Yaling Zhao, Liang Wang, Hong Xue, Huijun Wang, Youfa Wang
Fast food consumption and its associations with obesity and hypertension among children: results from the baseline data of the Childhood Obesity Study in China Mega-cities
BMC public health
analyzed prevalence type bias letters recommendation lor pediatric surgical fellowship applications 20162021 using natural language processing nlp quaternary care academic hospital demographics extracted submitted applications valence aware dictionary sentiment reasoning vader model used calculate polarity scores national research council dataset used emotion intensity analysis kruskalwallis htest used determine statistical significance setting study took place single academic free standing quaternary care childrens hospital acgme accredited pediatric surgery fellowship applicants single pediatric surgery fellowship selected study 2016 2021 total 182 individual applicants included 701 letters recommendation analyzed black applicants highest mean polarity positive hispanic applicants lowest overall differences polarity distributions statistically significant intensity emotions showed differences anger statistically significant p003 mean polarity higher applicants successfully matched pediatric surgery study identified differences lors based racial gender demographics submitted part pediatric surgical fellowship applications single training program presence bias letters recommendation lead inequities demographics given program difficult detect humans natural language processing able detect bias well differences polarity emotional intensity types emotions identified study highly similar among race gender groups intensity emotions revealed differences anger significant work concluded bias lors reflected differences polarity likely result intensity emotions used types emotions expressed natural language processing shows promise identification subtle areas bias may influence individuals likelihood successful matching