Part-time work assessing

Government policies to encourage universities to attract more students, and university policies to attract and admit more students, have seen significant increases in the numbers of less well prepared students undertaking engineering studies without a commensurate increase in teaching resources. At the same time, student commitment to study has reduced in response to increased commitment to part time work, leading to a trend of student non-attendance of classes and incomplete attempts of tutorial questions and assessment tasks. 

Sue is 42 years old and experiencing her second episode of major depressive disorder. She has never been on antidepressants before but this time wouid iike to try medication as part of her treatment. The initiai assessment period for her wiii be a few days to a week after starting to make sure that the medication is not producing uncomfortabie side effects. After 3-4 weeks, we expect to see some improvement in her mood if there is no change whatsoever, many physicians wouid change antidepressants after 4-5 weeks. Finaiiy, when there has ceased to be any further improvement in mood, we want to know, "is she weii or is she oniy better " if the answer is that she has oniy gotten better, but not yet weii, then we have more work to do. 

In some diseases a simple ordinal scale or a VAS scale cannot describe the full spectrum of the disease. There are many examples of this including depression and erectile dysfunction. Measurement in such circumstances involves the use of multiple ordinal rating scales, often termed items. A patient is scored on each item and the summation of the scores on the individual items represents an overall assessment of the severity of the patient s disease status at the time of measurement. Considerable amoimts of work have to be done to ensure the vahdity of these complex scales, including investigations of their reprodu-cibihty and sensitivity to measuring treatment effects. It may also be important in international trials to assess to what extent there is cross-cultural imiformity in the use and imderstand-ing of the scales. Complex statistical techniques such as principal components analysis and factor analysis are used as part of this process and one of the issues that need to be addressed is whether the individual items should be given equal weighting. 

Mortality associated with acrylonitrile exposure was evaluated as part of a study of 15 643 male workers in a rubber plant in the United States (Akron, Ohio) (Delzell Monson, 1982). Included in the analysis were 327 workers who were employed for at least two years in the plant between 1 January 1940 and 1 July 1971, and who had worked in two departments where acrylonitrile was used, i.e., 81 worked only in the nitrile rubber manufacturing operation where exposures to 1,3-butadiene (see this volume), styrene (lARC, 1994a) and vinylpyridine also occurred and 218 only in the department where the latex was coagulated and dried. [No information on levels of exposure to acrylonitrile was provided ] Mortality among these workers was assessed through 1 July 1978 and compared with age- and calendar-time-specific rates for white men in the United States. SMRs were 0.8 ( = 74 95% CI, 0.7-1.0) for all causes of death, 1.2 ( = 22 95% CI, 0.8-1.9) for all cancers combined, 1.5 ( = 9 95% CI, 0.7-2.9) for lung cancer, 4.0 ( = 2 95% CI, 0.5-14.5) for urinary bladder cancer and 2.3 ( = 4 95% CI, 0.6-5.8) for cancers of the lymphatic and haematopoietic system. SMRs for lung cancer by duration of employment were [1.0] (4 observed, 3.8 expected) [95% CI, 0.3-2.7] for < 5 years, and [3.3] (5 observed, 1.5 expected) [95% CI, 1.1-7.8] for 5-14 years. No case was observed with duration > 15 years. 

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