scholarly journals Quali-Quantitative Analysis (QQA): Why It Could Open New Frontiers for Holistic Health Practice

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 321-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Bell
2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-63
Author(s):  
Wai Fun. WONG ◽  
Andrew Leung. LUK

Background: From adolescents transitioning into professional healthcare team members, nursing students need to face different kinds of challenges during their journey of nursing study. Are nursing students ready and prepared to take care of themselves before taking care of others? Aim: Few studies were found on the holistic health of nurses in Macao. This study aims to explore the health status of a group of first-year undergraduate nursing students and to investigate whether a holistic health practice program can enhance their holistic health, self-esteem, and self-efficacy after they participate in the program. Methods: A randomized control study was used. Students in both the experimental and control groups filled in an online pre-test questionnaire, which consisted of some demographic information and the following measurement tools including, the Health Promotion Lifestyle Profile-II (HPLP-II), the Self-Esteem Scale (ESTEEM), and the General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES). The experimental participants had to undergo an additional 6-sessions program on holistic health practice. After the intervention, all participants in both groups were invited to complete an online post-test questionnaire, which was the same as the one used in pre-study. Results: Results showed that participants’ physical activity was the lowest score in 6 domains, followed by their health responsibility. On the other hand, their spiritual growth scored the highest. The study found that participants who had attended the holistic health practice program had significantly enhanced their holistic health, self-esteem, and self-efficacy. Conclusion: This study provided some ground data of the holistic health status of nursing students in Macao. It also demonstrated that the Holistic Health Practice Program is effective in promoting holistic health, self-esteem, and self-efficacy among junior nursing students.


2006 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 2285-2295
Author(s):  
Erica Bell

Holistic health practice is often described as being about understanding the larger contexts of patients, their health services, and their communities. Yet do traditional quantitative and qualitative health research methods produce the best possible evidence for the holistic practices of doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals? This paper argues ““no”, and examines the potential of a cutting-edge, social science research method — Quali-Quantitative Research (QQA) — for providing better evidence for holistic practice, particularly in small-N populations, such as rural and remote communities. It does so with reference to the international literature on holistic medicine, as well as three holistic health projects conducted in Tasmania: about prevention of falls in older people, adolescent substance abuse, and interventions for children aged 0–5 exposed to domestic violence. The findings suggest that much health research fails to capture rigorously the contextual complexity of holistic health challenges: the multiple different needs of individual patients, and the interprofessional approaches needed to deliver multidisciplinary and multiservice health interventions tailored to meet those needs in particular community contexts. QQA offers a “configurational”, case-based, diversity-oriented approach to analysing data that combines qualitative and quantitative techniques to overcome the limitations of both research traditions. The author concludes that QQA could open new frontiers for holistic health by helping doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals answer a fundamental question presented by complex health challenges: “Given this set of whole-of-patient needs, what elements of which interventions in what services would work best in this particular community?””


Author(s):  
J.P. Fallon ◽  
P.J. Gregory ◽  
C.J. Taylor

Quantitative image analysis systems have been used for several years in research and quality control applications in various fields including metallurgy and medicine. The technique has been applied as an extension of subjective microscopy to problems requiring quantitative results and which are amenable to automatic methods of interpretation.Feature extraction. In the most general sense, a feature can be defined as a portion of the image which differs in some consistent way from the background. A feature may be characterized by the density difference between itself and the background, by an edge gradient, or by the spatial frequency content (texture) within its boundaries. The task of feature extraction includes recognition of features and encoding of the associated information for quantitative analysis.Quantitative Analysis. Quantitative analysis is the determination of one or more physical measurements of each feature. These measurements may be straightforward ones such as area, length, or perimeter, or more complex stereological measurements such as convex perimeter or Feret's diameter.


Author(s):  
V. V. Damiano ◽  
R. P. Daniele ◽  
H. T. Tucker ◽  
J. H. Dauber

An important example of intracellular particles is encountered in silicosis where alveolar macrophages ingest inspired silica particles. The quantitation of the silica uptake by these cells may be a potentially useful method for monitoring silica exposure. Accurate quantitative analysis of ingested silica by phagocytic cells is difficult because the particles are frequently small, irregularly shaped and cannot be visualized within the cells. Semiquantitative methods which make use of particles of known size, shape and composition as calibration standards may be the most direct and simplest approach to undertake. The present paper describes an empirical method in which glass microspheres were used as a model to show how the ratio of the silicon Kα peak X-ray intensity from the microspheres to that of a bulk sample of the same composition correlated to the mass of the microsphere contained within the cell. Irregular shaped silica particles were also analyzed and a calibration curve was generated from these data.


Author(s):  
H.J. Dudek

The chemical inhomogenities in modern materials such as fibers, phases and inclusions, often have diameters in the region of one micrometer. Using electron microbeam analysis for the determination of the element concentrations one has to know the smallest possible diameter of such regions for a given accuracy of the quantitative analysis.In th is paper the correction procedure for the quantitative electron microbeam analysis is extended to a spacial problem to determine the smallest possible measurements of a cylindrical particle P of high D (depth resolution) and diameter L (lateral resolution) embeded in a matrix M and which has to be analysed quantitative with the accuracy q. The mathematical accounts lead to the following form of the characteristic x-ray intens ity of the element i of a particle P embeded in the matrix M in relation to the intensity of a standard S


Author(s):  
John A. Hunt

Spectrum-imaging is a useful technique for comparing different processing methods on very large data sets which are identical for each method. This paper is concerned with comparing methods of electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) quantitative analysis on the Al-Li system. The spectrum-image analyzed here was obtained from an Al-10at%Li foil aged to produce δ' precipitates that can span the foil thickness. Two 1024 channel EELS spectra offset in energy by 1 eV were recorded and stored at each pixel in the 80x80 spectrum-image (25 Mbytes). An energy range of 39-89eV (20 channels/eV) are represented. During processing the spectra are either subtracted to create an artifact corrected difference spectrum, or the energy offset is numerically removed and the spectra are added to create a normal spectrum. The spectrum-images are processed into 2D floating-point images using methods and software described in [1].


Author(s):  
Delbert E. Philpott ◽  
David Leaffer

There are certain advantages for electron probe analysis if the sample can be tilted directly towards the detector. The count rate is higher, it optimizes the geometry since only one angle need be taken into account for quantitative analysis and the signal to background ratio is improved. The need for less tilt angle may be an advantage because the grid bars are not moved quite as close to each other, leaving a little more open area for observation. Our present detector (EDAX) and microscope (Philips 300) combination precludes moving the detector behind the microscope where it would point directly at the grid. Therefore, the angle of the specimen was changed in order to optimize the geometry between the specimen and the detector.


Author(s):  
Conly L. Rieder

The behavior of many cellular components, and their dynamic interactions, can be characterized in the living cell with considerable spatial and temporal resolution by video-enhanced light microscopy (video-LM). Indeed, under the appropriate conditions video-LM can be used to determine the real-time behavior of organelles ≤ 25-nm in diameter (e.g., individual microtubules—see). However, when pushed to its limit the structures and components observed within the cell by video-LM cannot be resolved nor necessarily even identified, only detected. Positive identification and a quantitative analysis often requires the corresponding electron microcopy (EM).


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