Psychometric validation of anti-clot treatment scale and treatment satisfaction questionnaire for medication version II in Japanese patients with atrial fibrillation

Aims: The Anti-Clot Treatment Scale (ACTS) and Treatment Satisfaction Questionnaire for Medication version II (TSQM-II) are validated treatment satisfaction patient-reported outcome (PRO) instruments. The ACTS includes two domains: Burdens and Benefits; the TSQM-II includes four: Effectiveness, Side Effects, Convenience, and Global Satisfaction. Japanese-language versions of the ACTS and TSQM-II have been developed and linguistically validated. This study aimed to assess their psychometric properties in Japanese patients with atrial fibrillation (AF).

Materials and methods: ACTS and TSQM-II data from 534 patients with AF were collected in a Japanese post-marketing surveillance study of a direct oral-anticoagulant, rivaroxaban. Four key psychometric properties, in line with best practice guidelines from the US Food and Drug Administration, were examined using traditional psychometric methods: acceptability, scaling assumptions, reliability (i.e. internal consistency reliability, test-retest reliability), and construct validity (i.e. convergent validity and known groups).

Results: ACTS Burdens and Benefits and TSQM-II Effectiveness, Convenience, and Global Satisfaction scales were found to be acceptable (e.g. item-level missing data at baseline <4%), with all scales having good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha > 0.80). test-retest reproducibility intraclass correlation coefficients for the ACTS Burdens and Benefits were 0.59 and 0.65, respectively, and between 0.54–0.61 for the TSQM-II scales. Known-groups validity for the ACTS and TSQM-II was supported by differences in scale scores by positive and negative impact (p?<?0.05). Correlations between the ACTS and TSQM-II (convergent validity) were lower than expected (range r?=?0.09–0.48), but in line with the original ACTS development study.

Limitations: Evaluation of test-retest reproducibility was limited by assessment period, which was longer (3 months) than recommended guidelines (usually up to 2 weeks).

Conclusions: Overall, Japanese versions of ACTS and TSQM-II scales satisfied internal consistency reliability and traditional validity criteria. Our study supports the ACTS and TSQM-II as appropriate PRO instruments to measure satisfaction with anticoagulant treatment in Japanese patients with AF.

Trial registration: NCT01598051, clinicaltrials.gov; registered April 20, 2012.     

Young Americans' ethnic identity toward disaster advertising: The effects of disaster location and message types

The purpose of this study is to examine young American donors' perspectives toward disaster ad messages. Attitude toward helping others, social responsibility, ethnic identity on donation behavior, attitude toward ad, and advertising effectiveness were examined using 2 experimental variables (disaster location and message types). The findings explain that the constructs are positively related to each other and the 2 experimental variables significantly influence young Americans' attitudes toward ads and advertising effectiveness. In addition, young Americans expressed stronger feelings concerning attitude toward charity ads, and a higher level of advertising effectiveness was demonstrated when the disaster occurred domestically. Further, emotional messages were considered more persuasive than factual messages. As managerial suggestions, when charities work for domestic disasters, emphasizing patriotism and an emotional message can increase the positive attitude toward ads and advertising effectiveness. On the contrary, when charities work for international disasters, the messages should focus on diminishing distinctions between in‐group and out‐group perceptions.     

Estimating switching costs after introducing Fixed-Mobile Convergence in Japan

In this study, based on a conjoint-type survey analysis, the switching cost of several Japanese telecom services are empirically examined simultaneously, contingent on each carrier’s bundling strategies. The results suggest the following conclusions. The hierarchy of switching costs is mobile phone service, fixed phone service, ISP (Internet Service Provider), and broadband access service, in descending order. Even if the government prohibits the formerly state-owned monopoly NTT from forming alliances with other carriers, the legacy NTT group would still command more than half of the market share under FMC if each carrier adopts a pure bundling strategy. If mixed bundling emerges as the primary strategy in the FMC market, the resulting type of competition from the introduction of FMC does not stimulate competitive pricing.     

A COMPLETE CHARACTERIZATION OF THE INVERTED S‐SHAPED LABOR SUPPLY CURVE

Empirical evidence suggests that labor supply curves are downward sloping at low wage levels, i.e. ‘forward‐falling labor supply’. In contrast, the supply curve is only downward sloping at high wage levels in the canonical labor supply model, i.e. ‘backward‐bending’. This paper derives a labor supply curve with both forward‐falling and backward‐bending segments, or an ‘inverted S‐shape’ by incorporating two elements into a standard utility function: a subsistence level of consumption and a decreasing elasticity of substitution. It is also shown that the subsistence level of consumption plays a key role in determining the shape of the labor supply curve.     

Finite-dimensional utilities

Summary. Sufficient axioms are identified for the existence of a finite- dimensional quasilinear utility function whose lexicographically ordered vectors preserve a decision maker's preference order on a mixture set . It is shown that those axioms are also necessary for the linear lexicographic representation when the underlying set is a mixture space. Received: August 20, 1998; revised version: December 14, 1998     

Micro-foundation for a constant elasticity of substitution production function through mechanization

We consider an increase in the range of capital use as a form of mechanization. A constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function is dynamically derived from Leontief production functions through the endogenous complementary relationship between capital accumulation and mechanization. This implies that a CES production function can be resolved into technological change that does not involve changes in total factor productivity. Furthermore, using the normalizing procedure of the CES production function developed by de La Grandville [de La Grandville, O., 1989. In quest of the Slutsky diamond. American Economic Review 79, 468–481], we investigate how mechanization is related to the elasticity of substitution in our endogenous growth model.     

A flexible dynamic model of multiproduct technology for the West German economy

This paper tests symmetry and negativity of the Slutsky matrix for a system of demand functions derived from an aggregate model of multi product technology within a flexible dynamic framework. The model considers three inputs and three outputs, including imports and exports of intermediate goods. We derive a static demand model from a trans log cost function and specify the data generation process by a stationary ARX (1, 1) model. Results based on West German quarterly data indicate that the integrability conditions are not rejected when imposed on the ARX (1, 1) model, whereas they are rejected for all the less general dynamic models considered.     

Two Types of Disagreement in Group Discussions of Japanese Undergraduates

In this study we investigated the nature of disagreement, which is a necessary component of a good discussion. We obtained 27 group discussion scenes by Japanese undergraduates that were evaluated by two ways: impression rating and ranking. As a result of factor analysis for the impression rating data, five factors were extracted: activeness, multidirection and unification of discussion, relationships of participants, development and sophistication of discussion, and sincerity of the participants, and each factor scores of each scene was simultaneously calculated. Each scene’s rank score was also calculated by relative comparisons. A significant positive correlation was found between the mean factor and the rank scores except for Factor 3 (relationships of participants). To consider the reason for the difference relating to Factor 3’s score, we scrutinized the discussion process of four scenes of the different patterns of the factor and rank scores. From the analysis of conversations, we suggested that this difference reflected ways of disagreement. By introducing a probative discourse tags for discussion (pDTD), we reasoned that the frequency of disagreement made Factor 3’s score negative and the absence of the second part of adjacency pairs made the rank score worse. The explicit speech and actions of blame such as emotional and aggressive expression, and neglect of treatment for the minor opinion made also the discussion unfair, but we think that these behaviors might erupt from the ground made by the accumulated implicit behaviors such as the absence of the second part. We finally concluded that the criticism type of disagreement increased the rank scores, and its censure type produced lower results, and the proper ways of disagreement in group discussions were discussed.