIGN: A prospective single-centre observational study. SETTING: A university medical centre in the Netherlands. SUBJECTS: Patients admitted to the hospital. MAIN MEASURES: Physical activity of participants was measured for one day from 9 AM to 4 PM with the behavioural mapping method and an accelerometer simultaneously. The level of agreement between the percentages spent lying, sitting and moving from both measures was evaluated using the Bland-Altman method and by calculating Intraclass Correlation Coefficients. RESULTS: In total, 30 patients were included. Mean (±SD) age was 63.0 (16.8) years and the majority of patients were men (n = 18). The mean percentage of time (SD) spent lying was 47.2 (23.3) and 49.7 (29.8); sitting 42.6 (20.5) and 40.0 (26.2); and active 10.2 (6.1) and 10.3 (8.3) according to the accelerometer and observations, respectively. The Intraclass Correlation Coefficient and mean difference (SD) between the two measures were 0.852 and -2.56 (19.33) for lying; 0.836 and 2.60 (17.72) for sitting; and 0.782 and -0.065 (6.23) for moving. The mean difference between the two measures is small (⩽2.6%) for all three physical activity levels. On patient level, the variation between both measures is large with differences above and below the mean of ⩾20% being common. CONCLUSION: The overall level of agreement between the behavioural mapping method and an accelerometer to identify the physical activity levels 'lying', 'sitting' and 'moving' of hospitalized patients is reasonable.
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Background: Experienced assessors show good intra-rater reproducibility (within-session and between-session agreement and reliability) when using an algometer to determine pressure pain thresholds (PPT). However, it is unknown whether novice assessors perform equally well. This study aimed to determine within and between-session agreement and reliability of PPT measurements performed by novice assessors and explored whether these parameters differed per assessor and algometer type.Methods: Ten novice assessors measured PPTs over four test locations (tibialis anterior muscle, rectus femoris muscle, extensor carpi radialis brevis muscle and paraspinal muscles C5-C6) in 178 healthy participants, using either a Somedic Type II digital algometer (10 raters; 88 participants) or a Wagner Force Ten FDX 25 digital algometer (nine raters; 90 participants). Prior to the experiment, the novice assessors practiced PPTs for 3 h per algometer. Each assessor measured a different subsample of ~9 participants. For both the individual assessor and for all assessors combined (i.e., the group representing novice assessors), the standard error of measurement (SEM) and coefficient of variation (CV) were calculated to reflect within and between-session agreement. Reliability was assessed using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC1,1).Results: Within-session agreement expressed as SEM ranged from 42 to 74 kPa, depending on the test location and device. Between-session agreement, expressed as SEM, ranged from 36 to 76 kPa and the CV ranged from 9-16% per body location. Individual assessors differed from the mean group results, ranging from -55 to +32 kPa or from -9.5 to +6.6 percentage points. Reliability was good to excellent (ICC1,1: 0.87 to 0.95). Results were similar for both types of algometers.Conclusions: Following 3 h of algometer practice, there were slight differences between assessors, but reproducibility in determining PPTs was overall good.
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The main aim of this study was to determine the agreement in classification between the modified KörperKoordinations Test für Kinder (KTK3+) and the Athletic Skills Track (AST) for measuring fundamental movement skill levels (FMS) in 6- to 12-year old children. 3,107 Dutch children (of which 1,625 are girls) between 6 and 12 years of age (9.1 ± 1.8 years) were tested with the KTK3+ and the AST. The KTK3+ consists of three items from the KTK and the Faber hand-eye coordination test. Raw scores from each subtest were transformed into percentile scores based on all the data of each grade. The AST is an obstacle course consisting of 5 (grades 3 till 5, 6–9 years) or 7 (grades 6 till 8, 9–12 years) concatenated FMS that should be performed as quickly as possible. The outcome measure is the time needed to complete the track. A significant bivariate Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.51 was found between the percentile sum score of the KTK3+ and the time to complete the AST, indicating that both tests measure a similar construct to some extent. Based on their scores, children were classified into one of five categories: <5, 5–15, 16–85, 86–95 or >95%. Cross tabs revealed an agreement of 58.8% with a Kappa value of 0.15 between both tests. Less than 1% of the children were classified more than two categories higher or lower. The moderate correlation between the KTK3+ and the AST and the low classification agreement into five categories of FMS stress the importance to further investigate the test choice and the measurement properties (i.e., validity and reliability) of both tools. PE teachers needs to be aware of the context in which the test will be conducted, know which construct of motor competence they want to measure and know what the purpose of testing is (e.g., screening or monitoring). Based on these considerations, the most appropriate assessment tool can be chosen.
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