The questionnaire also does not assess etiological explanations and other cultural beliefs held by the respondents about childhood autism.
13 14 To assess for explanations for changes in plasma HIV RNA concentrations over time, we linked participants to the local province-wide antiretroviral dispensation programme to examine patterns of antiretroviral use during the study period.
However, it is difficult to assess this explanation without an independent way of estimating Ne for these species.
We then assessed possible explanations for the sources of these errors and provided recommendations for reducing the number of errors, based on cognitive theory and on experience drawn from software engineering methodologies.
But we do not know for certain that this is the case, because we do not have any independent, objective source of information on the behaviours in question: we have only compared and triangulated different sets of self-reported data and assessed participants' explanations of the discrepancies.
We assessed other explanations for the poor quality of sputum such as stigma or transportation difficulties to the health care facility.
Thus, as Mayne [ 9] suggested, developing a results chain, and assessing alternative explanations for outcomes, enables us to produce a plausible 'performance story', and in turn, to estimate the degree to which results could be attributed to particular interventions.
When we assessed for explanations for the observed longitudinal pattern of estimated community plasma HIV-1 RNA (figure), we found that the number of individuals who had started antiretroviral therapy increased during the study period from 42.5% in 1996 to 69.6% in 2007 (Mantel test for trend across all 11 years P<0.001).
As the empirical trajectory unfolds, it becomes easier to assess these competing explanations.
Although our study is underpowered to assess the potential explanations for this finding, we can provide some hypotheses.
