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Taguchi method is a very popular offline quality design. However, it cannot solve the multi-response problem which occurs often in today's society. Research shows that the multiresponse problem is still an issue with the Taguchi method. Researchers have tried to find a series of theories and methods in seeking a combination of factors/levels to achieve the situation of optimal multi-response instead of using engineers' judgement to make a decision in the Taguchi method. In 1997, Su et al. submitted the multivariate method, and in 2000 Antony proposed principal component analysis (PCA), to solve this problem. But with the PCA method, there are still two main shortcomings. In this study, the weighted principal components (WPC) method is proposed to overcome these two shortcomings, and three cases in their papers will be illustrated and compared in the application of WPC method. The result shows that the WPC method offers significant improvements in quality.

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Looks at the Taguchi method, a traditional approach that seeks to obtain the best combination of factors with the lowest societal cost solution to achieve customer requirements, and also principal component analysis (PCA). States that the Taguchi method can only be used to optimize single response problems and not multi-response problems and that PCA, although it has been considered to solve multi-response problems, itself has shortcomings. Proposes a data envelopment analysis ranking (DEAR) approach as an effective means of optimizing the multiresponse problem. Includes a series of steps from the proposed approach which are capable of decreasing uncertainty caused by engineering judgement in the Taguchi method and overcoming the shortcomings of PCA. Concludes that the DEAR approach is more powerful for practical applications.

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Objective: The study intended to use narrative medicine study for interdisciplinary collaboration to let medical and healthcare students have a chance to interact with one another and listen to patients’ stories to enhance students’ reflective thinking, communication, empathy, and narrative medicine writing skills. Methods: A fifteen-week quasi-experimental design was used to examine the learning outcomes of the intervention. Two groups of students were randomly assigned as the experimental group (33 students) and the control group (32 students). Before and after the intervention, both groups had to fill in a Reflective Thinking Scale for Healthcare Students and Providers (RTS-HSP), Patient–Healthcare Provider Communication Scale (P-HCS), Empathy Scale in Patient Care (ES-PC), and Analytic Narrative Medicine Writing Scoring Rubric (ANMWSR). Results: The findings showed that on the reflective thinking scale, experimental group students had significantly higher reflective thinking posttest scores in “reflective skepticism,” “empathetic reflection,” and “critical open-mindedness,” but not in “self-examination.” As for patient–healthcare provider communication, they had significantly higher posttest scores in all “perception of trust and receptivity,” “patient-centered information giving,” “rapport building,” and “facilitation of patient involvement” factors. As for empathy, they had significant higher posttest scores in “behavioral empathy” and “affective empathy,” but not in “intelligent empathy.” In narrative medical writing skills, they had significant higher posttest scores in the “attention → representation → affiliation,” “depth of reflection,” “focus and context structure,” and “ideas and elaboration” sections, but not in the “language and conventions” section. Conclusion: The findings suggest that narrative medicine is worth recommending for interdisciplinary collaboration for healthcare education.

Our aim was to develop the Critical Thinking Disposition Assessment (CTDA) scale to assess medical care professionals' or students' level of critical thinking disposition and to validate the psychometric properties of this instrument. A total of 775 medical care professionals and students agreed to respond to the survey instrument. Exploratory factor analysis extracted 3 factors; systematicity and analyticity, inquisitiveness and conversance, and maturity and skepticism, accounting for 63.40% of the variance. The final scale comprised 19 statements rated on a 7-point Likert scale. Reliability analysis produced Cronbach's alpha coefficients ranging from .86 to .94 for the 3 factors and the overall scale, indicating acceptable reliability for the instrument. The concurrent validity analysis was also conducted to compare the instrument with other measures. In light of these findings, the CTDA was found to be a valid and reliable instrument to measure the critical thinking disposition of medical care professionals and students.

The Taguchi method is an efficient method used in off-line quality control where experimental design is combined with quality loss. This method includes three stages-system design, parameter design, and tolerance design. In the real world it is obvious that more than one quality characteristic should be considered for most industrial products; i.e., in most applications the customer's concern is with multi-response problems. Nevertheless, the Taguchi method is not appropriate for optimising a multi-response problem since engineering judgment is the main optimisation procedure in Taguchi method. In order to overcome this problem, this paper proposes an effective procedure called PCR-TOPSIS that is based on process capability ratio (PCR) theory and on the theory of order preference by similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS) to optimise multi-response problems. Using PCR-TOPSIS, multiple responses in each experiment will be transformed into a performance index. Therefore, the optimal factors/levels combinations for the multi-responses can be determined. Two case studies in Tarng et al. and Reddy et al. are resolved using the proposed procedure. The result indicates that PCR-TOPSIS can yield a satisfactory solution for multiresponse problems.