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The
goal of the current study is to develop and validate a "mobile" protocol
to train research assistants to verify the presence of common cold and
influenza episodes, referred to as upper respiratory infections (URI).
This protocol, based upon techniques used by medical doctors and nurse
practitioners to diagnose URIs, will be such that research assistants can
use it in participants' homes. An objective set of verification procedures
for non-medical professionals does not exist in the field, and we think
this would be a valuable tool for two reasons. First, because individuals
may report symptoms of an URI without a physiological basis, objectively
verified URIs offer a cleaner assessment of actual illness than self-report.
Further, previous research in our lab suggests that when participants are
asked to go to a medical professional to have their self-reported URIs
verified, the majority of self-reported URIs (65% and 90%, respectively)
go without a verification attempt. We suspect that full schedules,
wanting to remain in bed, and beliefs that "there was nothing medical staff
could do because it just had to run its course" served as deterrents for
participants to pursue verification. TO achieve the aforementioned
goals, investigators will work closely with our consultant (Director of
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Student Health Center) to develop a URI
verification manual and examination checklist. Research assistants
trained by us will then use these materials to guide their URI verification
examinations on 90 CMU students presenting mild to severe respiratory symptoms.
To validate this protocol, we will also have these same 90 participants
examined by a nurse practitioner and we will compare the research assistants'
conclusions to nurses' diagnoses. To evaluate its validity, we will
then calculate our procedure's sensitivity (ability to correctly confirm
URI), specificity (ability to correctly confirm the absence of URI), and
efficiency (overall percentage of correct classifications).
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