We used the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) for the period 1998-2014 to analyze a sample of 130 million hospital discharge records of all age groups from four U.S. census regions for the following allergic disorders: allergic conjunctivitis, allergic rhinitis, anaphylaxis, angioedema, asthma, atopic eczema/dermatitis, drug allergy, food allergy, urticaria and venom allergy. After the application of population weights to the sample, we had a total of 622.6 million inpatient records (3.7 million annually). Yearly age- and sex-standardized hospitalization rates and trends for primary and non-primary diagnoses, defined as up to 14 diagnoses following the primary diagnosis, over the 17-year period were calculated using segmented generalized linear regression. From the project point of view this work is important as it allowed us to test the scalability of some analytical methods we plan to use in the later stages of the project.
COBISS.SI-ID: 22753046
The primary aim of this study was to identify mobile phone applications (apps) that include gamification features focused on motivating children to learn, perform and maintain optimal oral hygiene. We searched six online app stores using four search terms ("oral hygiene game", "oral hygiene gamification", "oral hygiene brush game" and "oral hygiene brush gamification"). The PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines were followed throughout the review. We identified gamification features, identified whether apps were consistent with evidence-based dentistry, we performed a quality appraisal with the user version of the app rating scale (uMARS) and we quantified the number of behaviour scores (Behaviour change score, uMARS score, and Coventry, Aberdeen and London-Refined [CALO-RE] score) using three different instruments that measure behavior change. Of 612 potentially relevant apps included in the analysis, 17 met the inclusion criteria. On average, apps included 6.87 (standard deviation [SD] = 4.18) out of 31 possible gamification features. The most frequently used gamification features were time pressure (n = 16; 94%), virtual characters (n = 14; 82%) and fantasy (n = 13; 76%). The most common oral hygiene evidence-based recommendation was brushing time (2-3 minutes), which was identified in 94% (n = 16) of apps. The overall uMARS total mean for app quality was high (mean [M] = 4.30; SD = 0.36), with good subjective quality (M = 3.79; SD = 0.71) and perceived impact (M = 3.58; SD = 0.44). Sufficient amount of behavior change techniques based on three taxonomies was detected in each app. The majority of the analyzed oral hygiene apps included gamification features and behaviour change techniques to perform and maintain oral hygiene in children. Overall, the apps contain some educational content consistent with evidence-based dentistry and high quality background for performing oral self-care in children; however, there is scope for improvement. From the project point of view this study is important since it gave us an insight into using uMARS tool to assess user experience that will play an important role in case studies with nurses working at the primary healthcare level in the later stages of the project.
COBISS.SI-ID: 2577060
For conducting research, nurses typically use commercial statistical packages. R software is a free, powerful, and flexible alternative, but is less familiar and used less frequently in nursing research. In this paper, we use data from a previous study to demonstrate a few typical steps in exploratory data analysis using R. A step-by-step description of some basic analyses in R is provided here, including examples of specific functions to read and manipulate the data, calculate scores from individual questionnaire items, and prepare a correlation plot and summary table.
COBISS.SI-ID: 2546084