William J. Browne

• PhD in Statistics
• Professor (Full) at University of Bristol

Languages vary in their complexity; caregivers vary in the way they structure their communicative interactions with children; and boys and girls can differ in their language skills. Using a multilevel modelling approach, we explored how these factors influence the path of language acquisition for young children growing up around the world (mean age...

Scientific Argumentation (SA) is an important scientific practice that engages students in cognitive, epistemic, and social endeavours to construct, evaluate, and reconstruct knowledge. Assessing SA is important because it helps in gaining insight into the nature of SA as understood by students and their engagement with SA while facilitating the te...

Most studies of the effects of housing and husbandry on animals’ affective states and welfare investigate the impact of stable living conditions, comparing for example, animals living in enriched environments with those living in non-enriched ones. Changes in living conditions, including from more to less enriched environments, have also been found...

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has brought renewed attention to respiratory aerosol and droplet generation. While many studies have robustly quantified aerosol (<10 µm diameter) number and mass exhalation rates, fewer studies have explored larger droplet generation. This study quantifies respiratory drople...

Argumentation plays a significant role in science as a scientific practice in which knowledge is constructed, evaluated, and modified. Scientific argumentation (SA) is thus a promising activity for students to pursue in order to think and act like scientists and to enhance their understanding of science. Considering the impact that assessments usua...

Introduction Voice assessment and treatment involve the manipulation of all the subsystems of voice production, and may lead to production of respirable aerosol particles that pose a greater risk of potential viral transmission via inhalation of respirable pathogens (eg, SARS-CoV-2) than quiet breathing or conversational speech. Objective To chara...

Ethnic achievement gaps are often explained in terms of student and school factors. The decomposition of these gaps into their within- and between-school components has therefore been applied as a strategy to quantify the overall influence of each set of factors. Three competing approaches have previously been proposed, but each is limited to the s...

Ethnic achievement gaps are often explained in terms of student and school factors. The decomposition of these gaps into their within- and between-school components has therefore been applied as a strategy to quantify the overall influence of each set of factors. Three competing approaches have previously been proposed, but each is limited to the s...

Background The coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic led to the prohibition of group-based exercise and the cancellation of sporting events. Evaluation of respiratory aerosol emissions is necessary to quantify exercise-related transmission risk and inform mitigation strategies. Methods Aerosol mass emission rates are calculated from concurren...

To assess the welfare of captive animals, validated measures, so-called ‘welfare indicators’, are required. We used a triangulation approach to investigate the extent to which different measures converged to provide corroborating evidence of welfare. Laying hens were exposed to living conditions designed to be generally preferred (GP) or generally...

Aerosol particles of respirable size are exhaled when individuals breathe, speak and sing and can transmit respiratory pathogens between infected and susceptible individuals. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into focus the need to improve the quantification of the particle number and mass exhalation rates as one route to provide estimates of viral...

We created a 20-item parent-report measure of humor development from 1 to 47 months: the Early Humor Survey (EHS). We developed the EHS with Study 1 ( N = 219) using exploratory factor analysis, demonstrating the EHS works with 1- to 47-month-olds with excellent reliability and a strong correlation with age, showing its developmental trajectory. We...

Background The coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic has profoundly impacted sports and exercise, disrupting a plethora of events worldwide. Aerosol transmission is increasingly recognised as an important route for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), with systematic evaluation of particulate matter release during exer...

A systematic review of recent publications was conducted to assess the extent to which contemporary micro-level research on smallholders facilitates data re-use and knowledge synthesis. Following PRISMA standards for systematic review, 1,182 articles were identified (published between 2018 and 2020), and 261 articles were selected for review in ful...

Social cognition refers to a broad range of cognitive processes and skills that allow individuals to interact with and understand others, including a variety of skills from infancy through preschool and beyond, e.g., joint attention, imitation, and belief understanding. However, no measures examine socio-cognitive development from birth through pre...

The performing arts have been significantly restricted due to the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. We report measurements of aerosol and droplet concentrations generated when playing woodwind and brass instruments and comparisons with breathing, speaking, and singing. These measurements were conducted in a room...

Simple Summary Dental disease affects many dogs worldwide and is believed to be particularly problematic for racing greyhounds. It costs the industry and rehoming charities financially and likely causes unnecessary suffering to a large number of dogs. The risk factors for dental disease in this population are debated, and the best methods to overco...

Bayesian estimation of multilevel structural equation models (MLSEMs) offers advantages in terms of sample size requirements and computational feasibility, but does require careful specification of the prior distribution especially for the random effects variance parameters. The traditional “non-informative” conjugate choice of an inverse-Gamma pri...

Bayesian estimation of multilevel structural equation models (MLSEMs) offers advantages in terms of sample size requirements and computational feasibility, but does require careful specification of the prior distribution especially for the random effects variance parameters. The traditional “non-informative” conjugate choice of an inverse- Gamma pr...

Reproducible science requires transparent reporting. The ARRIVE guidelines (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) were originally developed in 2010 to improve the reporting of animal research. They consist of a checklist of information to include in publications describing in vivo experiments to enable others to scrutinise the work ade...

Reproducible science requires transparent reporting. The ARRIVE guidelines (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) were originally developed in 2010 to improve the reporting of animal research. They consist of a checklist of information to include in publications describing in vivo experiments to enable others to scrutinise the work ade...

Reproducible science requires transparent reporting. The ARRIVE guidelines (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) were originally developed in 2010 to improve the reporting of animal research. They consist of a checklist of information to include in publications describing in vivo experiments to enable others to scrutinise the work ade...

Reproducible science requires transparent reporting. The ARRIVE guidelines (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) were originally developed in 2010 to improve the reporting of animal research. They consist of a checklist of information to include in publications describing in vivo experiments to enable others to scrutinise the work ade...

Improving the reproducibility of biomedical research is a major challenge. Transparent and accurate reporting is vital to this process; it allows readers to assess the reliability of the findings and repeat or build upon the work of other researchers. The ARRIVE guidelines (Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments) were developed in 2010 to h...

Reproducible science requires transparent reporting. The ARRIVE guidelines (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) were originally developed in 2010 to improve the reporting of animal research. They consist of a checklist of information to include in publications describing in vivo experiments to enable others to scrutinise the work ade...

Reproducible science requires transparent reporting. The ARRIVE guidelines (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) were originally developed in 2010 to improve the reporting of animal research. They consist of a checklist of information to include in publications describing in vivo experiments to enable others to scrutinise the work ade...

Reproducible science requires transparent reporting. The ARRIVE guidelines (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) were originally developed in 2010 to improve the reporting of animal research. They consist of a checklist of information to include in publications describing in vivo experiments to enable others to scrutinise the work ade...

Affective states are key determinants of animal welfare. Assessing such states under field conditions is thus an important goal in animal welfare science. The rapid Defence Cascade (DC) response (startle, freeze) to sudden unexpected stimuli is a potential indicator of animal affect; humans and rodents in negative affective states often show potent...

A first step when fitting multilevel models to continuous responses is to explore the degree of clustering in the data. Researchers fit variance-component models and then report the proportion of variation in the response that is due to systematic differences between clusters. Equally they report the response correlation between units within a clus...

A first step when fitting multilevel models to continuous responses is to explore the degree of clustering in the data. Researchers fit variance-component models and then report the proportion of variation in the response that is due to systematic differences between clusters or equally the response correlation between units within a cluster. These...

Aggression in group-housed laboratory mice is a serious animal welfare concern. Further understanding of the causes of mouse aggression could have a significant impact on a large number of laboratory animals. The NC3Rs led a crowdsourcing project to collect data on the prevalence and potential triggers of aggression in laboratory mice. The crowdsou...

Improving the reproducibility of biomedical research is a major challenge. Transparent and accurate reporting are vital to this process; it allows readers to assess the reliability of the findings, and repeat or build upon the work of other researchers. The NC3Rs developed the ARRIVE guidelines in 2010 to help authors and journals identify the mini...

Reproducible science requires transparent reporting. The ARRIVE guidelines were originally developed in 2010 to improve the reporting of animal research. They consist of a checklist of information to include in publications describing in vivo experiments to enable others to scrutinise the work adequately, evaluate its methodological rigour, and rep...

The rapid global spread of artificial light at night is causing unprecedented disruption to ecosystems. In otherwise dark environments, street lights restrict the use of major flight routes by some bats, including the threatened lesser horseshoe bat Rhinolophus hipposideros, and may disrupt foraging. Using radio tracking, we examined the response o...

In 2010, the NC3Rs published the Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines to improve the reporting of animal research. Despite considerable levels of support from the scientific community, the impact on the quality of reporting in animal research publications has been limited. This position paper highlights the strategy...

Affective states influence decision-making under ambiguity in humans and other animals. Individuals in a negative state tend to interpret ambiguous cues more negatively than individuals in a positive state. We demonstrate that the fruit fly,Drosophila melanogaster, also exhibits state-dependent changes in cue interpretation.Drosophilawere trained o...

In this paper we consider the impact of both missing data and measurement errors on a longitudinal analysis of participation in higher education in Australia. We develop a general method for handling both discrete and continuous measurement errors that also allows for the incorporation of missing values and random effects in both binary and continu...

Aim To present a flexible model for repeated measures longitudinal growth data within individuals that allows trends over time to incorporate individual-specific random effects. These may reflect the timing of growth events and characterise within-individual variability which can be modelled as a function of age. Subjects and methods A Bayesian mo...

Obesity is considered the second most common health problem in pet cats in developed countries. This study used prospective data from a longitudinal study of pet cats (‘C.L.A.W.S.’, www.bristol.ac.uk/vetscience/claws) to identify early-life risk factors for feline overweight/obesity occurring at around two years of age. Data were collected via five...

R2MLwiN is a new package designed to run the multilevel modeling software program MLwiN from within the R environment. It allows for a large range of models to be specified which take account of a multilevel structure, including continuous, binary, proportion, count, ordinal and nominal responses for data structures which are nested, cross-classifi...

Highly trained observers can show near-optimal visual search strategies, similar to those of a Bayesian ideal observer. Based on two participants, Najemnik & Geisler (2005, 2008) demonstrate that optimal search can be identified with a stereotypical pattern of eye movements when searching for a target (short horizontal saccades and occasional jumps...

Importance of the dry period with respect to mastitis control is now well established although the precise interventions that reduce the risk of acquiring intramammary infections during this time are not clearly understood. There are very few intervention studies that have measured the clinical efficacy of specific mastitis interventions within a c...

The aim of the current study was to investigate the social relationships between individual sheep, and factors that influence this, through the novel application of the statistical multiple membership multiple classification (MMMC) model. In study one 49 ewes (ranging between 1 and 8 years old) were fitted with data loggers, which recorded when pai...

Multilevel models, also often known as random effects or mixed models, are now a well-established statistical technique with applications in many disciplinary areas, most notably the social and medical sciences. In this article, we provide a basic introduction to these models and discuss extensions that deal with data structures of increasing compl...

Affect-induced cognitive judgement biases occur in both humans and animals. Animals in a more negative affective state tend to interpret ambiguous cues more negatively than animals in a more positive state and vice versa. Investigating animals’ responses to ambiguous cues can therefore be used as a proxy measure of affective state. We investigated...

The use of statistical modelling by researchers in all disciplines is growing in prominence. There is an increase in the availability and complexity of data sources, and an increase in the sophistication of statistical methods that can be used. For the novice practitioner of statistical modelling it can seem like you are stuck at the bottom of a mo...

We develop a random effects discrete choice model for the analysis of households' choice of neighbourhood over time. The model is parameterised in a way that exploits longitudinal data to separate the in uence of neighbourhood characteristics on the decision to move out of the current area ("push" effects) and on the choice of one destination over...

Multilevel models, also often known as random effects or mixed models, are now a well-established statistical technique with applications in many disciplinary areas, most notably the social and medical sciences. In this article, we provide a basic introduction to these models and discuss extensions that deal with data structures of increasing compl...

We present a technique to capture retrospective provenance across a number of tools in a statistical software suite. Our goal is to facilitate portability of processes between the tools to enhance usability and to support reproducibility. We describe an intermediate notation to aid runtime capture of provenance and demonstrate conversion to an exec...

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Bats frequently roost in historic churches, and these colonies are of considerable conservation value. Inside churches, bat droppings and urine can cause damage to the historic fabric of the building and to items of cultural significance. In extreme cases, large quantities of droppings can restrict the use of a church for worship and/or other commu...

The main aim of this study was to replicate methodology used to estimate the size of the UK pet cat and dog populations in 2006 and the proportion of households owning cats/dogs in 2007, to produce updated data to compare trends in ownership and population sizes. A cross-sectional study design was used to collect telephone interview data from 3155...

Conflict can arise when bats roost in human dwellings and householders are affected adversely by their presence. In the United Kingdom, the exclusion of bats from roosts can be licensed under exceptional circumstances to alleviate conflict, but the fate of excluded bats and the impact on their survival and reproduction is not well understood. Using...

Obesity is considered the second most common health problem in pet cats in developed countries. Previous studies investigating risk factors for feline obesity have been cross-sectional, where reverse causality cannot be ruled out. This study is the first to use prospective data from a large scale longitudinal study of pet cats ('Bristol Cats') to i...

Neuronal brain activity in response to repeated stimuli can be perceived using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In this paper, we develop a statistical model for fMRI data that estimates both the associated haemodynamic response function and the within and between trial variability through maximum likelihood estimation. We discuss our...

Applications of multilevel models to continuous outcomes nearly always assume constant residual variance and constant random effects variances and covariances. However, modeling heterogeneity of variance can prove a useful indicator of model misspecification and in some educational and behavioral studies, it may even be of direct substantive intere...

Lameness in dairy cows is an important welfare issue. As part of a welfare assessment, herd level lameness prevalence can be estimated from scoring a sample of animals, where higher levels of accuracy are associated with larger sample sizes. As the financial cost is related to the number of cows sampled, smaller samples are preferred. Sequential sa...

The 3Rs-replacement, reduction, and refinement-can be applied to any animal experiment by researchers and other bodies seeking to conduct those studies in as humane a manner as possible. Key to the success of this endeavor is an appreciation of the principles of good experimental design and analysis; these need to be considered in concert before an...

This paper reports radial colour and longitudinal mitral annulus pulsed-wave tissue Doppler findings in a large cohort of healthy, adult pet rabbits. Thirty-nine rabbits (22 Dwarf Lops, 14 French Lops and 3 Alaskan) underwent conscious echocardiography. The median age of the rabbits was 22 months and the median weight was 2.8 kg (Dwarf Lop 2.4kg/Fr...

The reliability of scientific research is under scrutiny. A recently convened working group proposes cultural adjustments to incentivize better research practices.

Farm animal welfare assessment is used to provide an overall picture of the welfare status of the animals on a farm. It is rarely practical or feasible to assess every animal on the farm, therefore some form of sampling scheme is used where a trade-off is made between time taken and accuracy of the results. Here, how representative the sample resul...

The theoretical concept of ‘iceberg indicators’ suggests that by measuring only a subset of animal-based measures it may be possible to predict the overall welfare state of an animal. To test the concept of iceberg indicators, a Welfare Quality assessment was carried out on 92 UK dairy farms which were found to have an overall Welfare Quality class...

The Welfare Quality ® protocols provide a multidimensional assessment of welfare, which is lengthy, and hence limited in terms of practicality. The aim of this study was to investigate potential ‘iceberg indicators’ which could reliably predict the overall classification as a means of reducing the length of time for an assessment and so increase th...

Decision-making under ambiguity in cognitive bias tasks is a promising new indicator of affective valence in animals. Rat studies support the hypothesis that animals in a negative affective state evaluate ambiguous cues negatively. Prior automated operant go/go judgement bias tasks have involved training rats that an auditory cue of one frequency p...

The theoretical concept of ‘iceberg indicators’ suggests that by measuring only a subset of animal-based measures it may be possible to predict the overall welfare state of an animal. To test the concept of iceberg indicators, a Welfare Quality assessment was carried out on 92 UK dairy farms which were found to have an overall Welfare Quality class...

Objectives The aim of the study was to report normal two-dimensional, M-mode, and Doppler echocardiographic findings from a large cohort of healthy, manually restrained, adult pet rabbits. Animals and Methods Forty healthy pet rabbits [22 Dwarf Lops (DL), 14 French Lops (FL) and 4 Alaskan (AL)] underwent a full physical examination and conscious t...

Elastography is a simple, expedient and noninvasive technique that may be used to assess the elasticity or stiffness of a tissue, in conjunction with traditional B-mode ultrasonography. Quantitative assessment of tissue stiffness can be made which involves measurement of the shear wave velocity within the tissue of interest. The goal of this study...

This paper presents an account of a Welfare Quality® assessment of 92 dairy farms carried out by seven experienced assessors. The aim was to evaluate the potential of the Welfare Quality® assessment protocol with respect to its uptake by UK farm assurance schemes. Data collection, and measure aggregation were performed according to the Welfare Qual...

In the last decade the number of bioscience journals has increased enormously, with many filling specialised niches reflecting new disciplines and technologies. The emergence of open-access journals has revolutionised the publication process, maximising the availability of research data. Nevertheless, a wealth of evidence shows that across many are...

The paper extends existing models for multilevel multivariate data with mixed response types to handle quite general types and patterns of missing data values in a wide range of multilevel generalized linear models. It proposes an efficient Bayesian modelling approach that allows missing values in covariates, including models where there are intera...

Simple Summary Key aims of the formal inspections of British zoos are to assess compliance with minimum standards of animal welfare and promote improvements in animal care and husbandry. We compared reports from two consecutive inspections of 136 British zoos to see whether these goals were being achieved. Most zoos did not meet all the minimum ani...

The social network literature on network dependences has largely ignored other sources of dependence, such as the school that a student attends, or the area in which an individual lives. The multilevel modelling literature on school and area dependences has, in turn, largely ignored social networks. To bridge this divide, a multiple-membership mult...

The paper extends existing models for multilevel multivariate data with mixed response types to handle quite general types and patterns of missing data values in a wide range of multilevel generalized linear models. It proposes an efficient Bayesian modelling approach that allows missing values in covariates, including models where there are intera...

Laying hens with keel fractures (n = 35) and control hens with no fractures (n = 12) were trained to associate the colour and position of an environment with the effects of either a subcutaneous injection of an opioid analgesic drug (butorphanol) or a subcutaneous injection of saline in a conditioned place preference experiment. Each hen experience...

Bayesian mixture models can be used to discriminate between the distributions of continuous test responses for different infection stages. These models are particularly useful in case of chronic infections with a long latent period, like Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP) infection, where a perfect reference test does not exist. Howe...

Objective: To report signalment, history, indications, complications and outcome for 28 dogs and 5 cats in which 34 permanent epicardial pacing leads were surgically placed by transdiaphragmatic approach (32) or intercostal thoracotomy (2). Methods: Medical records (2005-2010) were reviewed. Signalment, age, species, gender, clinical signs, pres...

Experiments to investigate bone's physiological adaptation to mechanical loading frequently employ models that apply dynamic loads to bones in vivo and assess the changes in mass and architecture that result. It is axiomatic that bones will only show an adaptive response if the applied artificial loading environment differs in a significant way fro...

A very general class of multilevel factor analysis and structural equation models is proposed which are derived from considering the concatenation of a series of building blocks that use sets of factor structures defined within the levels of a multilevel model. An MCMC estimation algorithm is proposed for this structure to produce parameter chains...

The incidence of herd breakdown (HBD) with bovine tuberculosis (bTB) has continued to increase year on year since the 1980s in Great Britain. The management of bTB constitutes a major challenge for government and the cattle industry. Whilst various factors have been implicated with the risk of HBD with bTB, factors involved in recovery are less wel...

In a cross-sectional study, data from records of cattle slaughtered over a 1-year period at a large abattoir in South West England were analysed using an ordered category response model to investigate the inter-relationships between age, sex and breed on development of the permanent anterior (PA) teeth. Using the model, transition points at which t...