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Biomedical subjects

G McCord

Publications and source records attributed to G McCord.

9 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1989

Risk of imbalance in elderly people with impaired hearing or vision.

We evaluated the effect of impaired hearing and vision on balance in a sample of 977 elderly people residing in the community. Of the sample, 21% reported balance problems, 27% vision problems, and 30% hearing problems. The increased relative risk for balance problems was 1.7 for each 10-year age increment. Women were 1.7 times more likely to report balance problems than were men. The relative risk of imbalance with impaired vision decreased with age from 2.8 in those aged 65-69 years to 1.0 in those over 85 years. There was no age-hearing interaction, the relative risk for impaired hearing is 1.6. It appears that impaired vision and hearing are important risk factors for imbalance and perhaps falls and injury.

Accidental Falls↗
PubMed1986

A strategy to increase appointment keeping in a pediatric clinic.

This paper reports the results of two related studies. The first, a prospective study, investigated the relationship between appointment keeping at a pediatric clinic and parents' self-perceived time utilization skills as measured by a subscale of Wessman's Temporal Experience Questionnaire (TEQ). Using a logistic regression analysis to adjust for the effect of telephone reminders, low scorers on the time utilization subscale were twice as likely as high scorers to miss their appointments. The second study was a test of the value of using knowledge of parents' subjective time perspectives as part of a strategy to increase appointment keeping. The goal of this study was to achieve equivalent missed appointment rates between high and low scorers on the TEQ. Parents attending the clinic were asked to complete the questionnaire, and they were then stratified into two groups. High scorers, those who initially had a low probability of missing appointments, received a single reminder. Low scorers, those who initially had a high probability of missing appointments, received two reminders. Two alternate forms of reminders were randomly allocated within each scoring strata. Equivalent missed appointment rates were observed between parents who scored low and those who scored high on the TEQ. The study also investigated two other questions. Information on the importance of the visit had no effect. Postcard reminders were as effective as telephone reminders and were more cost efficient.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Interpretation of moderately elevated MMPI scores for normal subjects.

Two opposing views concerning the interpretation of moderately elevated MMPI scores of normal subjects have appeared in the literature. Whereas some authors have suggested that such scores indicate negative characteristics less severe than those suggested by more extremely elevated scores for psychiatric patients, other authors have suggested that such scores may be indicative of more positive characteristics. The present study attempted to determine the relative validity of these two opposing views. Correlates of MMPI clinical scales were determined for 101 male and 101 female college students who had no clinical T-score greater than 75. Subjects described themselves using the Adjective Check List (ACL), and they were also described by peers using the ACL. Point-biserial correlations between MMPI scores and self and peer endorsements on the ACL were computed. For both self and peer data more significant correlations were found than expected by chance. Most of the correlates involved negative characteristics, offering some support for the interpretive approach based on an attenuation of negative descriptors derived for psychiatric patient samples.

Adult↗
PubMed1983

Developmental and reading ability differences in accessing information from semantic memory.

A categorical judgment task was utilized to investigate the relationships between word recognition skills and reading achievement at several grade levels. In the first experiment skilled and unskilled readers from Grades 2, 4, and 6 made cognitive decisions about pairs of words using either graphemic, lexical, or semantic information. In Experiment 2 skilled, average, and unskilled readers from Grades 1, 3, and 5 made semantic decisions about word or picture pairs. The speed and accuracy of word encoding, lexical access, and semantic memory access processes varied as a function of reading ability. These results suggest that inefficient word recognition skills can contribute to reading deficiencies as can deficiencies in semantic memory organization.

Achievement↗