• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.33-39
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• 2016

Background: Elements of informed consent including capacity, disclosure, understanding, voluntariness, and permission of the participant, are all crucial for clinical trials to be legally and ethically valid. During the informed consent process, the patient information leaflet is an important information source which prospective research subjects can utilize in their decision-making. In the adequate provision of information, KGCP guideline necessitate 20 specific items, as well as the use language that individuals can understand. This study measures the vocabulary level of patient information leaflets in an effort to provide an objective evaluation on the readability of such material. Methods: The word difficulty of 13 leaflets was quantitatively evaluated using Kim kwang Hae's vocabulary grading framework, which was compared to the difficulty level of words found in the $6^{th}$ grade Korean textbook. The quantitative outcomes were statistically analyzed using chi-squared tests and linear by linear association for ordinal data. Results: There was a statistically significant difference between the vocabulary level and frequency of words in leaflets and the 6th Korean textbook. The leaflets were on average 260 sentences and about roughly 15 pages long, including lay language (easier or equal to language used in primary school) of around 12% less; technical language of around 4.5% more. As the vocabulary grades increase, there was a distinct difference in vocabulary level between Korean textbook and each information leaflet (p < 0.001). Conclusion: Patient information leaflets may fail to provide appropriate information for self-determination by clinical trial subject through the difficulty level of its wording. Improvements in the degree of patients' understanding and appropriate use of information leaflets are collaboratively equipped to strengthen patient's autonomy and therefore guaranteeing participant's rights.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.9 no.10
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• pp.549-559
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to examine the prevalence of depression in Korean middle-aged adults and to identify the gender difference in factors associated with the severity of depression. The data of 2,241 individuals who participated in the Sixth Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2014 were used. Depressive symptoms were assessed using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), and multivariate ordinal logistic regression analysis was performed. The prevalence rate of moderate to severe depression ($PHQ-9{\geq}10$) was identified at 5.2% (men 3.3%, women 7.0%). The factors associated with the severity of depression in men were younger age, living in metropolitan, unemployed, lower body mass index, and heavily drinking. On the other hand, women were affected by having no spouse, lower income, limited physical activity, and sleeping shorter hours.

• Journal of the Korean housing association
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.131-142
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• 2009

High-rise and high-density apartment complexes have been built and supplied on a large scale in the 1st period of the New Town project in metropolitan areas since the late 1980s. Now It has become necessary to improve those apartment complexes, which have serious deterioration problems for aging more than about 20 years accompanying simultaneity and a large scale. The purpose of this research is to develop the evaluating indicators to measure the level of deterioration of apartments inclusively and practically in order to regenerate apartments as sustainable residential environments. This study is composed of the following four parts; (a) establishing the conceptual model of evaluation of apartment deterioration, (b) selecting evaluation items, (c) constituting evaluation measurement, and（ｄ)weighting evaluation indicators. First, deterioration of apartments was conceptualized by physical. social, and economical aspects in terms of sustainable development and proposed the conceptual model of hierarchy structure of evaluation of apartment deterioration by literature reviews. Second, evaluating items were selected based on literature reviews of existing indicators and preceding studies about apartments of Korea and foreign countries. The evaluating indicators were identified as a total of 77 evaluating items which were composed of three dimensions and 9 attributes on the basis of the conceptual model. They cover comprehensive scope of the apartment such as unit, building, complex, and site. Third, as the measurement, the 5 point ordinal scale measure was suggested. The evaluating measurement including measure standards, measure methods, and measure contents were developed by each evaluating items. Lastly, the weighting of evaluating indicators was analyzed by AHP method conducted by survey on the expert group. Items were identified as high contributors or low contributors. The weighting of these items could suggest several evaluations according to the situation. The evaluation of the level of deterioration can be done by both total evaluation and a specific field of evaluation. In addition, it is easy to grasp deteriorated attributes or dimensions by providing a radar and bar chart showing evaluation results. These evaluating indicators could be a useful tool to grasp actual methods for the regeneration of apartments.

• Journal of Acupuncture Research
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.144-158
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• 2003

This study was carried out to investigate what kinds of statistical techniques have been used to analyze data from oriental medicine research, For study, 551 original articles which used statistical techniques in their data analysis were selected form the articles published in The journal of Korean Acupuncture & Moxibustion Society(JKAMS) between 1984 to 2002. among them, 122 articles used descriptive statistics while 429 articles used inferential statistics for data analysis. For that 429 articles, t-test (189 articles), analysis fo variance (111 articles), chi-square test (14 articles), correlation (10 articles), regression analysis (4 articles), factor analysis(5 articles), or nonparametric test (23 articles) were chose to analyze the data. Nonparametric approach has substantial power in case data do not meet the assumption of normality. This method is not only easy to use ut also provides measures of the statistical variation of nominal and ordinal scale. This study shows that more and more recent papers use nonparametric test compared to the old articles. nine different statistical software or packages (SAS, SPSS, Statview, Minitab, Sigma plot, ISP, Graphpad prism, Excel, Access) have been used in the articles published JKMAS. High level statistical techniques such as SAS, SPSS, and Statview are user friendly and used most for acupuncture and Moxibustion research. Including tables and plots in an article facilitates understanding family process data from a descriptive standpoint, minimized erroneous statistical conclusions, and clarifies theoretically important relationships among variables. Table and plots have been used 500 and 233 articles, respectively. A computer procedure is proposed and illustrated with statistical packages using SAS, SPSS, Statview and ISP.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.407-426
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• 2003

We consider the missing covariates problem in generalized estimating equations(GEE) model. If the covariate is partially missing, GEE can not be calculated. In this paper, we study the performance of 7 imputation methods to handle missing covariates in GEE models, and the properties of GEE estimators are investigated after missing covariates are imputed for ordinal data of repeated measurements. The 7 imputation methods include i) Naive Deletion ii) Sample Average Imputation iii) Row Average Imputation iv) Cross-wave Regression Imputation v) Carry-over Imputation vi) Bayesian Bootstrap vii) Approximate Bayesian Bootstrap. A Monte-Carlo simulation is used to compare the performance of these methods. For the missing mechanism generating the missing data, we assume ignorable nonresponse. Furthermore, we generate missing covariates with or without considering wave nonresp onse patterns.

• Journal of the Korean Regional Science Association
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.3-16
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• 2020

The causes and effects of intra-urban spatial inequality have received much scholarly attention. However, the effects of urban spatial inequality on resident perceptions and the mechanisms through which it is sustained and reproduced remain mostly unknown. This study aimed to investigate whether regional deprivation, the relative socioeconomic standing of a region, affects the residents' perceptions of upward social mobility. By employing the ordinal logistic multilevel model to analyze nested data collected from Seoul, South Korea, this study found that the regional deprivation has a significant negative effect on residents' perception of upward social mobility. The results of this study suggest that one way in which spatial inequality is sustained and reproduced is by the effects of regional deprivation, having negative impacts on the aspirations and socioeconomic activities of residents. This study is expected to provide meaningful implications for planning and policy aimed to combat spatial inequality.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.165-172
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• 2008

Objectives : Despite various government initiatives, including the expansion of national health insurance coverage, health inequality has been a key health policy issue in South Korea during the past decade. This study describes and compares the extent of the total health inequality and the income-related health inequality over time among Korean adults. Methods : This study employs the 1998, 2001 and 2005 Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (KNHANESs). The self-assessed health (SAH) ordinal responses, measured on a five-point scale, resealed to cardinal values to measure the health inequalities with using interval regression. The boundaries of each threshold for the interval regression analysis were obtained from the empirical distribution of the EuroQol-5 Dimension (EQ-5D) valuation weights estimated from the 2005 KNHANES. The final model predicting the individuals' health status included age, gender, educational attainment, occupation, income, and the regional prosperity index. The concentration index was used to measure and analyze the health inequality. Results : The KNHANES data showed an unequal distribution of the total health inequality in favor of the higher income groups, and this is getting worse over time (0.0327 in 1998, 0.0393 in 2001 and 0.0924 in 2005). The income-related health inequality in 2005 was 0.0278, indicating that 30.1% of the total health inequality can be attributed to income. Conclusions : The findings indicate there are health inequalities across the sociodemographic and income groups despite the recent government's efforts. Further research is warranted to investigate what potential policy actions are necessary to decrease the health inequality in Korea.

• The Journal of Korean Physical Therapy
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.9-21
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• 2004

The purpose of study is that we will observe the change of c-fos with the immunohistochemistry method and then we will study the effect of micro current stimulation following the frequency after inducing pain to rats with capsaicin. Rat were classified to SD and they have growed for 8 weeks. We classify to four groups, ordinal group is used in experiment I, the group which we induce pain is used in experiment II, the application group which we induce pain and then the high frequency micro current stimulation is used in experiment III, the application group which we induce pain and then the low frequency micro current stimulation is used in experiment IV, we get the following result. Compare with experiment II, experiment III, and experiment IV from acute pain modal in the immunohistochemistry experiment which has c-fos protein as an antigen, c-fos immunoreactive positive neurons significantly after induced pain for two hours(p<0.001). According to these results, from rats induced pain, micro current stimulation effect to reducing pain, but following frequency micro current stimulation theraphy isn't different from immunoreactive c-fos

• The Journal of Korean Physical Therapy
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.103-108
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• 2009

Purpose: Electrical stimulation is one of several treatments recommended for RA patients. Electrical stimulation of RA patients, reduces pain, or facilitates joint motion prior to exercises. However, there is still limited evidence on the efficacy of electrical stimulation and thus any conclusions drawn about this method remain controversial. Recently, Microcurrent Electrical Neuromuscular Stimulation (MENS) has received significant attention as a potential method of electrical stimulation. In this study, we investigated the effect of microcurrent treatment in rheumatoid arthritis rat. Methods: Subjects were allocated either to the control group or experimental group, which was subject to microcurrent stimulation. Interleukin-1 expression in the metatarsophlangeal joint and the oedema index in the ankle were used for classification and subsequent evaluation of pathology. Subjects were assessed at 1, 7 and 14 days after inducing rheumatoid arthritis through adjuvant injection. Thirty-six subjects, 18 in each group, were used in this study. Statistical analysis was performed by calculating the differences between the two groups and between each interval assessment. Categorical variables were compared between the two groups with the paired-T test. The one-way ANOVA test was performed to assess changes in ordinal variables. Results: Baseline characteristics were similar in both groups. Statistically significant differences were found between the two groups. The biological marker of pro-inflammatory cytokine and oedema index were decreased in response to this treatment. Conclusion: These data show that treatment of rheumatoid arthritis with a microcurrent stimulation device reduced the oedema index and pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-1.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.1496-1521
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• 2012

Uncertainty is ubiquitous in target tracking wireless sensor networks due to environmental noise, randomness of target mobility and other factors. Sensing results are always unreliable. This paper considers unreliability as it occurs in wireless sensor networks and its impact on target-tracking accuracy. Firstly, we map intersection pairwise sensors' uncertain boundaries, which divides the monitor area into faces. Each face has a unique signature vector. For each target localization, a sampling vector is built after multiple grouping samplings determine whether the RSS (Received Signal Strength) for a pairwise nodes' is ordinal or flipped. A Fault-Tolerant Target-Tracking (FTTT) strategy is proposed, which transforms the tracking problem into a vector matching process that increases the tracking flexibility and accuracy while reducing the influence of in-the-filed factors. In addition, a heuristic matching algorithm is introduced to reduce the computational complexity. The fault tolerance of FTTT is also discussed. An extension of FTTT is then proposed by quantifying the pairwise uncertainty to further enhance robustness. Results show FTTT is more flexible, more robust and more accurate than parallel approaches.