There is notorious inconsistency regarding mental health benefits of dog ownership, partially due to repeated cross-sectional studies comparing dog owners and non-owners, without taking into account the heterogeneity of dog-owner dyads, especially the activities with which the owners are involved. this study aimed to develop a comprehensive framework of the most important dog human related activities and their impact on owner well-being. Six focus groups with 35 dog owners were conducted, and their audio transcripts thematically analysed. Dog human related activities and themes of activities were linked to their reported changes in well-being through matrix coding. A framework of 58 dog human related activities linked with their specific hedonic well-being, life satisfaction and eudaimonic well-being outcomes was generated. Most activities were reported to improve owner's well-being, (e.g. human-dog tactile interaction increases owner's self-esteem), and a minority was mainly associated with negative outcomes. the richness of the framework presented in this study reinforces the importance of assessing dog ownership well-being outcomes based on specific dog human related activities with which dog owners are involved. this new and systematic investigative approach should decrease inconsistencies in the field and facilitate mental health interventions and study designs of a higher level of evidence. Mental health problems are one of the main disease burdens of society and are growing worldwide 1. In the United Kingdom, mental health problems represent the largest single cause of disability, with estimated costs of £105 billion a year; one in four adults in the country suffers at least one diagnosable mental health problem in any given year 2. Psychological changes led by pet ownership may have an important impact on mental health, with associated economic savings (£2.5 billion/year-UK) 3. However, studies in this field are inconsistent, and how pet ownership might impact on human well-being has not been explored systematically. Heterogeneity within important aspects of pet ownership (e.g. amount of exercise undertaken, level of disclosure of personal emotional information with their dogs) may explain why some individuals may benefit while others do not 4-6. It is therefore not surprising that investigations on depression have shown pet ownership improves 7-9 , as well as makes no difference 10-12 and even worsens the condition 13,14. Similar contradictions extend to other aspects of well-being, such as loneliness 8,15 , stress 13,16 , anxiety 13,17 , human functioning 11,18 and life satisfaction 19,20. The tendency to compare 'pet owners' versus 'non-owners' in cross-sectional research 21 is a gross oversimplification of a complex relationship. Clearly, the specific activities owners engage with, rather than the simple act of ownership is important. 35% of dog owners, for example, do not walk their dogs 22,23 , and so benefits associated with increased exercise cannot be expected in this subpopulation; likewise, var...
Medicine, Biological Sciences and Psychology, University of Leicester, UK, LE1 9HN. Email, jm148@le.ac.uk. PrePrints AbstractThe current study explores the perceived quality of life of Syrian refugees who have entered the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Two hundred and seventy participants residing in refugee camps in the Erbil region in Kurdistan completed the WHOQOL-BREF, which measures quality of life (QoL) within four domains; physical, psychological, social relationships and environment. Syrian refugees in Kurdistan scored significantly lower for general population norms on physical health, psychological and environment QoL, and score significantly lower for physical health and psychological QOL for refugees in the Gaza strip. However, respondents in the current sample scored significantly higher on environment QoL to refugees in the Gaza strip, and significantly higher on all the QoL domains than those reported for refugees in West Africa. Finally, Syrian refugees in Kurdistan scored significantly higher than general population norms for environment- The WHOQOL-BREF can be scored in three ways; through raw scores and two transformation methods; the first that creates domain scores within the range of 4-20, and the second that creates domain scores within the range of 0-100.The WHOQOL-BREF's psychometric properties have been analyzed using crosssectional data from 11,830 adults from 23 countries (Sevington, Lofty, & O'Connell, 2004) and is a valid assessment across cultures and socioeconomic status (Hawthorne, Herrman, & Murphy, 2006; Sevington,et al., 2004). Syrian refugees tend to speak the Kurdish language, but have According to the WHOQOL-BREF manual the transformational methods for scoring of the scale allows for missing items. EthicsThe study received ethical approval from the University's School Ethics Board whose ethical procedures conform to those of the British Psychological Society (http://www.bps.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/code_of_human_research_ethics.pdf). TheEthics Reference for the Ethics Board was jm148-851fa. All participants were 18 years of age or over and provided free and informed consent to take part in the study. Formal procedures and permission to visit the camps were given by the General Director of Academic Missions and Cultural Relations and the Democracy and Human Rights Research Institute. ResultsWe found three reported non-clinical based samples that provided enough information to allow statistical mean score comparisons between the current sample and these samples. The first sample was the overall norm data from 11,830 adults from 23 countries (Sevington,et al., 2004).The other two samples comprised samples from refugee populations residing in West Africa (Akinyemi, et al., 2012) Table 1 shows a set of mean comparisons between Syrian refugees in Kurdistan and overall norm data for the WHOQOL-BREF. This comparison uses transformed domain scores within a range 4-20. As our sample data has a missing item, we recomputed the mean/SD score for social relationships QOL f...
Clinical applications of Artifi cial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare are relatively rare. The high expectations in relation to data analysis infl uencing general healthcare have not materialized, with few exceptions, and then predominantly in the fi eld of rare diseases, oncology and pathology, and interpretation of laboratory results. While electronic health records, introduced over the last decade or so in the UK have increased access to medical and treatment histories of patients, diagnoses, medications, treatment plans, immunization dates, allergies, radiology images, laboratory and test results, these have potential for evidence-based tools that providers can use to make decisions about a patient's care, as well as streamline workfl ow. In the following text, we review the advances achieved using machine learning and deep learning technology, as well as robot use and telemedicine in the healthcare of older people. Key points: 1. Artifi cial Intelligence use is extensively explored in prevention, diagnosis, novel drug designs and after-care. 2. AI studies on older adults include a small number of patients and lack reproducibility needed for their wider clinical use in different clinical settings and larger populations. 3. Telemedicine and robot assisted technology are well received by older service users. 4. Ethical concerns need to be resolved prior to wider AI use in routine clinical setting. seem to face a number of barriers in contacting communitybased primary health care, such as limited access, lack of standardized information systems and care pathways [3], all necessary to address their complex health care and social care needs. Indeed, older adults have much higher prevalence of nearly all major chronic and long-term conditions. In addition, they are more likely to succumb to adverse health events, such as a falls or infections, and these can lead to dramatic changes in their physical and mental wellbeing even after an apparently minor incident [4]. However, person and familyfocused care, self-management resources, and successful collaborative practice have been all highlighted as facilitators of good health care provision both by older people and their families [3]. All the above places the importance of diagnosis, monitoring of disease risks and their prevention, as well as management and optimizing of geriatric syndromes in the community for both older people living independenly or in 24h care facilities. In particular, identi ication of health issues/ diagnosis, support/treatment needs evaluation, development
The current study explores the problem with the lack of measurement invariance for the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) by addressing two issues: conceptual heterogeneity of narcissism and methodological issues related to the binary character of data. We examine the measurement invariance of the 13-item version of the NPI in three populations in Japan, Poland and the UK. Analyses revealed that leadership/authority and grandiose exhibitionism dimensions of the NPI were cross-culturally invariant, while entitlement/exploitativeness was culturally specific. Therefore, we proposed NPI-9 as indicating scalar invariance, and we examined the pattern of correlations between NPI-9 and other variables across three countries. The results suggest that NPI-9 is valid brief scale measuring general levels of narcissism in cross-cultural studies, while the NPI-13 remains suitable for research within specific countries.
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