No abstract

Depressive symptoms in elderly hip-fracture patients may be alleviated by postoperative comprehensive care that features both psychological and physical interventions. Patients with increasing depressive status should be targeted for early interventions. (PsycINFO Database Record

No abstract

Assessing caregivers' self-perceived sense of balance may help to identify caregivers at high risk for role strain and depressive symptoms. Interventions to enhance caregivers' perceived sense of balance between competing needs may provide a strategy for reducing the negative effects of caregiving.

Since Cronbach proposed the alpha coefficient in 1951, researchers have contributed to the derivation of its sampling distribution and the testing of related statistical hypotheses. Yet, there has been no research on effect size index relevant to coefficient alpha to our knowledge. Considering the importance of effect size in understanding quantitative research findings, we therefore developed an effect size index Delta for the comparison of two independent alphas with equal test length based on the asymptotic distribution of (1/2)ln(1 - alphahat) under the assumptions of normality and compound symmetry. Simulations indicated that the index was applicable when the sample size was at least 100. The robustness of the derived index when the required assumptions were violated was also explored. It is suggested that the index should be applicable in most cases of unequal test lengths and could be extended to non-normally distributed component scores. Moreover, a small simulation was conducted to explore the behaviour of Delta with correlated errors, a frequently studied situation violating the assumption of compound symmetry. The proposed index was found to be robust unless a large number of highly correlated errors were present in the data.