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Study Design: Cross-sectional study.Objective: To investigate the equivalence of electronic and paper version of self-report questionnaires for the assessment of disability, pain, fear of movement, depression, and physical activity of patients with chronic low back pain (LBP).Summary Of Background Data: Paper and electronic versions of self-report questionnaires are commonly used for assessment of patients with LBP. However, the equivalence of self-report questionnaires commonly used for assessment of patients with chronic LBP remains unclear.Methods: Seventy-nine individuals with chronic LBP seeking physiotherapy care were recruited. Participants attended the clinic twice with an interval of 1 week and completed the self-reported questionnaires in a random order. The following questionnaires were administered: Roland Morris Disability Questionnaire (RMDQ); 11-point numerical rating scale (NRS); Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia (TSK); Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression (CES-D), and Baecke Habitual Physical Activity Questionnaire (BPAQ). To investigate the equivalence between the two questionnaire versions, intraclass correlation coefficient with 95% confidence interval and Bland-Altman plotting was used.Results: The paper and electronic versions of the RMDQ, TSK, and CES-D showed good reliability and the showed moderate reliability. In contrast, the NRS showed poor reliability between the electronic and paper versions.Conclusion: Our findings support that the electronic version of the RMDQ, TSK, CES-D, and BPAQ can be administered in clinical and research settings for assessment of patients with chronic LBP. Nevertheless, electronic version of the NRS for assessment of pain intensity should not be used interchangeably in clinical practice in patients with chronic LBP.Level Of Evidence: 3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The characteristics of paper surface play a central role in the overall quality of paper produced in modern paper machines. Among the surface features, paper formation, i.e., the level of homogeneity in the distribution of fibres on the surface of paper, is a key quality parameter, being currently monitored off-line, at low sampling rates relatively to the high production speeds achieved with modern paper machines. Therefore, in this paper, we address the problem of assessing the quality of paper formation, on-line, in situ, in an autonomous, efficient, objective and fast way, using features derived from images collected by a specially designed sensor, coupled with proper classification methodologies. The results obtained clearly demonstrate the potential of the proposed assessment approach either for the more complex three-class classification problem as well as for less demanding, but still important in practice, two-class “Accept”/“Reject” or “Pass”/“Fail” problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the effect of mode of administration of the Raven Standard Progressive Matrices test on distribution, accuracy, and meaning of raw scores. A random sample of high school students take counterbalanced paper-and-pencil and computer-based administrations of the test and answer a questionnaire surveying preferences for computer-delivered test administrations. Administration mode effect is studied with repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance, internal consistency reliability estimates, and confirmatory factor analysis approaches. Results show a lack of test mode effect on distribution, accuracy, and meaning of raw scores. Participants indicate their preferences for the computer-delivered administration of the test. The article discusses findings in light of previous studies of the Raven Standard Progressive Matrices test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we derive the asymptotic distributions of AugmentedDickey-Fuller (ADF) tests under very mild conditions. The tests were originally proposed and investigated by Said and Dickey (1984) for testing unit roots in finite-order ARMA models with i.i.d, innovations, and are based on a finite AR process of order increasing with the sample size. Our conditions are significantly weaker than theirs. In particular, we allow for general linear processes with martingale difference innovations, possibly having conditional heteroskedasticities. The linear processes driven by ARCH type innovations are thus permitted. The range for the permissible increasing rates for the AR approximation order is also much wider. For the usual t-type test, we only require that it increase at order o(n[sup ½]) while they assume that it is of order o(n[sub K]) for some k satisfying 0 < k ≤ 1/3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]