Search results

The purpose of this study is to identify and examine the factors that affected the scale of ILL photocopy requests between Japanese university libraries from 1994 to 2008.

Based on the newly developed conceptual framework to interpret the rise and fall in ILL, more than 10 million requests, sent through a nation‐wide system called NACSIS‐ILL from 1994 to 2008 were quantitatively analyzed.

The number of photocopy requests for articles in foreign journals started to decrease in 2000, due to the dramatic increase of e‐journal titles made accessible through “Big Deal” contracts that came into effect in 2002 as well as other similar trials prior to it. On the other hand, requests for articles in domestic journals, mostly written in Japanese, continued to increase until 2006. The main factor for this increase was the expansion of journal title coverage in bibliographic databases, which enabled users to retrieve more references. However, requests decreased in 2007, because of advances in digitization in the Japanese academic environment.

This research proposes a conceptual model to understand document demand and service patterns observed in nation‐wide ILL services. It also successfully draws a comprehensive picture of ILL in Japanese higher education institutions, based on more than 10 million request records over 15 years, and it shows how the number of ILL requests correlates with the availability of requested journals in electronic form.

This research proposes a conceptual model to understand document demand and service patterns observed in nation‐wide ILL services. It also successfully draws a comprehensive picture of ILL in Japanese higher education institutions, based on more than 10 million request records over 15 years, and it shows how the number of ILL requests correlates with the availability of requested journals in electronic form.

Measurements of the quality of physician‐patient communication are important in assessing patient outcomes, but the quality of communication is difficult to quantify. The aim of this paper is to develop a computer analysis system for the physician‐patient consultation process (CASC), which will use a quantitative method to quantify and analyze communication exchanges between physicians and patients during the consultation process.

CASC is based on the concept of narrative‐based medicine using a computer‐mediated communication (CMC) technique from a cognitive dialog processing system. Effective and ineffective consultation samples from the works of Saito and Kleinman were tested with CASC in order to establish the validity of CASC for use in clinical practice. After validity was confirmed, three researchers compared their assessments of consultation processes in a physician's office with CASCs. Consultations of 56 migraine patients were recorded with permission, and for this study consultations of 29 patients that included more than 50 words were used.

Transcribed data from the 29 consultations input into CASC resulted in two diagrams of concept structure and concept space to assess the quality of consultation. The concordance rate between the assessments by CASC and the researchers was 75 percent.

In this study, a computer‐based communication analysis system was established that efficiently quantifies the quality of the physician‐patient consultation process. The system is promising as an effective tool for evaluating the quality of physician‐patient communication in clinical and educational settings.

The diagnosis of autism in adults often involves the use of tools recommended by NICE guidance but which are validated in children. The purpose of the paper is to establish the strength of the association between the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) scores and the final clinical outcome in an all intellectual quotients adult autism diagnostic service and to establish if this in any way relates with gender and intellectual ability.

The sample includes referrals to Leeds Autism Diagnostic Service in 2015 that received a clinical outcome. Sensitivity, specificity and positive and negative predictive values were calculated to evaluate ADI-R and final clinical outcomes. Logistic regression model was used to predict the effect of the scores in all the domains of ADI-R and the two-way interactions with gender and intellectual ability.

ADI-R has a high sensitivity and low specificity and is useful to rule out the presence of autism, but if used alone, it can over diagnose. Restricted stereotyped behaviours are the strongest predictor for autism and suggests that the threshold should be increased to enhance its specificity.

This is a single site study with small effect size, so results may not be replicable. It supports the combined use of ADI-R and Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule and suggests increasing ADI-R cut-offs to increase the specificity.

The clinical team may consider piloting a modified ADI-R as suggested by the results.

To the authors’ knowledge this is the only study of ADI-R in an adult population of all intellectual abilities.