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This book is an invaluable, instructional field manual for any professional who needs to obtain and interpret information gathered directly by and from people, without recourse to a technological intermediary, such as online search. In the role of interviewer, interrogator, or evaluator, there are many opportunities to get it wrong. Good information can go bad ... bad information can go good, but for the wrong reasons. Either way, without an understanding of process and context, free-standing information runs the risk of sending one in the wrong direction. As advanced as our information-gathering technology may be, it is still impossible to get inside the head of an interviewee by conducting a Google search; so hit them with the tactics spelled out in this book instead in order to protect yourself from being sent in the wrong direction.

This study explores the relationship between objective measures and perceptions of financial well-being for older Americans. Financial well-being is measured objectively using three financial ratios including the liquidity ratio, the debt-to-asset ratio, and the investment ratio. Individuals' perceptions of their financial well-being are measured by a question in the Health and Retirement Study that asks respondents how satisfied they are with their present financial condition. An ordered probit model is used to examine the relationship between the perceptions of financial well-being and the three financial ratios. The findings in this analysis suggest that there is a positive relationship between the investment ratio and perceptions of financial well-being. There is also a small but statistically significant improvement in the perception of financial well-being with increases in the liquidity ratio. For large categorical differences, the positive relationship also holds for the debt-to-asset ratio.

The ascertained prevalence of Huntington's disease (HD) increased significantly following the provision of diagnostic testing. A systematic review was conducted to estimate the prevalence of HD in the post-diagnostic testing era. 22 studies with original data pertaining to the prevalence of HD (1993-2015) were included and analyzed. A global meta-analysis was not performed due to heterogeneity in study methods and geographical variation. The prevalence of HD is significantly lower in Asian populations compared with western Europe, North America and Australia. The global variation in HD prevalence is partly explained by the average CAG repeat lengths and frequency of different gene haplotypes in the general population. Understanding the prevalence of HD has significant implications for healthcare resource planning.

Purpose This paper aims to provide a living tribute to the leading autoethnographer, Alec Grant. Design/methodology/approach Alec provided Jerome with a list of names of people he might approach to write a tribute on his behalf. Findings The accounts describe the influence that Alec has had both as an educator and as a trusted colleague for the people approached. Research limitations/implications While this is a living tribute, it is about one man and could, therefore, be described as a case study. Some people wonder what can be learned from a single case study. Read on and find out. Practical implications Alec has carved out a path for himself. In many senses, he chose “The Road Less Travelled”. He has never shied away from challenging “The System” and defending the rights of the marginalized and socially excluded. It is not a road for the faint-hearted. Social implications For systems to change, radical thinkers need to show the way. “Change keeps us safe” (Stuart Bell). Originality/value Alec was a well-known and highly respected cognitive behavioural academic practitioner and the author of key textbooks in the field. He then decided to reinvent himself as an autoethnographer. This has brought him into contact with a much more diverse group of people. It has also brought him home to himself.

Nationwide, graduation rates at community colleges are discouragingly low. This randomized experiment provides evidence that graduation rates can be increased dramatically. The City University of New York’s (CUNY) Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) is a comprehensive, integrated, 3-year program that has an estimated 18 percentage point effect on 3-year graduation rates, increases 6-year graduation rates by an estimated 10 percentage points, and helps students graduate more quickly. Graduation effect estimates of this magnitude are exceptional in randomized experiments conducted in higher education, offering hope of what is possible when serving low-income students.

Children comprise the largest proportion of the population in sub-Saharan Africa. Of these, millions are orphaned. Orphanhood increases the likelihood of growing up in poverty, dropping out of school, and becoming infected with HIV. Therefore, programs aimed at securing a healthy developmental trajectory for these orphaned children are desperately needed. We conducted a two-arm cluster-randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of a family-level economic strengthening intervention with regard to school attendance, school grades, and self-esteem in AIDS-orphaned adolescents aged 12–16 years from 10 public rural primary schools in southern Uganda. Children were randomly assigned to receive usual care (counseling, school uniforms, school lunch, notebooks, and textbooks), “bolstered” with mentorship from a near-peer (control condition, n  = 167), or to receive bolstered usual care plus a family-level economic strengthening intervention in the form of a matched Child Savings Account (Suubi-Maka treatment arm, n  = 179). The two groups did not differ at baseline, but 24 months later, children in the Suubi-Maka treatment arm reported significantly better educational outcomes, lower levels of hopelessness, and higher levels of self-concept compared to participants in the control condition. Our study contributes to the ongoing debate on how to address the developmental impacts of the increasing numbers of orphaned and vulnerable children and adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa, especially those affected by HIV/AIDS. Our findings indicate that innovative family-level economic strengthening programs, over and above bolstered usual care that includes psychosocial interventions for young people, may have positive developmental impacts related to education, health, and psychosocial functioning.

Background Drug information training is restricted to pharmacy students due to the lack of opportunities for training and the inadequate number of drug information centers. Drug information simulation requires manpower and is time-consuming to arrange. MyDispense (MD) is widely accepted by numerous pharmacy schools and plays a major role in training students for various courses in the pharmacy curriculum. However, the students’ performances and perceptions of MD in drug information training involving nonjudgmental queries are yet to be established. Objective To compare the student’s success and perceptions of virtual versus in-person simulation in providing drug information. Methods A cross-over study design was used to compare student performance and perception of virtual and in-person simulation. A total of one hundred and forty-nine students consented to participate in the study. They were randomly allocated, with 75 assigned to the MD group and 74 to the in-person simulation group for exercise (1) Then, the students crossed over to in-person simulations and MD for exercise (2) A 5-point Likert scale questionnaire consisting of ten items was developed and validated to assess their perception regarding the learning experience of drug information exercises. Simple logistic regression was used to compare the students’ success rate, and the mean value of students’ responses was compared using non-parametric tests. Results In exercise 1, a significant association of student success with MD was observed with task 2 (Identify the patient’s background; p  = 0.001) and task 3 (Identify background information of the drug information query; p  = 0.002). The students expressed a significantly higher confidence level ( p  = 0.000) when dealing with virtual patients, as reflected in their success rate regarding the identification of the background of the patient and the nature of the drug information question during exercise 1. However, students’ responses to the item related to the confidence level had no significant difference in exercise 2 ( p  = 0.382). Further, in-person and MDs had no significant differences regarding student perception of the remaining tasks in both exercises. Also, the student performances were comparable between virtual and in-person simulation in exercise 2. Conclusion The students’ performances and perceptions were comparable between virtual and in-person simulations at different times. Therefore, MD can be implemented to train the students regarding drug information services and handle nonjudgmental queries at community pharmacies.

Background: The large language model (LLM) has the potential to be applied to clinical practice. However, there has been scarce study on this in the field of gastroenterology. Aim: This study explores the potential clinical utility of two LLMs in the field of gastroenterology: a customized GPT model and a conventional GPT-4o, an advanced LLM capable of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). Method: We established a customized GPT with the BM25 algorithm using Open AI’s GPT-4o model, which allows it to produce responses in the context of specific documents including textbooks of internal medicine (in English) and gastroenterology (in Korean). Also, we prepared a conventional ChatGPT 4o (accessed on 16 October 2024) access. The benchmark (written in Korean) consisted of 15 clinical questions developed by four clinical experts, representing typical questions for medical students. The two LLMs, a gastroenterology fellow, and an expert gastroenterologist were tested to assess their performance. Results: While the customized LLM correctly answered 8 out of 15 questions, the fellow answered 10 correctly. When the standardized Korean medical terms were replaced with English terminology, the LLM’s performance improved, answering two additional knowledge-based questions correctly, matching the fellow’s score. However, judgment-based questions remained a challenge for the model. Even with the implementation of ‘Chain of Thought’ prompt engineering, the customized GPT did not achieve improved reasoning. Conventional GPT-4o achieved the highest score among the AI models (14/15). Although both models performed slightly below the expert gastroenterologist’s level (15/15), they show promising potential for clinical applications (scores comparable with or higher than that of the gastroenterology fellow). Conclusions: LLMs could be utilized to assist with specialized tasks such as patient counseling. However, RAG capabilities by enabling real-time retrieval of external data not included in the training dataset, appear essential for managing complex, specialized content, and clinician oversight will remain crucial to ensure safe and effective use in clinical practice.

Sexual exploitation in religious circles is often underreported, especially in contemporary Nigeria. This includes the misuse of power and abuse of fiduciary relationships, prompting calls for reviewing the existing frameworks that regulate religious activities. There have been several news reports about religious leaders involved in the sexual abuse of their followers in various parts of Nigerian society due to the special trust that the congregation has in them. Hence, the objective of the study is to examine the sexual abuse of fiduciary relationships between religious leaders and their followers in Nigeria. The doctrinal legal research method is adopted. The reasoning for utilising the approach was to establish the credibility of the findings on the impacts of sexual exploitation and the vulnerability of followers in Nigerian religious circles with the legal panacea to the conundrum in our society. The social contract theory and utilitarian theory of law are utilised to model the study. The justification is that the law should be used as a tool of social engineering to increase human happiness and combat sexual exploitation. This involves content analysis; primary and secondary data were sources of reference. In essence, news articles, textbooks, peer-reviewed journals, and internet source materials were utilised to extract information. In conclusion, the study finds that followers who are victims of sexual harassment or abuse are ignorant of the true teachings of God and erroneously put their trust in their leaders. It is recommended, among others, that society desist from glorifying religious leaders and seek the true teachings of God.