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PubMed1994

Traits and relationship status: stranger versus peer group inhibition and test intelligence versus peer group competence as early predictors of later self-esteem.

A 9-year longitudinal study of 99 children observed from ages 4 through 12 showed that inhibition toward strangers was strongly related to inhibition with peers, and test intelligence to social competence with peers, only in the first months of preschool socialization. These correlations decreased later on. Stranger inhibition and test intelligence were not predictive of social self-esteem in middle childhood. However, high inhibition and low competence in the peer group after 1 and 2 years of group socialization did predict low social self-esteem up to age 10. Discussion focuses on the processes that might mediate these correlative relations and on the role of relationship-unspecific traits and relationship-specific individual attributes for later social-emotional developmental outcomes.

Child↗

PubMedDate not supplied

The role of peer assessment and peer review in nursing.

With the implementation of clinical governance and professional self-regulation, substantial responsibility is devolved on to clinical nurses. Central to these two concepts is accountability for practice. We are accountable for our professional competence and knowledge to various parties such as the professional statutory body, the employer, society as well as ourselves. Although self-assessment provides each individual with a medium for ascertaining his/her own level of performance and, therefore, identifying his/her learning needs, peer review and peer assessment provide healthy means for obtaining feedback and external perceptions. They also bring with them several other benefits and meet other recommended professional requirements. Peer review is an intrinsic component of clinical governance, and it can be initiated and implemented at one-to-one, departmental or organizational level.

Clinical Competence↗

PubMed2004

Peer-assessed behavioural characteristics and sociometric rejection: differences between pupils who have moderate learning difficulties and their mainstream peers.

BACKGROUND: The outcomes of social inclusion and skills training programmes for pupils with special educational needs have been mixed. Programmes are generally based on research with mainstream samples yet it has been suggested that the social skills important for sociometric acceptance may be different for children who have special educational needs. AIMS: The study aims to compare peer-assessed behavioural characteristics associated with sociometric status for included children who have moderate learning difficulties and their mainstream classmates. SAMPLE: Mainstream classmates (N=867) of all the children ascertained as having Moderate Learning Difficulties (MLD) and included in mainstream middle schools (8-12 years) in one English county. Subgroups of rejected mainstream (n=38) and pupils with MLD (n=32) were further investigated. METHOD: Discriminant function analysis was carried out with peer assessment items as predictors of sociometric status group membership in the mainstream sample and contrasted with previously reported data from pupils with MLD in the same classes. Cluster analysis was used to identify behavioural subtypes within the rejected groups drawn from each sample. For pupils with MLD subtypes were validated using teacher assessments of social behaviour. RESULTS: Systematic differences were identified across different analyses between the peer-assessed behavioural characteristics associated with rejected sociometric status for pupils with MLD and for mainstream pupils. CONCLUSIONS: The appropriateness of generic social skills training programmes for promoting the social inclusion of pupils with MLD should be questioned and consideration given to rejected pupil subtypes.

Child↗

PubMed1988

Consultation among peers in general practice; from no consultation to peer review.

The present study concerned several aspects of peer consultation by general practitioners, investigated in a group of 184 doctors (response rate: 83%) who had their vocational training in the department of general practice of the University of Utrecht and practised for at least three years at the time of the study. Questionnaire responses indicated that consultation during and outside surgery hours and participation in case-discussion groups generally extended over more than two years, occurred frequently, and usually pertained to diverse problems associated with diagnosis and treatment. Participation in study and peer review groups extended usually over a shorter time (1 to 1 1/2 years) and the problems dealt with were predominantly the same as for individual consultation. One-third of the general practitioners consulted colleagues frequently and continued to do so for long periods, dealing systematically with a variety of problems; one-third did so infrequently or unsystematically, and one-third did little or not at all. A relationship was found between the setting of the practice and consulting behaviour: 20% of those who practised alone never consulted peers, whereas those in group practices and health centres were accustomed to do so regularly.

Family Practice↗

PubMed2006

First CytoJournal Peer-Reviewer's Retreat in 2006 - open access, peer-review, and impact factor.

CytoJournal organized its first Peer-Reviewer's Retreat of 2006 during the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology Annual Meeting at Atlanta on Feb 12, 2006. The major topics discussed were open access, peer review, and impact factors. Representative participants volunteered to join the task force to prepare an instructional guide for peer-reviewing cytopathology manuscripts. Concern about the impact factor for CytoJournal was discussed. A feedback to its readers and authors was recommended. Impact factor calculation needs at least three years of journal statistics. It is only possible after two years from the time a journal is first accepted by Thomson-ISI for citation tracking. CytoJournal is still too new for an impact factor to be calculated. However, general progress of CytoJournal suggests an encouraging pattern for high impact factor.

Journal Article↗

PubMed1998

Does masking author identity improve peer review quality? A randomized controlled trial. PEER Investigators.

CONTEXT: All authors may not be equal in the eyes of reviewers. Specifically, well-known authors may receive less objective (poorer quality) reviews. One study at a single journal found a small improvement in review quality when reviewers were masked to author identity. OBJECTIVES: To determine whether masking reviewers to author identity is generally associated with higher quality of review at biomedical journals, and to determine the success of routine masking techniques. DESIGN AND SETTING: A randomized controlled trial performed on external reviews of manuscripts submitted to Annals of Emergency Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA, Obstetrics & Gynecology, and Ophthalmology. INTERVENTIONS: Two peers reviewed each manuscript. In one study arm, both peer reviewers received the manuscript according to usual masking practice. In the other arm, one reviewer was randomized to receive a manuscript with author identity masked, and the other reviewer received an unmasked manuscript. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Review quality on a 5-point Likert scale as judged by manuscript author and editor. A difference of 0.5 or greater was considered important. RESULTS: A total of 118 manuscripts were randomized, 26 to usual practice and 92 to intervention. In the intervention arm, editor quality assessment was complete for 77 (84%) of 92 manuscripts. Author quality assessment was complete on 40 (54%) of 74 manuscripts. Authors and editors perceived no significant difference in quality between masked (mean difference, 0.1; 95% confidence interval [CI], -0.2 to 0.4) and unmasked (mean difference, -0.1; 95% CI, -0.5 to 0.4) reviews. We also found no difference in the degree to which the review influenced the editorial decision (mean difference, -0.1; 95% CI,-0.3 to 0.3). Masking was often unsuccessful (overall, 68% successfully masked; 95% CI, 58%-77%), although 1 journal had significantly better masking success than others (90% successfully masked; 95% CI, 73%-98%). Manuscripts by generally known authors were less likely to be successfully masked (odds ratio, 0.3; 95% CI, 0.1-0.8). When analysis was restricted to manuscripts that were successfully masked, review quality as assessed by editors and authors still did not differ. CONCLUSIONS: Masking reviewers to author identity as commonly practiced does not improve quality of reviews. Since manuscripts of well-known authors are more difficult to mask, and those manuscripts may be more likely to benefit from masking, the inability to mask reviewers to the identity of well-known authors may have contributed to the lack of effect.

Authorship↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Peer-to-peer mentoring: teaching collegiality.

Developing undergraduate educational initiatives that employ mentoring and encourage collegiality will assist novice nurses in seeking these relationships when they enter practice. The author describes a peer-to-peer mentoring program that used electronic mentoring to link junior and senior nursing students. Structure, process, and outcome elements of the program are discussed.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗

PubMed1990

Effects of collateral peer supportive behaviors within the classwide peer tutoring program.

A classwide peer tutoring procedure was implemented in an urban elementary school classroom to improve students' spelling performance. Three students combined untrained or collateral tutoring behaviors with the core behaviors initially taught. To explore the function of these natural and spontaneous behaviors, a multielement single-subject experiment with replications was conducted. Results indicated that the additional tutoring behaviors increased (a) the academic response frequencies of 3 tutees and (b) the weekly spelling achievement of 1 target tutee. The remaining class members were successfully taught and continued to use these behaviors over the final 3 weeks of the school year. These findings are discussed with regard to academic instruction, natural communities of peer reinforcement, and the social validation of intervention procedures.

Achievement↗

PubMed1999

An expansion of the peer-tutoring paradigm: cross-age peer tutoring of social skills among socially rejected boys.

We examined the effects of a cross-age peer-tutoring program on the social skills of 2 sixth-grade and 2 kindergarten socially rejected and isolated boys. Peer tutoring consisted of the older boys conducting social skills training with their younger tutees. The frequency of positive social interactions increased for all 4 boys, with maintenance of treatment gains following a 5-week interval.

Child↗

PubMed1998

Harnessing peer networks as an instrument for AIDS prevention: results from a peer-driven intervention.

OBJECTIVE: Since 1985, community outreach efforts to combat acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) among injecting drug users (IDUs) in the United States have overwhelmingly depended on a provider-client model that relies on staffs of professional outreach workers. We report on a comparison of this traditional outreach model with an innovative social network model, termed "a peer-driven intervention" (PDI). The latter provides IDUs with guidance and structured incentives that permit them to play a much more active role in the outreach process, thereby harnessing peer pressure on behalf of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention efforts. METHODS: We compare the performance of a traditional outreach intervention (TOI) and a PDI that were implemented in medium-sized towns in eastern and central Connecticut. Comparisons are based on the number and representativeness of IDUs recruited at each site, the effectiveness of HIV prevention education, compliance rates with AIDS risk reduction recommendations, and relative cost. The analyses are based on 522 initial interviews and 190 six-month follow-up interviews conducted during the first two years of each intervention's operation. RESULTS: Both interventions produced significant reductions in HIV risk behaviors, as measured using self-reports. The PDI outperformed the traditional intervention with respect to the number of IDUs recruited, the ethnic and geographic representativeness of the recruits, and the effectiveness of HIV prevention education. In addition, the costs of recruiting IDUs into the intervention and educating them about HIV in the community was only one-thirtieth as much in the PDI as in the traditional intervention. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that given guidance and nominal incentives, IDUs can play a more extensive role in community outreach efforts than the traditional model allows. The findings also suggest that both interventions reduce HIV-associated risk behaviors, but the PDI reaches a larger and more diverse set of IDUs, and does so at much less expense.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Enabling collaborative medical diagnosis over the Internet via peer-to-peer distribution of electronic health records.

Recent developments in networking and computing technologies and the expansion of the electronic health record system have enabled the possibility of online collaboration between geographically distributed medical personnel. In this context, the paper presents a Web-based application, which implements a collaborative working environment for physicians by enabling the peer-to-peer exchange of electronic health records. The paper treats technological issues such as Video, Audio and Message Communication, Workspace Management, Distributed Medical Data Management and exchange, while it emphasizes on the Security issues arisen, due to the sensitive and private nature of the medical information. In the paper, we present initial results from the system in practice and measurements regarding transmission times and bandwidth requirements. A wavelet based image compression scheme is also introduced for reducing network delays. A number of physicians were asked to use the platform for testing purposes and for measuring user acceptance. The system was considered by them to be very useful, as they found that the platform simulated very well the personal contact between them and their colleagues during medical meetings.

Computer Communication Networks↗

PubMed2004

Association rule mining in peer-to-peer systems.

We extend the problem of association rule mining--a key data mining problem--to systems in which the database is partitioned among a very large number of computers that are dispersed over a wide area. Such computing systems include grid computing platforms, federated database systems, and peer-to-peer computing environments. The scale of these systems poses several difficulties, such as the impracticality of global communications and global synchronization, dynamic topology changes of the network, on-the-fly data updates, the need to share resources with other applications, and the frequent failure and recovery of resources. We present an algorithm by which every node in the system can reach the exact solution, as if it were given the combined database. The algorithm is entirely asynchronous, imposes very little communication overhead, transparently tolerates network topology changes and node failures, and quickly adjusts to changes in the data as they occur. Simulation of up to 10,000 nodes show that the algorithm is local: all rules, except for those whose confidence is about equal to the confidence threshold, are discovered using information gathered from a very small vicinity, whose size is independent of the size of the system.

Algorithms↗

PubMed2006

Self-organizing and adaptive peer-to-peer network.

In this paper, an algorithm that forms a dynamic and self-organizing network is demonstrated. The hypothesis of this work is that in order to achieve a resilient and adaptive peer-to-peer (P2P) network, each network node must proactively maintain a minimum number of edges. Specifically, low-level communication protocols are not sufficient by themselves to achieve high-service availability, especially in the case of ad hoc or dynamic networks with a high degree of node addition and deletion. The concept has been evaluated within a P2P agent application in which each agent has a goal to maintain a preferred number of connections to a number of service providing agents. Using this algorithm, the agents update a weight value associated with each connection, based on the perceived utility of the connection to the corresponding agent. This utility function can be a combination of several node or edge parameters, such as degree k of the target node, or frequency of the message response from the node. This weight is updated using a set of Hebbian-style learning rules, such that the network as a whole exhibits adaptive self-organizing behavior. The principal result is the finding that by limiting the connection neighborhood within the overlay topology, the resulting P2P network can be made highly resilient to targeted attacks on high-degree nodes, while maintaining search efficiency.

Journal Article↗

PubMed1984

Medicare and Medicaid programs; utilization and quality control peer review organization (PRO); assumption of responsibilities and Medicare review functions and coordination of Medicaid with peer review organization--HCFA. Proposed rule.

This proposal would implement portions of the Peer Review Improvement Act of 1982 (Title I, Subtitle C of the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 (TEFRA), Pub. L. 97-248) and the Social Security Act Amendments of 1983 (Pub. L 98-21) by establishing the review functions to be performed by a Utilization and Quality Control Peer Review Organization (PRO). The 1983 amendments to the Social Security Act amended TEFRA by requiring that effective October 1, 1983, hospitals receiving payment under the Medicare prospective payment system (PPS) are required to maintain an agreement with a PRO if there is one for the area. Effective October 1, 1984, hospitals are required to have an agreement with a PRO in order to receive Medicare payments. These proposed regulations outline the relationships among PROs, Medicare fiscal intermediaries and carriers, providers, practitioners, and beneficiaries upon the PRO's assumption of conduct of review for those hospitals under PPS and for all other facilities. The proposal would also describe the relationship between PROs and State Medicaid agencies that contract with PROs to perform review.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, U.S.↗

PubMed2004

Design of a patient-centered, multi-institutional healthcare information network using peer-to-peer communication in a highly distributed architecture.

OBJECTIVE: to design a community healthcare information network for all 450,000 citizen in the State of Geneva, Switzerland, connecting public and private healthcare professionals. Requirements include the decentralized storage of information at the source of its production, the creation of a virtual patient record at the time of the consultation, the control by the patient of the access rights to the information, and the interoperability with other similar networks at the national and european level. METHODS: a participative approach and real-world pilot projects are used to design, test and validate key components of the network, including its technical architecture and the strategy for the management of access rights by the patients. RESULTS: a distributed architecture using peer-to-peer communication of information mediators can implement the various requirements while limiting to an absolute minimum the amount of centralized information. Access control can be managed by the patient with the help of a medical information mediator, the physician of trust.

Community Networks↗

PubMed2006

Peering at peer review revealed high degree of chance associated with funding of grant applications.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: There is a persistent degree of uncertainty and dissatisfaction with the peer review process underlining the need to validate the current grant awarding procedures. This study compared the CLassic Structured Scientific In-depth two reviewer critique (CLASSIC) with an all panel members' independent ranking method (RANKING). Eleven reviewers, reviewed 32 applications for a pilot project competition at a major university medical center. RESULTS: The degree of agreement between the two methods was poor (kappa = 0.36). The top rated project in each stream would have failed the funding cutoff with a frequency of 9 and 35%, depending on which pair of reviewers had been selected. Four of the top 10 projects identified by RANKING had a greater than 50% of not being funded by the CLASSIC ranking. Ten reviewers provided optimal consistency for the RANKING method. CONCLUSIONS: This study found that there is a considerable amount of chance associated with funding decisions under the traditional method of assigning the grant to two main reviewers. We recommend using the all reviewer ranking procedure to arrive at decisions about grant applications as this removes the impact of extreme reviews.

Canada↗

PubMed1997

How reliable is peer review? An examination of operating grant proposals simultaneously submitted to two similar peer review systems.

To determine level of agreement and correlation between two similar but separate peer review systems, proposals simultaneously submitted during the same funding year to two agencies using the same scoring system were identified and analyzed (n = 248). There was a direct linear relationship between the scores of the two agencies (r = 0.592, p < 0.001). Raw agreement within whole-digit ranges was moderate (53%) but a Cohen's kappa indicated that agreement beyond chance was only fair (kappa = 0.29, 95% CI = 0.198, 0.382). When proposals were arbitrarily categorized as being "clearly fundable" (on a 0-5 scale, score > or = 3.0) or "not clearly fundable" (score < 3.0), raw agreement was 73% and agreement beyond chance was moderate (kappa = 0.444, 95% CI = 0.382, 0.552). In cases where there was inter-agency disagreement on the fundability of the project, the difference in scores was greater than in those in which there was agreement. In a subsample of 128 pairs, variables describing the application and the applicant (i.e., principal investigator) were coded, but none explained inter-agency agreement on the "fundability" of proposals.

Humans↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Emotion expression processes in children's peer interaction: the role of peer rejection, aggression, and gender.

The goal of the current study was to investigate sociometric status, aggression, and gender differences in children's expression of anger, happiness, and sadness. Participants were 111 second-grade African American boys and girls, half rejected and half average sociometric status, and half aggressive and half nonaggressive as assessed by their peers. Children interacted with a confederate in two standardized competitive game paradigms. Participants' expressions of anger, happiness, and sadness were observationally coded across facial, verbal intonation, and nonverbal modalities. Rejected children expressed more facial and verbal anger than average-status children. Rejected children also expressed more nonverbal happiness than average children, but only during turns of the game that were favorable to the participant. Finally, boys expressed more facial, verbal, and nonverbal anger than girls.

Black or African American↗