In Washington state, budtenders at recreational-only stores. routinely give medical advice, with conversations such as "What can I get you?" "I'd likely something to sleep and relieve anxiety." "Well, we have this . . . etc etc." It is surprising to me that, as far as I know, no actions have been brought against vendors for dispensing medical advice without a license.
It is surprising, and disappointing, that social science research project managers seem to rely so little on paradata as well as other types of research such as this study in efforts to improve the data collected in the field through interviews.
In my experience, interviewer training is almost entirely made up of repeating the mantra, "Trust the instrument!" Yet interviewers are capable of understanding more about how the data contribute to the big picture, and training of this type could substantially contribute to interviewer consistency and adherence to protocols.
Some of the largest social science research shops in the US are still married to the idea that interviewers must read questions exactly as written, with only vocal inflection to help respondents better understand the question. Yet, this study from 2012 implies that a more conversational interviewing approach actually reduces interviewer effects.
The MCBS is valuable for this very reason--it is one of the few tools available to better understand heath events that generally are not documented in medical charts and only occasionally represented in expenditure data. Still, falls can be a powerful predictor of age-related deterioration.
I hope that in the post-CoVID era, health behavior researchers will fully employ the various theories available for better understanding this socially-fraught behavior, and also use the mask/no mask phenomenon to expand our knowledge of theory.
This is important research. Too many IM patients whose condition is identified after early childhood suffer with vague digestive pain that can be dismissed by clinicians, or misdiagnosed.
I wonder if the the association between long sleep and prevalent MetS, which was found in sleep duration defined by 24-hr sleep patterns (i.e. including naps) rather than nighttime sleep alone could be reverse causation due to the dips in energy that can occur during the day due to "sugar highs" and subsequent "sugar lows." Personally, I found that careful restriction of grains cut out the need for afternoon naps altogether.
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