Friday, November 2, 2012

Anatomy of an Abstract

I am trying to find a ways to incorporate what I do for a living with reconciling my weight maintenance goals.Please bear with me and I hope this post doesn't come off hokey and gives good information.  I understand more than anyone in the age of Google how easy it is to pinpoint and find information; for me I deal mostly with scholarly peer-reviewed articles.  I am not a snob; but as a librarian it bothers me when I read an article from a news source and they reference this and that (some with hyperlinks) and it still doesn’t lead you to the correct source.  This is because they receive news feeds and don’t bother with tracking down the original source.  I will try my best here to deliver the original source.  I use PubMed which is the online version of the former MEDLINE, explanations about them can be found here.  I have saved searches for “weight maintenance” and “obesity and African-American women,” that I have been tracking for about 2 years.  The newest article in my queue is the one below.  The abstract is interesting because it focuses on college women (for many, including yours truly, this is where the wheels begin to fall of the wagon).  Also I will start to keep a list of scholarly journals dealing with weight maintenance and control.  Also many universities are establishing centers for obesity which can be great sources of information.  I will also update these types of posts when I read the full-text of the article.  Right now, my institution does not subscribe to this journal electronically but I have ordered the article.  Also of note, I did get my hands on the “Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire.”  I learned the three factors are: (1) cognitive restraint of eating; (2) disinhibition; and (3) hunger. Below I have given some information of what to note when reading a scholarly abstract in PubMed. (I am experimenting with text boxes and Blogger; I think i am losing, sorry if it's really bad)

Text Box: The title of the journal is very important; mouse over for correct title—guessing will waste a lot of time. Also beware (highlighted); this means electronic format for this journal, could be a conference paper in another journal
Eat Weight Disord. 2012 Sep;17(3):e157-63.

Text Box: The “Source” is usually the lead author and grant information.  I like this one because we can email questions or concerns to this Center

The current study examined healthy weight control practices among a sample of college women enrolled at an urban university (N=715; age=19.87±1.16; 77.2% Caucasian; 13.4% African American, 7.2% Asian, 2.2% other races). Participants completed measures as part of an on-line study about health habits, behaviors, and attitudes. Items from the Three Factor Eating Questionnaire were selected and evaluated with exploratory factor analysis to create a healthy weight control practices scale. Results revealed that college women, regardless of weight status, used a comparable number (four of eight) of practices. Examination of racial differences between Caucasian and African American women revealed that normal weight African American women used significantly fewer strategies than Caucasian women. Of note, greater use of healthy weight control practices was associated with higher cognitive restraint, drive for thinness, minutes of physical activity, and more frequent use of compensatory strategies. Higher scores on measures of binge and disinhibited eating, body dissatisfaction, negative affect, and depressive symptoms were associated with greater use of healthy weight control practices by underweight/normal weight but not by overweight/obese college women. Results suggest that among a sample of college females, a combination of healthy and potentially unhealthy weight control practices occurs. Implications of the findings suggest the need for effective weight management and eating disorder prevention programs for this critical developmental life stage. Such programs should be designed to help students learn how to appropriately use healthy weight control practices, as motivations for use may vary by weight status.
PMID: 23086250 [PubMed - in process] 
Text Box: PMID is very good to note; if you go to your library and you want them to find an article that you are asking them to find this is the easiest reference to pull the article up quickly—every article has one—like a VIN for a car; this number shows that there are over 23 million articles indexed in PubMed.  Also the PubMed-in process is scary; if a library has the e-subscription the article is available but PubMed bases its citation on the Print version, so until it has Volume, Number, Pages it will be in process—and your librarian will probably groan

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