Psychometric evaluation of the hope, agency and opportunity (HAO); a brief measure of mental health recovery.

BACKGROUND: The development of safe and effective mental health services is a priority. This requires valid measures of personal recovery, yet these tools are not embedded in routine clinical practice. Brief "patient reported measures" are most likely to be acceptable to service-users and clinicians. The 4-item "Hope, Agency and Opportunity" (HAO) was co-produced to assess recovery outcomes and experience of mental health services. AIM: To evaluate the psychometric properties of the HAO. METHOD: A clinical sample from secondary healthcare services and a non-clinical sample were assessed at baseline and two weeks, on measures of personal recovery. RESULTS: Factor analysis indicated goodness of fit for the HAO with both clinical and non-clinical samples. The measure demonstrated acceptable internal consistency, moderate to strong construct validity and substantial test-retest reliability over two weeks. CONCLUSIONS: The HAO demonstrates satisfactory psychometric properties. Co-production of the measure confers clinical credibility. The brevity of the tool means it can be incorporated into routine clinical practice to drive improvements in service quality.

Delayed onsets are not necessary for generating distractor quitting thresholds effects in visual search.

Salient distractors lower quitting thresholds in visual search. That is, when searching for the presence of a target among filler items, a large heterogeneously coloured distractor presented at a delayed onset produces quick target-absent judgements and increased target-present errors. The aim of the current study was to explore if the timing of the salient distractor modulates this Quitting Threshold Effect (QTE). In Experiment 1, participants completed a target detection search task in the presence or absence of a salient singleton distractor that either appeared simultaneously with other search items or appeared at a delayed onset (i.e., 100 ms or 250 ms after other array items appeared). In Experiment 2, a similar method was used, except that the salient singleton distractor appeared simultaneously, 100 ms before, or 100 ms after the other array items. Across both experiments, we observed robust distractor QTEs. Regardless of their onset, salient distractors decreased target-absent search speeds and increased target-present error rates. In all, the present findings suggest that delayed onsets are not required for lowered quitting thresholds in visual search.

Using Novel Computed Tomography Analysis to Describe the Contribution and Distribution of Emphysema and Small Airways Disease in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.

Rationale: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is characterized by airflow limitation, caused by emphysema and small airways disease (SAD). Computed tomography (CT) coupled with image analysis enables the quantification of these abnormalities; however, the optimum method for doing so has not been determined.Objectives: This study aims to compare two CT quantitative analysis techniques, disease probability measure (DPM) and parametric response mapping (PRM), and assess their relationship with specific physiological measures of SAD.Methods: Subjects with mild to moderate COPD, never smokers, and healthy ex-smokers were recruited. Each had airway oscillometry and multiple-breath nitrogen washout, measuring peripheral airway resistance, peripheral airway reactance, and acinar airway inhomogeneity. Subjects also had an inspiratory and expiratory chest CT, with DPM and PRM analysis performed by coregistering images and classifying each voxel as normal, emphysema, or nonemphysematous gas trapping related to SAD.Results: Thirty-eight subjects with COPD, 18 never smokers, and 23 healthy ex-smokers were recruited. There were strong associations between DPM and PRM analysis when measuring gas trapping (ρ = 0.87; P < 0.001) and emphysema (ρ = 0.99; P < 0.001). DPM assigned significantly more voxels as emphysema and gas trapped than PRM (P < 0.001). Both techniques showed significantly greater emphysema and gas trapping in subjects with COPD than in never smokers and ex-smokers (P < 0.001). All CT measures had significant associations with peripheral airway resistance and reactance, with disease probability measure of nonemphysematous gas trapping related to SAD having the strongest independent association with peripheral airway resistance (ß = 0.42; P = 0.001) and peripheral airway reactance (ß = 0.41; P = 0.001). Emphysema measures had the strongest associations with acinar airway inhomogeneity (ß = 0.35-0.38).Conclusions: These results provide further validation for the use of DPM/PRM analysis in COPD by demonstrating significant relationships with specific physiological measures of SAD.