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A study of the validity of the task inventory method of job analysis.

To enhance the efficient utilization of health providers, medical care researchers are increasingly concerned with the measurement of task performance. One job analysis methodology that is widely used is the task inventory technique, characterized by retrospective self-reporting. The purpose of this study was to validate the task inventory method by using the observational technique. Two data collection instruments were developed, a Task Inventory and an Observer Check List; both contained the same set of task statements. Trained observers shadowed 13 primary care physicians in their offices for one week recording the frequency and duration of task performance on the Observer Check Lists. At the end of the week, the 13 physicians completed a Task Inventory indicating how often they had performed each task in their offices and how long it normally took. The observers' and physicians' respective sets of data were analyzed to determine the degree of agreement. The results indicate that the agreement is not sufficient between the task data obtained by the two different methods to conclude that one is substitutable for the other. The validity of the Task Inventory method is therefore not supported by the results.

Evaluation Studies as Topic

Achievement motivation, performance and cardiovascular activity.

Cardiovascular measures were obtained from 40 subjects differing in level of achievement motivation during the performance of a vigilance task. Analysis of interbeat interval and heart rate variability indicated that cardiovascular measures obtained from low achievers did not differ significantly from pre-test measures during the performance of the task, while the measures from high achievers did. In addition, the performance of high achievers was significantly better than the performance of low achievers. It is suggested that these findings indicate that high achievers are marked by the effort they expend in performance and that such effort is reflected in the cardiovascular activity of such subjects.

Achievement

Movement training: when trainer initiated reinforcement and self-monitoring are not enough.

Trainer initiated reinforcement and client self-monitoring have been used successfully to increase the vocational productivity of individuals with moderate and severe mental retardation. Some previous research, however, has reported cases in which reinforcement strategies had minimal influence on productivity. The current study introduced reinforcement and self-monitoring sequentially in an attempt to improve the productivity levels of five clients with moderate and severe mental retardation in an adult development center. In a subsequent alternating treatments phase, the self-monitoring was compared to self-monitoring with movement training--prompting through a task analysis of the most efficient movements to perform a task. In a final phase, the most effective treatment of the alternating treatments for each subject was replicated across sessions. Four of the five subjects responded minimally to trainer initiated reinforcement or self-monitoring but showed improvement with movement training. This increase was replicated across sessions for three of these four subjects. A fifth subject increased productivity substantially with reinforcement, maintained the increase with self-monitoring, and replicated the increase across sessions with self-monitoring alone. This fifth subject did not increase productivity with movement training.

Adult

Wetsuits, body density and swimming performance.

To determine the influence of body composition upon swimming performance with and without wetsuits, 14 competitive female swimmers (mean (s.d.) age, 19.9 (0.9) years) were measured for body density while wearing both wetsuits and normal swimsuits. Subjects swam 400 and 1500 m trials with and without wetsuits, randomly, over a 12-day period. Six subjects participated in an additional trial while wearing neoprene leg-bands fitted over the wetsuit. Mean (s.d.) subject density without and with wetsuits was 1.048 (.009) and 1.021 (.007) g/ml respectively. Wetsuits reduced (P less than 0.05) swim times for the 400 (-4.96%) and 1500 m swim (-3.23%) compared with swimsuit trials. The neoprene bands increased (P less than 0.05) swim times relative to swimsuit and wetsuit trials. With wetsuits, swim times were inversely (P less than 0.05) related to density for the 400 (r = -0.46) and 1500 m swim (r = -0.54) suggesting that wetsuits increase performance by increasing buoyancy and that lean subjects benefit more from wearing wetsuits than do fatter subjects.

Adult

Relationship between upper body anaerobic power and freestyle swimming performance.

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of upper body anaerobic power, as measured by the Wingate Anaerobic Arm Test (WAAT), in 50-m sprint swim performance. Thirty competitive age-group swimmers (14 males and 16 females) participated in this investigation. Subjects had been training daily for 5 months prior to the study, swimming an average of 6,000 m.d-1, 6 d.wk-1. Swimmers performed a WAAT and a 50-m time-trial. Peak power (PP), mean power (MP) and fatigue index (FI) were determined for the WAAT. Subjects also reported their current competition performances for all distances up to 400 m. Significant relationships were obtained between swim speed over 50 m (S50) and PP (r = 0.82, p less than 0.001), S50 and MP (r = 0.83, p less than 0.001), and S50 and FI (r = 0.41, p less than 0.05). PP and MP showed significant but generally decreasing correlations with swim speed as distance increased. Substantial relationships (r = 0.74-0.96, p less than 0.001) were found between S50 and swim speeds over distances up to and including 400 m. This study shows a strong relationship exists between upper body anaerobic power, as measured by the WAAT, and performance in both sprint and longer distance (400 m) swim events. The WAAT may serve as a useful tool for coaches to objectively evaluate and monitor the upper body anaerobic power of competitive swimmers.

Acceleration

Development of psychomotor objectives for classroom of clinical education in physical therapy.

A systematic method for developing and evaluating psychomotor objectives for students in clinical and laboratory education was presented. In preparing objectives for motor learning, the instructor must perform a task analysis of each skill to be taught. The analysis involves 1) identifying components of the movement, 2) salient features of facilitating stimuli, such as placement of grips, intensity and speed of stimulation, and 3) timing of commands or resistance. The senses, such as vision or kinesthesia, through which the student is to perceive the selected features must be chosen. After determining the level of skill to be attained, teaching methods are easily fit to the objectives. A simple checklist aids evaluation of student competency and provides immediate feedback on performance level.

Humans

Marijuana and driving in real-life situations.

It is evident that the smoking of marijuana by human subjects does have a detrimental effect on their driving skills and performance in a restricted driving area, and that this effect is even greater under normal conditions of driving on city streets. The effect of marijuana on driving is not uniform for all subjects, however, but is in fact bidirectional; whether or not a significant decline occurs in driving ability is dependent both on the subject's capacity to compensate and on the dose of marijuana. For those subjects who improved their performance, the explanation may lie in overcompensation and possibly the sedative effect of the drug. Whereas the street portion of this study approximated normal driving conditions, it should be emphasized that the context of the driving experience een on city streets was experimental. the design of this study maximal safeguards in terms of a dual control vehicle and a driver observr; in addition, the subjects were proffessionally screened and, with rare exception, they were emotionally stable. Given the experimental setting and set, the safeguards, and the nature of the study sample, idiosyncratic behaviour that might occure under normal driving condition would be less likely to occur in a study such as this. Other identified factors might lead to more stringent conclussions regarding the effects of marijuana on driving.The first is night driving, which may be more stressful. But an even more important unanswered question is the cumulative effect of alcohol and marijuana on driving (64 percent of the study sample reported alcohol in combination with marihjuana before driving). Third, the doses of marijuana used in this study were within the range of social marijuana usage(1); more heroic doses might be taken before driving. Fourth, the effect of marijuana on reactions and decision during high speed is still another unknown. What are the recommendations that emarge from this study? Driving under the influence of marijuana should be avoided as much as should driving under the influence of alcohol. More investigation is urgently required-and high priority should be given to studies that approximate normal conditions of driving and in which alcohol and marijuana are administered to the same subjects.

Adult

Gender verification in sport: the need for change?

Most of an estimated one in 504 sportswomen fail the gender verification test unjustly. Until clinical examination becomes acceptable, a new code of practice is proposed which avoids unfair disqualification.

Chromosome Aberrations

SAM Complex Coordinator and Multidimensional Pursuit Test: annotated bibliographies.

A brief description of the SAM Complex Coordinator (Mashburn Apparatus) and the SAM Multidimensional Pursuit Test (MDP or MPT) and annotated bibliographies including 144 and 51 citations respectively are presented. All references are annotated as to subject matter within six categories; Factor Analytic-Task Taxonomy, Aircrew Selection-Classification, Learning Phenomena, Stress Effects, History and Development, General Reviews.

Aerospace Medicine

The ophthalmologist's office: planning and practice. Staffing.

By seeking top-flight office personnel and then offering attractive salaries and fringe benefits, systematically and selectively screening available applicants, and properly training and indoctrinating them in office policies, task analysis, and performance, the young ophthalmologist will assemble the most useful and compatible office staff, thereby making his or her professional life most productive and pleasant.

Allied Health Personnel

[The content of the nursing consultation at a health center].

AIMS: To describe the care process in the Nursing Station. To analyse the length of a consultation and factors which affect the length. DESIGN: Crossover study. Analysis of the length of the Consultation, using a multiple lineal regression model. SITE. Urban Health Centre. PATIENTS AND OTHERS TAKING PART: All the calls and consultations, both in the patient's home and in the Health Centre, undertaken by six nurses over a period of two weeks. MAIN MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS: There were 879 consultations. 65.41% of them took place in the treatment room. Ten health problems represented 72% of the work-load. Health education took un the greatest proportion of time. The average time of a consultation was of 10.40 +/- 0.3 minutes. The length of the consultation depended on the professional involved, on the place where it took place, on the number of problems which the patient had and on the nature of the main problem: multiple correlation coefficient = 0.74; F = 67.52 (p < 0.00000001). CONCLUSIONS: The nurse faces a very limited number of health problems. Most of her activities are preventive or to do with prevention. The length of the Consultation in greatly conditioned by the amount of morbidity.

Community Health Centers

Laterality and motor control.

Lateralization in motor control, exemplified by handedness, is a publically observable lateral asymmetry. The understanding of causation of lateral asymmetry in movement is poor for two major reasons. First, structural limitations underlying lateral bias cannot be compelling in the sense that laterality is completely specified. Second, interacting sources of lateral bias are probably represented at several levels of the central nervous system, with some sources being many steps removed from the executing motor structures. Both factors permit flexibility in terms of which side does what. I suggest two approaches to improve understanding of mechanism. First, use of bimanual tasks which reduce flexibility in lateral expression and therefore provide more information than unimanual tasks. Second, analysis of task performances in terms of what levels of lateral specialization are likely to be involved. Such analyses will be especially useful in the understanding of hand use in left-handers who perform different skilled tasks with different hands.

Female

Job analysis in the clinical laboratory.

Questionnaires were sent to 111 hospitals located within a 100-mile radius of Morgantown, West Virginia. In the 55 responding hospitals, 1,532 laboratory workers were employed; of this total, 399 were MT(ASCP), 55 were MLT(ASCP), 262 were CLA(ASCP), and 816 were not certified by the Board of Registry of the American Society of Clinical Pathologists (ASCP). Participating hospital laboratory directors were asked to distribute task inventories to medical technologists and to individuals not certified as MT(ASCP). One hundred sixty-five task inventories were completed and returned for analysis. Using the chi square test, comparison was made between the tasks performed by ASCP-certified medical technologists and ASCP-certified laboratory assistants. Both performed essentially the same tasks in the clinical laboratories included in this study. In the final analysis, teaching and supervision were performed more frequently by MTs than by CLAs.

Certification

An analysis of the relationship between cardiac deceleration and correct performance under conditions of constant task difficulty.

Previous analyses of the relationship between cardiac deceleration and correct performance suffered from a confounding of task difficulty with performance accuracy. The present analysis indicates that the relationship between these variables still holds and is, in fact, more general under conditions which control difficulty of the task at a constant level.

Achievement

Serial-position effects in paragraph recall following mild closed-head injury.

Serial-position effects were examined on a contextual memory task (paragraph recall) for patients with minor to mild closed-head injury and normal controls. Analysis indicated that at immediate recall, both normals and closed-head-injury patients have primacy and recency effects. With regard to total recall, however, the closed-head-injury patients remembered significantly fewer items than normal controls. The poorer performance of the minor to mild closed-head-injury group was not related to the duration from injury to neuropsychological evaluation and appears to be a lasting feature of memory performance following such injury. The pattern of serial-position effects was different between the groups. Normal controls showed slight recency and primacy effects and relatively better recall for the middle portions of the story, while patients with minor to mild closed-head injuries have prominent recency and primacy effects. Potential explanations for this pattern of performance are discussed.

Adult