A nurse management intervention combining an in-person visit, periodic phone calls, and home blood pressure monitoring over 9 months was associated with a statistically significant reduction in systolic, but not diastolic, blood pressure compared to usual care in a high risk population. Home blood pressure monitoring alone was no more effective than usual care.

Observations and ratings of classroom teaching and interactions collected over time are susceptible to trends in both the quality of instruction and rater behavior. These trends have potential implications for inferences about teaching and for study design. We use scores on the Classroom Assessment Scoring System-Secondary (CLASS-S) protocol from 458 middle school teachers over a 2-year period to study changes over time in (a) the average quality of teaching for the population of teachers, (b) the average severity of the population of raters, and (c) the severity of individual raters. To obtain these estimates and assess them in the context of other factors that contribute to the variability in scores, we develop an augmented G study model that is broadly applicable for modeling sources of variability in classroom observation ratings data collected over time. In our data, we found that trends in teaching quality were small. Rater drift was very large during raters' initial days of observation and persisted throughout nearly 2 years of scoring. Raters did not converge to a common level of severity; using our model we estimate that variability among raters actually increases over the course of the study. Variance decompositions based on the model find that trends are a modest source of variance relative to overall rater effects, rater errors on specific lessons, and residual error. The discussion provides possible explanations for trends and rater divergence as well as implications for designs collecting ratings over time.

Background Randomized, controlled trials have shown that nurse-led disease management for patients with heart failure can reduce hospitalizations. Less is known about the cost-effectiveness of these interventions. Objective To estimate the cost-effectiveness of a nurse-led disease management intervention over 12 months, implemented in a randomized, controlled effectiveness trial. Design Cost-effectiveness analysis conducted alongside a randomized trial. Data Sources Medical costs from administrative records, and self-reported quality of life and nonmedical costs from patient surveys. Participants Patients with systolic dysfunction recruited from ambulatory clinics in Harlem, New York. Time Horizon 12 months. Perspective Societal and payer. Intervention 12-month program that involved 1 face-to-face encounter with a nurse and regular telephone follow-up. Outcome Measures Quality of life as measured by the Health Utilities Index Mark 3 and EuroQol-5D and cost-effectiveness as measured by the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER). Results of Base-Case Analysis Costs and quality of life were higher in the nurse-managed group than the usual care group. The ICERs over 12 months were $17 543 per EuroQol-5D–based quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) and $15 169 per Health Utilities Index Mark 3–based QALY (in 2001 U.S. dollars). Results of Sensitivity Analysis From a payer perspective, the ICER ranged from $3673 to $4495 per QALY. Applying national prices in place of New York City prices yielded a societal ICER of $13 460 to $15 556 per QALY. Cost-effectiveness acceptability curves suggest that the intervention was most likely cost-effective for patients with less severe (New York Heart Association classes I to II) heart failure. Limitation The trial was conducted in an ethnically diverse, inner-city neighborhood; thus, results may not be generalizable to other communities. Conclusion Over 12 months, the nurse-led disease management program was a reasonably cost-effective way to reduce the burden of heart failure in this community.

This study examines how closely the kernel equating (KE) method (von Davier, Holland, & Thayer, 2004a) approximates the results of other observed-score equating methodsequipercentile and linear equatings. The study used pseudotests constructed of item responses from a real test to simulate three equating designs: an equivalent groups (EG) design and two non-equivalent groups with anchor test (NEAT) designs, one with an internal anchor and another with an external anchor. To compare results, the study sets the equating function in the EG design as the equating criterion. In these examples, the KE results were very close to the results from the other equating methods. Moreover, in almost all situations investigated, the KE results were closer to the equating criterion.

Classroom observation of teachers is a significant part of educational measurement; measurements of teacher practice are being used in teacher evaluation systems across the country. This research investigated whether observations made live in the classroom and from video recording of the same lessons yielded similar inferences about teaching. Using scores on the Classroom Assessment Scoring SystemSecondary (CLASS-S) from 82 algebra classrooms, we explored the effect of observation mode on inferences about the level or ranking of teaching in a single lesson or in a classroom for a year. We estimated the correlation between scores from the two observation modes and tested for mode differences in the distribution of scores, the sources of variance in scores, and the reliability of scores using generalizability and decision studies for the latter comparisons. Inferences about teaching in a classroom for a year were relatively insensitive to observation mode. However, time trends in the raters' use of the score scale were significant for two CLASS-S domains, leading to mode differences in the reliability and inferences drawn from individual lessons. Implications for different modes of classroom observation with the CLASS-S are discussed.As the education reform movement increasingly focuses on teachers and teaching, educators, policymakers, and researchers need valid and reliable measures of teaching that can be used to evaluate individual teachers, provide guidance for improving teaching performance, and support research in ways that advance instruction and classroom dialog and practice. Nearly 20 years ago, Jaeger (1993) identified mode of observation as potentially contributing to the psychometric properties of measuring teaching, but little research on mode effects has occurred since. Renewed interest in measuring teaching and the large-scale use of observations for teacher evaluation systems has raised questions about the affordances of video capture, heightening the need for information on the comparability of scoring video and live observations. We present the first large-scale comparison of observation mode in the assessment of mathematics teaching.Observations of teaching are viewed as very useful data sources about teaching quality because they provide assessments that incorporate not only observation of the teacher's teaching but also the level of student engagement, the cognitive complexity of student-teacher interactions, and the subject matter focus and depth of instruction (Erickson, 2006;Jaeger, 1993). Video recording of classrooms is an alternative with practical advantages (Brunvard, 2010), especially with recent technological advances in the capture and transmission of digital audio and video.Extant research has shown very little difference in scores resulting from video and live observation. However, the studies were either not based on any rigorous evaluation (and were therefore inconclusive) or were conducted on data for nonclassroom contexts. Frederiksen, Sipusic, Gamoran, and Wolfe (1992) found ...