Issues in evaluating vocational rehabilitation programs.

Addresses issues in the evaluation of vocational rehabilitation (VR) programs for the disabled and discusses examples of 10 common evaluation problems typically encountered in assessing VR services. The usefulness of conducting an initial evaluability assessment is emphasized to identify and deal with potential obstacles to evaluation and to prevent a premature evaluation effort. It is concluded that, in spite of the complexity of carrying out evaluation research, the improvement of VR and other rehabilitation services depends on this program-monitoring and budget-justifying activity. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Impact of Being a Support Provider to a Person Living in the Community With a Spinal Cord Injury.

Objective: To examine the personal impact of being a support provider (SP) to a community-dwelling person with a spinal cord injury (SCI). Study Design: Quantitative phase (interview-completed questionnaire; n=100), followed by qualitative phase (8 focus groups; n=46). Participants: Convenience sample; self-selected subsample in focus groups. Main Outcome Measures: Productivity status, satisfaction with community integration, quality of life. Results: Supporting a person with SCI brings significant life change. Greater support provision was related to lower productivity and community integration of the SPs. They felt underserved and unprepared emotionally and cognitively for their new, unanticipated role. Conclusions: More attention, understanding, and service directed to SPs are required to reduce trial-and-error learning and emotional and physical burden. Enhanced injury resource materials, peer networks, and knowledge-building opportunities may ameliorate SP difficulties. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Analytical calculation of volumes-of-intersection for iterative, fully 3-D PET reconstruction

Use of iterative algorithms to reconstruct three-dimensional (3-D) positron emission tomography (PET) data requires the computation of the system probability matrix. The pure geometrical contribution can easily be approximated by the length-of-intersection (LOI) between lines-of-response (LOR) and individual voxels. However, more accurate geometrical projectors are desirable. Therefore, we have developed a fast method for the analytical calculation of the 3-D shape and volume of volumes-of-intersection (VOI). This method provides an alternative robust projector with a uniformly continuous sampling of the image space. The enhanced calculation effort is facilitated by using several speedup techniques. Exploiting intrinsic symmetry relations and the sparseness of the system matrix allows to create an efficiently compressed matrix which can be precomputed and completely stored in memory. In addition, a new voxel addressing scheme has been implemented. This scheme avoids time-consuming symmetry transformations of voxel addresses by using an octant-wise symmetrically ordered field of voxels. The above methods have been applied for a fully 3-D, iterative reconstruction of 3-D sinograms recorded with a Siemens/CTI ECAT HR+ PET scanner. A comparison of the performance of the reconstruction using LOI weighting and VOI weighting is presented.     

The use of mobile telephones as adjuncts to cognitive behavioral psychotherapy.

Despite the rapid proliferation of technological adjuncts in cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), much of this development appears to have occurred on an ad hoc basis and in many cases has resulted in applications that are beyond the resources of most practicing clinicians. The authors delineate the specific areas in which CBT can be augmented through use of technology and outline the characteristics of an ideal therapy augmentor. Mobile telephones are identified as a low-cost and accessible device whose use has been largely untapped to date. The existing literature on use of the mobile phone is reviewed, and potential areas for its application in CBT are examined. The authors conclude with clinical guidelines for its use and the recommendation that use of mobile phones in CBT is a promising avenue for both clinical practice and research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Simplified energy analysis methodology for commercial buildings

Commercial building energy analyses may be used for new building design, energy end use forecasting and energy audit calculations. Many building simulation programs, such as DOE 2.1A or BLAST, are quite complex and must be run by specialists on main frame computers. A simplified method of commercial building energy analysis has been developed that utilizes a database of previous DOE 2.1A simulations to predict the outcome of other simulations. We have applied this methodology to an office building in one climate region and have found that it predicts heating, cooling, and total energy use very accurately. The main advantage of this methodology is that less specialized skill is required and only a microcomputer is needed to perform the analyses. Therefore, energy analyses can be done cheaply and quickly.     

Independent living long-term outcome variables in spinal cord injury: a replication of DeJong

Most independent living (IL) literature focused on describing rather than measuring or evaluating the newly developing IL phenomenon in the rehabilitation field. Gerben DeJong, however, recognized the need to quantify important IL components for research purposes. In the late 1970s he devised a ranking instrument to assess Living Arrangement and Productivity Status of adults with spinal cord injury. As there were few other IL researchers at the time, DeJong's instrument received little attention. Currently, however, IL research is becoming more prominent. The present study is a replication of DeJong's early work. It supports the current relevance of DeJong's conceptual framework, but suggests changes to the specific classification schemes for quantifying long-term IL outcomes of Living Arrangement and Productivity Status for individuals with spinal cord injury.