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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Aging And Dying Processes And The Health Of Older Adults, Paula Diehr
The Aging And Dying Processes And The Health Of Older Adults, Paula Diehr
Paula Diehr
It is difficult to distinguish changes in health due to aging from those related to dying, because the two processes are highly related. Some potentially treatable conditions may mistakenly be dismissed as due to old age. The goal of this article was to examine the relationships of aging and of dying to changes in 10 health-related variables: self-rated health, depression, ADLs, IADLs, minimental state examination, body mass index, blocks walked per week, bed days, hospitalization, and walking speed (all coded so that higher values were better). We used longitudinal data from the Cardiovascular Health Study to estimate the changes in …
The Importance Of The Normality Assumption In Large Public Health Data Sets, Paula Diehr, Thomas Lumley
The Importance Of The Normality Assumption In Large Public Health Data Sets, Paula Diehr, Thomas Lumley
Paula Diehr
It is widely but incorrectly believed that the t-test and linear regression are valid only for Normally distributed outcomes. The t-test and linear regression compare the mean of an outcome variable for different subjects. While these are valid even in very small samples if the outcome variable is Normally distributed, their major usefulness comes from the fact that in large samples they are valid for any distribution. We demonstrate this validity by simulation in extremely non-Normal data. We discuss situations in which in other methods such as the Wilcoxon rank sum test and ordinal logistic regression (proportional odds model) have …
Weight-Modification Trials In Older Adults: What Should The Outcome Measure Be?, Paula Diehr
Weight-Modification Trials In Older Adults: What Should The Outcome Measure Be?, Paula Diehr
Paula Diehr
BACKGROUND: Overweight older adults are often counseled to lose weight, even though there is little evidence of excess mortality in that age group. Overweight and underweight may be more associated with health status than with mortality, but few clinical trials of any kind have been based on maximizing years of healthy life (YHL), as opposed to years of life (YOL). OBJECTIVE: This paper examines the relationship of body mass index (BMI) to both YHL and YOL. Results were used to determine whether clinical trials of weight-modification based on improving YHL would be more powerful than studies based on survival. DESIGN: …