It’s been a week of finding out things I didn’t know I didn’t know about. iCarly, for one. Life expectancy in young people with deliberate self harm for another. And fake medicines. […]
Latest articles
Guest Blog: Involving children and young people in health and social care research: the need for a new perspective
We’re all very aware of including young people in our clinical work – it’s why we’re in child health – but what about making it happen in research? This blog post by Louca-Mai Brady, a researcher working in the field of CYP’s participation in health services and research, and NIHR INVOLVE advisory group member, briefly outlines […]
StatsMiniBlog: Causal Analysis
A while back, we looked at propensity scores as a way of adjusting / controlling for confounders in non-randomised designs. Another approach is the hypothesis-driven estimation of an ‘instrumental variable’: a measurable feature which causes* an outcome to occur through the agency of another. Uh? In the olden days (before smartphones, WiFi and email addresses that […]
What would you like (for Christmas / Birthday / Leaving present …)?
Now, when you’ve got someone who’s older than – say – five, and you’re not Santa … actually, even if you are … and they have a gift-related event coming up, you tend to ask them what they might like for a present (if you’re in the UK). (If you’ve not had this experience, you […]
Children are not little adults. Sometimes.
We reported some time ago that a review of Cochrane reviews (yes .. we are well aware of the meta-meta here ) looking at both adult and child responses to treatments showed, on average, that an intervention was equally as likely to be effective, or ineffective, in children as it was in adults. Like many averages, […]
Has anyone ever seen an academic title like this where the answer is “Yes”?
You know the sort – ” Is survival and neurodevelopmental impairment at 2 years of age the gold standard outcome for neonatal trials?” – have you ever seen one written where the answer is “Yes”? Go on … have a look and quote us some in the comments. – Archi […]
Measuring consentability
So I’m inventing words here. Could be worse though, could be “stooling” for “having a poo” or “pedagogy” for .. well, whatever you want it to mean when you really mean “be quiet and listen”. But how can you judge if a child / young person is sufficiently aware of ‘stuff’ to be able to […]
StatsMiniBlog: Cronbach’s alpha
When you’re next handing out your questionnaire in clinic, or on the wards, or sit out in the library assessing the results of a recent clinical study, will you be asking about the quality of the questionnaire you’re using or reading about? Of course. I should have realised you will. Though you might just have […]
What moved you to move?
When was the last time you changed your behaviour? (I’m not talking here of speaking differently to your Mum in Urdu, your sister in Londoneese and your patient in Glaswegian …) When did you last decide “I am doing THIS/THAT thing differently from now on.” Got one? Right. Why did you do it? Take 30 […]
StatsMiniBlog: Surrogate, proxy or process?
When we look at treatments for children’s ill health, we tend to be stuck in a pleasant dilemma. We normally want to use treatments to stop kids dying, and to make them better quicker – but it’s uncommon for children to die, and they’ll often get better anyway. So we end up using alternative outcome […]