Hi Thomas, At the point you state 'we can't prevent medical researchers from creating questionnaires with purely boolean answers' I recognised a critical distinction, it is one we know quite well: The distinction between how data entry/review elements are built into clinical applications - the front end design - and the abstract model which these interfaces must map to.
Taking the idea of a clinical researcher developing some informatics product - then they would ideally (re)use an abstract model (with its bound reference terminology) without re-modelling any of that, but then develop whatever screen designs then need, and merely define what on-screen values map to which things in the abstract model. I don't think this distinction is contentious, but I think it is often assumed rather than stated. I guess there are few if any points in a full abstract model of medicine or healthcare more generally where the careful attention to an abstract model design would lead to the use of Boolean values. Ian McNichol's contribution is useful here, putting this question into the context of prior work on clinical statement patterns. Tom Seabury From: openehr-technical-bounces at openehr.org [mailto:openehr-technical-boun...@openehr.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Beale Sent: 09 February 2011 17:30 To: openehr-technical at openehr.org Subject: Re: Representing binary values with DV_BOOLEAN On 09/02/2011 15:05, pablo pazos wrote: I agree with you Thomas but there's always some implicit semantics, I mean: when there is no data, it is taken as false, but what happen if the person who do the questionnaire do not try to make this question false? May be he/her didn't want to answer, and this false could have value/semantics in clinical or legal fields. Hi Pablo, my point is that in some cases, researchers construct questionnaires for healthcare use that will have some purely boolean answers, and they simply won't use responses containing missing answers, i.e. they will only use clean data. A question like 'have you ever had children' for example in such a questionnaire can be modelled as Boolean if the researcher wants simply to divide the population into two - women who gave birth, and women who never did. Any response like 'don't know' would be discarded in such a study. I am not saying that this is good study design, or anything else (it isn't my area), but we can't prevent medical researchers from creating questionnaires with purely boolean answers, if that is what their statistical computing model requires. - thomas ******************************************************************************************************************** This message may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient please inform the sender that you have received the message in error before deleting it. Please do not disclose, copy or distribute information in this e-mail or take any action in reliance on its contents: to do so is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. Thank you for your co-operation. NHSmail is the secure email and directory service available for all NHS staff in England and Scotland NHSmail is approved for exchanging patient data and other sensitive information with NHSmail and GSi recipients NHSmail provides an email address for your career in the NHS and can be accessed anywhere For more information and to find out how you can switch, visit www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/nhsmail ******************************************************************************************************************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.openehr.org/mailman/private/openehr-technical_lists.openehr.org/attachments/20110210/bdbcc3c2/attachment.html>
