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- Longitudinal clustering of tuberculosis incidence and predictors for the time profiles: the impact of HIVPublication . Sousa, P.; Oliveira, Alexandra; Gomes, M.; Gaio, A. R.; Duarte, R.BACKGROUND: Portugal remains the country with the highest tuberculosis (TB) incidence in Western Europe. OBJECTIVES: To identify longitudinal trends in TB incidence in Portugal from 2002 to 2012 and investigate the longitudinal effect of sociodemographic and health-related predictors among the resident population on the TB incidence rate. METHODS: We used data from the National Tuberculosis Surveillance System and other national institutions. K-means longitudinal clustering algorithm was performed on TB incidence time profiles from districts of Portugal. RESULTS: Three longitudinal profiles for the TB incidence rate of Portugal were identified. In all of them, TB incidence decreased over time. Among all studied sociodemographic and health-related predictors, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) notification rate and unemployment were shown to have (positive) significant effects on TB incidence. In particular, the greatest effects were found for the HIV notification rate. CONCLUSIONS: Our study supports the view that combined TB-HIV strategies and the improvement of social determinants can contribute to decreases in TB incidence.
- Modelling reporting delays in a multilevel structured surveillance system - application to portuguese HIV-AIDS dataPublication . Oliveira, Alexandra; Amorim, Humberta; Gaio, Rita; Reis, Luís PauloIn a deeply interconnected world of people and goods, infectious diseases constitute a serious threat. An active vigilance is required. The collection of adequate data is vital and coordinated by surveillance systems. It is widely-acknowledged that every case-reporting system has some degree of under-reporting and reporting delay in particular in HIV-AIDS Portuguese Surveillance System. To better understand the processes generating the reporting delays, which is an administrative process, it was used a flexible continuous time fully parametric survival analysis approach. It was taken into consideration the hierarchical administrative and organizational structure of the system as well as the relevant changes in the procedures throughout the time. The best multilevel structure to represent reporting delays in continuous time is the model where the individuals are nested into Reporting Entities (20.24% of the variance) which are nested into Type of services (8% of the variance) with the log-normal distribution.
- An approach for assessing the distribution of reporting delay in portuguese AIDS dataPublication . Oliveira, Alexandra; Gaio, Ana Rita; da Costa, Joaquim Pinto; Reis, Luís PauloHIV/AIDS epidemic is an important public health problem. The burden of the epidemic is estimated from surveillance systems data. The collected information is incomplete, making the estimation a challenging task and the reported trends often biased. The most common incomplete-data problems, in this kind of data, are due to under-diagnosis and reporting delays, mainly in the most recent years. This is a classical problem for imputation methodologies. In this paper we study the distribution of AIDS reporting delays through a mix approach, combining longitudinal K-means with the generalized least squares method. While the former identifies homogeneous delay patterns, the latter estimated longitudinal regression curves. We found that a 2-cluster structure is appropriated to accommodate the heterogeneity in reporting delay on HIV/AIDS data and that the corresponding estimated delay curves are almost stationary over time.
- O impacto da síndrome de burnout na autorregulação da aprendizagem dos estudantes da ESS a frequentar modelos pedagógicos distintosPublication . Salgado, Ana Isabel; Oliveira, Alexandra; Magalhães, Andreia; Faias, Joaquim; Pedroso, João PauloOs desafios da sociedade atual obrigam a repensar o Ensino Superior, a questionar a adequação dos seus objetivos e métodos, a redefinir o perfil quer do docente quer do estudante. A literatura tem reforçado a importância do desenvolvimento de competências autorregulatórias que permitam aos estudantes adaptar-se às mais diversas solicitações de um novo ambiente que impõe uma reorganização multidimensional. A autorregulação da aprendizagem tem sido definida como os pensamentos, sentimentos e ações planeados pelo próprio estudante para incrementar a motivação e a aprendizagem. Alguns autores sugerem que em ambientes onde as tarefas são percecionadas como demasiado exigentes ou pouco compensadoras podem constituir-se como importantes stressores, surgindo inclusivamente a síndrome de burnout e interferir negativamente no rendimento académico. O presente trabalho inclui 73 estudantes do 2º ano do Ensino Superior da área da saúde, da Escola Superior de Saúde do Porto, a frequentar os cursos de Terapia Ocupacional, Fisioterapia, Saúde Ambiental e Farmácia, divididos em duas metodologias de ensino diferentes, o modelo tradicional e o modelo Problem-Based Learning (PBL). O objetivo principal consistiu em estudar as competências autorregulatórias destes estudantes bem como as relações destas com outras variáveis. Neste sentido foram utilizados a Escala de Burnout de Maslach para estudantes portugueses, o Inventário de Processos de Autorregulação da Aprendizagem – Universidade do Minho, e um questionário sociodemográfico. Os resultados evidenciam que existem diferenças significativas no que respeita à autorregulação nos dois grupos definidos pelas tipologias de ensino, apresentando-se mais elevada nos estudantes do ensino com metodologia tradicional. As análises revelam que a autorregulação pode ser também explicada pelos 3 domínios da escala de Burnout, sendo que quanto maior o valor das subescalas de exaustão emocional e de eficácia profissional, maiores são os níveis de autorregulação. O inverso acontece com a subescala de descrença. Não foram encontradas evidências estatísticas da relação entre a autorregulação e as variáveis: média geral pretendida, idade, sexo, saída de casa e número de matrículas feitas no Ensino Superior. Para além disso, a medida utilizada para avaliar o sucesso académico pode ser explicada pela dimensão da exaustão emocional, a média geral pretendida, o género, a prática desportiva e a tipologia de ensino. Sendo que, a medida de sucesso académico diminuiu se a dimensão da exaustão emocional aumentar, e aumenta com um incremento da média pretendida. Os rapazes têm menor sucesso académico assim como os estudantes da tipologia tradicional. Este estudo mostra que a síndrome de burnout tem um papel importante na explicação da autorregulação, com implicações diretas no sucesso académico dos estudantes em ambos os modelos educativos. No futuro será importante continuar a recolher dados para melhor compreender estas variáveis ao longo do percurso de formação no sentido de otimizar a capacidade de detetar precocemente dificuldades, definir estratégias promotoras das competências autorregulatórias e refletir sobre as práticas pedagógicas, contribuindo assim para o sucesso académico no sentido mais lato.
- Antihypertensives knowledge – assessment in higher education students through digital game-based learningPublication . Gonçalves, Helena; Capitão, Romana; Cruz, Agostinho; Oliveira, Alexandra; Oliveira, Ana Isabel; Pinho, Cláudia; Borges, Janete; Oliveira, Rita FerrazHypertension has been described as the most prevalent risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, which are the main cause of death worldwide. In Portugal, in 2015, its prevalence was of 36%. This pathology’s therapeutic success depends upon a good knowledge about the therapeutic alternatives available.There is, therefore, imperative to insure that the learning process is efficient. In order to improve it, in a more appealing and effective way, there has been an increase in the employ of digital tools.
- Assessing sleep quality of professional drivers: an analysis based on self-perceived and sleep companions' feedbackPublication . Lopes, T.; Faria, Brigida Monica; Oliveira, Alexandra; Pimenta, Rui; Reis, L. P.Portugal has been ranked as the fourth European country with the highest incidence of falling asleep while driving. The quality of sleep comprises both quantitative aspects, such as sleep duration and sleep latency, and qualitative aspects, such as mood and health status. Neglecting the quality and quantity of sleep can result in fatigue, affecting multiple aspects of safe driving, such as attentiveness to the road. Although quantitative measures of sleep are easy to assess, evaluating subjective aspects of sleep is more challenging. Poor sleep quality and habits were the most commonly cited reasons for falling asleep at the wheel. Given the high prevalence of road accidents in Portugal and the significant impact of sleep quality on driving safety, there is a need for comprehensive research on the sleep quality of professional drivers. Adult sleep is often a shared activity between sleep companions, making it a crucial aspect to investigate for a better understanding of sleep perceptions. The main objective of this study is to analyze the sleep quality of a population of Portuguese professional drivers and compare it with the responses given by their sleep companions.
- The incidence of AIDS in Portugal adjusted for reporting delay and underreportingPublication . Oliveira, Alexandra; Costa, Joaquim; Gaio, Ana RitaThe Human Immunodeficiency Virus can evolve to severe illness having a major impact on socio-demographic and economic features of the affected countries. Most countries rely on surveillance systems to monitor the status of the epidemic which are based on cases notification by physicians. It can take several months until the diagnosed cases are notified and there are even cases that are not reported at all. The purpose of this paper is to adjust the Portuguese notification data to these main possible biasing problems. For the reporting delay we will use the traditional conditional likelihood estimation for count data assuming a Poisson distribution. For the cases that are not reported at all, we will use a mixture of Poisson distributions, based on natural conjugate prior distributions, and estimate the unknown parameters through maximum likelihood. The Poisson model suggests that approximately 80% of the Portuguese AIDS cases were reported within one year after the diagnosis and that the majority of cases were notified in the first three months. The BB/NBD model suggests that the probability of a new AIDS case being notified gets higher once a large amount of AIDS cases has been notified.
- Data quality miningPublication . Oliveira, Alexandra; Gaio, Rita; Baylina, Pilar; Rebelo, Carlos; Reis, Luís PauloWe are living in a world of information abundance, surplus, and access. We have technologies to acquire any type of information but we still face the challenge of extracting the underlying valuable knowledge. Data analyses and mining processes may be severely impaired whenever data are corrupted by noise, ambiguity and distortions. This paper aims to provide a systematic procedure for data cleaning in single files data sources without schema that may be corrupted by the most common data problems. The methodology is guided by the dimensions of data quality standards and focuses on the goal of performing reasonable posterior statistical analyses.
- Percepção dos atores sobre o papel da terapia da fala nos contextos de cinema, dublagens, teatro e televisão em PortugalPublication . Mondim, Inês; Araújo, André; Oliveira, AlexandraIntrodução: Em alguns países tem-se verificado um aumento da parceria entre o terapeuta da fala e o ator, existindo uma expansão crescente da intervenção do terapeuta nos vários contextos profissionais do ator. Em Portugal, esta realidade é ainda pouco conhecida. Objetivo: Descrever e relacionar a percepção que os atores das diferentes áreas performativas: cinema, dublagem, teatro e televisão, têm em relação ao papel do terapeuta da fala. Material e Método: Realizou-se um estudo observacional descritivo-transversal. Recorreu-se a um questionário online para recolha de dados, numa amostra de 72 atores, proveniente de todo o país. Resultados: Nos contextos de dublagem e teatro o terapeuta da fala é considerado como extremamente importante, enquanto em cinema e televisão a classificação obtida é de importante. Apesar de os inquiridos atribuírem um grau elevado de importância à integração do terapeuta da fala nas suas equipes de trabalho, as suas áreas de intervenção ainda não são completamente conhecidas. Na opinião dos inquiridos, o terapeuta da fala pode integrar a equipe dos quatro contextos, nos seguintes aspectos: terapia vocal, orientação de aquecimento vocal e assistência contínua aos atores. Conclusão: Os atores estão receptivos ao trabalho do terapeuta da fala, embora demonstrem uma visão parcial das suas funções. A preparação dos terapeutas da fala para esta área é questionada, pelo que é necessário, desenvolver mais conhecimento sobre as suas reais competências, bem como formas de aprimoramento profissional de modo a melhor responder às necessidades dos atores, nos vários contextos.
- Development and validation of a health and work survey based on the rasch model among portuguese WorkersPublication . Barros, Carla; Cunha, Liliana; Baylina, Pilar; Oliveira, Alexandra; Rocha, ÁlvaroThe purpose of this study was to develop the Health and Work Survey (INSAT) and examine the validity of the discomfort rating scale. Data were collected from 706 Portuguese workers from six economic sectors with the support of the Health and Work Survey (INSAT - Inquérito Saúde e Trabalho). The INSAT is a self-administered questionnaire to assessing working conditions, health and wellbeing, and to provide information to the occupational health systems in the organisations. For the survey instrument validation, the Rasch Partial Credit Model (PCM) was used to analyse item fit statistics. From the application of PCM, Person Separation Reliability was obtained (0.8761) and the value can be considered very good (>0.8). From the statistical analysis, the Overall Model fit information, given by Outfit Mean square/Infit Mean square, is between 0.5 and 1.5, meaning "Productive for measurement" and "acceptable fit overall". The INSAT items can generate predictable response patterns. We recommend that the INSAT discomfort rating scale and some other items should be reviewed in future works. In any event, this tool proves to be useful in assessing the relationship between work and health and in evaluating key main risk factors, helping to prevent problems and improving occupational health systems.
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