Background
The Czech Unplugged Study, inspired by the European Drug Addiction
Prevention Trial, is a prospective, school-based, randomized controlled
prevention trial designed to reduce the risk of alcohol, tobacco, inhalant,
and illegal drug use in 6th graders in the Czech Republic. The intervention
uses the comprehensive social influence model to affect alcohol and drug
using norms among primary school students.
Methods
Descriptive statistics and chi-square analyses were used to assess
differences between the experimental and control groups on demographic
characteristics and study outcomes. Multilevel techniques were used to take
the hierarchical structure of the data into account. Prevalence odds ratios
using the Bonferroni correction were calculated to assess the differences
between the experimental (N = 914) and control
(N = 839) groups on each outcome 1, 3, 12, 15,
and 24 months after the end of the intervention.
Results
Multilevel analysis using the Bonferroni correction showed
statistically significant intervention effects at the final follow-up for
any smoking (OR = 0.75, 99.2% CI 0.65–0.87), daily
smoking (OR = 0.62, 99.2% CI 0.48–0.79), heavy
smoking (OR = 0.48, 99.2% CI 0.28–0.81), any
cannabis use (OR = 0.57 99.2% CI 0.42–0.77),
frequent cannabis use (OR = 0.57, 99.2% CI
0.36–0.89), and any drug use (OR = 0.78, 99.2% CI
0.65–0.94).
Conclusions
This study adds new evidence on the effectiveness of the Unplugged
school-based prevention program for primary school students in the Czech
Republic.
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Abstract:The paper estimates cost efficiency of 81 general hospitals in the Czech Republic during 2006-2010. We employ the conditional order-m approach which is a nonparametric method for efficiency computation accounting for environmental variables. Effects of environmental variables are assessed using the non-parametric significance test and partial regression plots. We find not-for-profit ownership and a presence of a specialized center in a hospital to be detrimental to hospital performance in the group of small and medium hospitals, while not-for-profit ownership is favorable to efficiency for big hospitals. Generally, hospital performance gets worse in period 2009-2010 because additional revenues received in form of user charges which were introduced in 2008 increase spending of hospitals. Only big hospitals proved to take some cost-saving measures as a reaction to financial crisis.Keywords: efficiency, hospitals, conditional order-m FDH, Czech Republic JEL: D24, I22Studies, Charles University in Prague, for providing data. We are grateful to Mika Kortelainen for methodological consultations and providing his R code. Financial support by GAUK 690 512 and SV IES 260 113 grants are gratefully acknowledged.
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