Preventive medicine
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Preventive medicine · Feb 2013
Home matters: work and household predictors of smoking and cessation among blue-collar workers.
This study examined the joint influence of work- and household-related variables on smoking behavior among a population representative sample of blue-collar workers with live-in partners. ⋯ Household-related variables were significant predictors of smoking status and cessation among blue-collar workers. Current efforts to decrease smoking in this group, which are mostly focused on work-related risk factors, should consider how to incorporate household risk factors.
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Preventive medicine · Jan 2013
Testing the agreement of medical instruments: overestimation of bias in the Bland-Altman analysis.
The Bland-Altman method is the most popular method used to assess the agreement of medical instruments. The main concern about this method is the presence of proportional bias. The slope of the regression line fitted to the Bland-Altman plot should be tested to exclude proportional bias. The aim of this study was to determine whether the overestimation of bias in the Bland-Altman analysis is still present even when the proportional bias has been excluded. ⋯ Testing the slope of regression line of the Bland-Altman plot does not remove the artifactual bias in the prediction.
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Preventive medicine · Jan 2013
Comparative StudyA comparison of smoking behaviour characteristics between Caucasian smokers in the United Kingdom and Malay smokers in Malaysia.
There is evidence that smoking behaviour differs by ethnicity. This study aims to compare smoking behaviour characteristics between Caucasian and Malay smokers. ⋯ Malays smoke as a means of socially integrating. This has important public health implications. Social reasons and the social environment play a role in smoking uptake, smoking maintenance and smoking cessation and this should be borne in mind for strategies planning to promote smoking cessation.
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Preventive medicine · Jan 2013
Validation of a measure of knowledge about human papillomavirus (HPV) using item response theory and classical test theory.
Public understanding of HPV is important to ensure informed participation in cervical cancer prevention programmes. While many studies have measured HPV knowledge, none has developed a validated measure for use across countries. We aimed to develop and validate such a measure. ⋯ A structurally coherent set of items covering a range of important HPV knowledge was developed. Responses indicated a reliable questionnaire, which allowed the fitting of an IRT model.
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Preventive medicine · Jan 2013
Suicide prevention program for at-risk groups: pointers from an epidemiological study.
The aim of this paper is to identify at-risk groups for a focused suicide prevention program for Malaysia. ⋯ In a developing country with competing priorities, prudent allocation of resources requires focusing suicide prevention efforts on treating depression in vulnerable groups.