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Editors' picks

Pets offer valuable support for owners with mental health problems

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Pets offer valuable support for owners with mental health problems

Pets can help people manage their long-term mental health conditions. Owners felt their pets helped by distracting them from symptoms and upsetting experiences such as hearing voices or suicidal thoughts.

BMC Psychiatry 2016

Validation of educational assessments doesn’t have to be complicated

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Validation of educational assessments doesn’t have to be complicated

Assessments help educators make decisions about learners. Assessment validation evaluates the appropriateness of such decisions. This article describes a contemporary, pragmatic approach to assessment validation.

Advances in Simulation 2016

Retrospectively registered trials

Registered Trials

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The Editors’ dilemma

Prospective clinical trial registration aims to address publication and reporting bias. Unfortunately, not all clinical trials are registered before they start. Here we discuss the dilemma faced by editors when receiving submissions reporting a clinical trial that was not registered prospectively, and a new policy for increasing transparency when a trial was registered after participant recruitment has begun.

Citizen science: through the looking glass

Citizen science: through the looking glass

Citizen science: through the looking glass

In this blog, Poppy Lakeman Fraser, Senior Programme Coordinator for the Open Air Laboratories (OPAL) initiative, explains what citizen science actually is and how researchers rely on this form of data collection.

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