Using portable computers in home visits: Effects on programs, data quality, home visitors and caregivers

Collecting and using high-quality data related to participant outcomes are critical for monitoring program quality in home visitation programs for child abuse and neglect prevention, as well as for efforts to improve effectiveness and use limited funds efficiently. An evaluation was conducted to determine the impact of using portable computers to record data from standardized screening tools during home visits. Six home visiting agencies participating in the Early Years Home Visitation Outcomes Project of Wisconsin implemented computerized screenings with wireless uploading of data to a state public health database. Using portable computers saved agencies time and money on all four screening tools tested, with significant cost savings (p < 0.05) on three of the four tools, as compared to paper-and-pencil administration of screenings and manual data entry. The average time used per screening dropped between 9 and 63 min, saving agencies between $2 and $14 per screening administration. Screening completion was also higher when portable computers were used for data capture. There was little effect on home visitors' perceptions of the ease of data collection or their interactions with families being served. The use of portable computers to collect standard screening data holds promise for the field of home visitation.     

The relationship between sexual abuse and drug use: findings from Houston's Safer Choices 2 program

Self-report drug use data were collected from 282 female alternative school students surveyed through the Safer Choices 2 study in Houston, Texas. Data collection took place between October 2000 and March 2001 via audio-enabled laptop computers equipped with headphones. Logistic regression analyses indicated that sexual abuse history was significantly associated with lifetime use (OR = 1.9, p < or = 0.05). While the relationships tested in this study are exploratory, they provide evidence for an important connection between sexual abuse and substance use among female alternative school students.     

Remote control: evaluating the potential of virtual desktops as a data collection tool in studies exploring how people use the Internet

Abstract

This study explores how virtual desktops hosted within a cloud computing environment can be used as a data capture tool to undertake research exploring web-browsing and web-searching behaviour. It details the protocol used to observe the task-orientated web interactions of 105 university and school aged participants within the confines of a research experiment and considers the comparability between data collected remotely via virtual desktops and data collected in a controlled environment. Data collected remotely via virtual desktops is found to be comparable to data collected in the field across a number of key statistics, with remote data collection making recruitment and participation more convenient, whilst potentially reducing response bias. The protocol detailed has broad potential for adaption where there is a need to remotely capture participants’ web-use in a cost-effective and non-technical manner. Limitations with the protocol are identified and possibilities for future adaptations are discussed.     

Health Promotion using Tablet Technology with Older Adult African American Methadone Clients: A Case Study

This exploratory study examined three single case studies to investigate the feasibility of handheld tablet computers for older adult methadone clients. The intervention targeted African American adults (N = 3) over the age of 50 who were in substance abuse treatment. Subjects participated, via a face-to-face video program, in 12 educational sessions focused on healthy living. Both the feasibility of teaching older adult subjects to use tablet computers and their levels of engagement in the intervention were assessed. In addition, completion of participants’ goals and their ability to remember those goals were tracked weekly. Findings revealed that participants were able to learn how to operate the tablets and enjoyed using the technology. Frequent interactions between the counselors and the participants, using face-to-face video, facilitated success in achieving program goals.     

The Neighborhood History Calendar: A Data Collection Method Designed for Dynamic Multilevel Modeling

This paper presents a new data collection method, called the Neighborhood History Calendar, designed to collect event histories of community-level changes over time. We discuss the need for and the uses of this method. We describe issues related to the design of instruments, collection of data, and data entry. We provide detailed examples from an application of this method to the study of marriage, contraception, and fertility in rural Nepal. The paper addresses applications of this same technique to other settings and research problems. We also extend the technique to collection of other forms of contextual-history data, including school histories and health service histories. Finally, we discuss how Geographic Information System (GIS) technology can be used to link together multiple sources of contextual-history data.     

Surveiller en éradiquant : l’importance des « médiateurs de la surveillance » et des réseaux informels dans la surveillance des risques sanitaires et environnementaux

Surveillance measures, now a major form of public action in relation to health and environmental risks, often rely on cooperation among parties with contradictory interests. This cooperation is analyzed in cases when neither coercion nor incentives suffice to obtain it. A study of an attack by a virus on crops has brought to light arrangements that contrast with the formal setup for surveillance. These arrangements made it possible for health-related information to circulate. They were facilitated by the activity of “surveillance mediators” who were able — thanks to their durable local roots and their technical qualifications — to relate to different social worlds. Light is thus shed on the need both to take into account the political nature of the data collected during surveillance activities and to examine the many forms they take — forms that are the very conditions for data collection.     

The Personal Computer and the Small Social Agency

Abstract

Use of computers in everyday professional tasks by caseworkers is described. Eighteen front line workers, after two or three hours of training, created and manipulated data bases of client, service, and outcome data tailored to their own caseloads. The authors believe that adoption of computers for everyday tasks by front line workers depends on three elements: Specially designed software which is very user-friendly; conceptual framework as bridge between agency task and computer system; and agency look and feel to all screen displays, forms, and reporting formats. Workers did overcome fear of computers and did see how computers could be professionally useful. This approach seems worthy of examination and further development.     

Fat talk: A citizen sociolinguistic approach

Fat talk, or self‐disparaging talk about the body, is common among US women and increasingly reported for men. Despite its commonality, this unique genre of talk is difficult to access using traditional sociolinguistic methods both because it is brief and because it arises spontaneously in casual conversation. Here we present a new method of data collection accomplished by collaborating with citizen sociolinguists to collect spontaneous fat talk in public spaces. We compare fat talk exchanges captured by citizen sociolinguists against those collected in a vignette‐based discourse completion task. Our results show redundancy both in how fat talk is initiated and in the manner of the reply across both forms of data collection. However, the citizen sociolinguistic method produced greater variety in fat talk utterances, was less methodologically taxing, and revealed that fat talk occurs differently in same‐sex interactions than mixed‐sex ones.     

Datafying anti-poverty programmes: implications for data justice

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to illuminate the significance of datafication for anti-poverty programmes, meaning social protection schemes designed specifically for poor people. The conversion of beneficiary populations into machine-readable data enables two core functions of social protection, those of recognising entitled beneficiaries and assigning entitlements connected to each anti-poverty scheme. Drawing on the incorporation of Aadhaar, India’s biometric population database, in the national agenda for social protection, we unpack a techno-rational perspective that crafts datafication as a means to enhance the effectiveness of anti-poverty schemes. Nevertheless, narratives collected in the field show multiple forms of data injustice on recipients, underpinned by Aadhaar’s functionality for a shift of the social protection agenda from in-kind subsidies to cash transfers. Based on such narratives the paper introduces a politically embedded view of data, framing datafication as a transformative force that contributes to reforming existing anti-poverty schemes.     

Designing Information Systems for Hospital Social Work Management

This article will identify five critical decisions and the component factors needed for their resolution when hospital social work managers consider computerization. The five decisions are: 1) manual v. computer information systems; 2) mainframe v. personal computers; 3) purchased v. "home-grown" software; 4) autocracy v. participatory democracy; and 5) whether computerized social work data collection systems should ever be abandoned.     

ACCESS TO TECHNOLOGY AND THE TRANSFER FUNCTION OF COMMUNITY COLLEGES: EVIDENCE FROM A FIELD EXPERIMENT

Access to information may represent an important barrier to learning about and ultimately transferring to 4‐year colleges for low‐income community college students. This article explores the role that access to information technology, in particular, plays in enhancing, or possibly detracting from, the transfer function of the community college. Using data from the first‐ever field experiment randomly providing free computers to students, we examine the relationships between access to home computers and enrollment in transferable courses and actual transfers to 4‐year colleges. The results from the field experiment indicate that the treatment group of students receiving free computers has a 4.5 percentage point higher probability of taking transferable courses than the control group of students not receiving free computers. The evidence is less clear for the effects on actual transfers to 4‐year colleges and the probability of using a computer to search for college information (which possibly represents one of the mechanisms for positive effects). In both cases, point estimates are positive, but the confidence intervals are wide. Finally, power calculations indicate that sample sizes would have to be considerably larger to find statistically significant treatment effects and reasonably precise confidence intervals given the actual transfer rate point estimates. (JEL J24, O33, I23, I24)     

Response Effects in the Electronic Survey

This report examines the electronic survey as a research tool.In an electronic survey, respondents use a text processing programto self-administer a computer-based questionnaire. As more peoplehave access to computers, electronic surveys may become widespread.The electronic survey can reduce processing costs because itautomates the transformation of raw data into computer-readableform. It can combine advantages of interviews (e.g., prompts,complex branching) with those of paper mail surveys (e.g., standardization,anonymity). An important issue is how the electronic surveyaffects the responses of people who use it. We conducted anexperimental sample survey on health attitudes, behaviors, andpersonal traits using two forms of administration: electronicand paper mail. Closed-end responses in the electronic surveywere less socially desirable and tended to be more extreme thanwere responses in the paper survey. Open-ended responses thatcould be edited by respondents were relatively long and disclosing.These findings are consistent with other research on computer-mediatedcommunication, raising general issues about using computersto collect self-report data.     

The disability divide in internet access and use

The increasing spread of the Internet holds much potential for enhancing opportunities for people with disabilities. However, scarce evidence exists to suggest that people with disabilities are, in fact, participating in these new developments. Will the spread of information technologies (IT) increase equality by offering opportunities for people with disabilities? Or will a growing reliance on IT lead to more inequality by leaving behind certain portions of the population including people with disabilities? In this paper, the authors draw on nationally representative data regarding Americans' Internet uses to (1) identify the extent to which people with disabilities are embracing use of the Internet; (2) how their use of the Internet compares with the Internet uses of the rest of the population; (3) how having a disability relates to and interacts with other social statuses (e.g. socioeconomic status, age, gender) with regard to Internet use; and (4) what explains these trends. They draw on representative data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census of the United States to answer these questions. It is found that people with disabilities are less likely to live in households with computers, are less likely to use computers and are less likely to be online. However, once socioeconomic background is controlled for, it is found that people with hearing disabilities and those who have limited walking ability are not less likely to be Internet users. This research enables a deeper understanding of both the use of the Internet by people with disabilities and the spread of new IT more generally.     

Colliding Identities in Arctic Canadian Sports and Games

Abstract

Using field data collected in northern Canadian communities between 1991 and 1995, this paper explores recent attempts by Canadian aboriginal peoples to determine and re-discover, on their own terms, what is meant by the expressions “traditional life” and “traditional culture.” Faced with the infiltration into the north of rationalized and commercial “southern” sports and the values they imply, aboriginal Canadians have attempted to consolidate their cultural integrity through the staging of games-festivals. An examination of these games-festivals demonstrates a number of tensions or colliding identities not only between “outside” and aboriginal communities but also within aboriginal communities over the place and meaning of traditional forms of sport, games and other contests.     

DIRECT SUPERVISION: ADDING COMPUTER-ASSISTED FEEDBACK AND DATA CAPTURE TO LIVE SUPERVISION

This is a critical review of live supervision with emphasis on technical innovations such as earphones or bug-in-the-ear, Teleprompters, and computers. A computer-assisted approach is described that overcomes many criticisms of live supervision. Direct supervision uses a computer monitor to unobtrusively provide information to the therapist about the supervisor's perceptions of the clients' and therapist's behavior, the expected therapeutic behaviors, and the therapist's "on target" behavior. Direct supervision has the advantage over other forms of supervision by providing an immediate, continuous, and permanent record for postsession supervision and for research into the supervisor-therapist-client process. The paper provides several suggestions for research.     

Parent loss and childhood bereavement: some theoretical considerations

This paper attempts to review critically the major psychoanalytic positions on the impact of parent loss during childhood. An effort is made to review systematically the issues of the loss of a parent as a love object, the loss of a parent as a narcissistic injury, children's cognitive understanding of death, and the relationship between loss and trauma. Two questions are raised by our efforts to understand the impact of the loss of a parent through death on children under ten years of age. First, what psychological tasks do children confront and what modes of coping do they use to deal with such an event? And, second, does such an event invariably lead to some pathological result for the child, or may its effects be normalized in the course of time? Although these questions may be seen as empirical questions needing to be answered through the collection of data that would confirm or negate the hypotheses generated, the questions are always posed within the context of a theoretical framework that colors how data is collected and which data is collected. By reviewing the theoretical positions, we come to the conclusion that no single approach is sufficient to explain the complexity of the impact of the death of a parent on a child. We propose that since no integrated conceptual framework presently encompasses all that needs to be explained, it is necessary to use a multivariant approach. Such an approach may be helpful in generating hypotheses and in beginning the task of systematic data collection.     

As Autumn Turns to Winter – in Search of the Archive Without an Address

This paper reflects upon absences in the institutional archive and considers the problems associated with the search for non‐textual records. Speculating on the potential of the city street, or spaces as such, as sites of collection, this paper aims to perform a displacement of public forms of memorialization, such as the formal archive, the gravestone, or the public monument and argues that institutional forms of memorialization tend to trade the ontological accumulation of imprints, echoes, and trajectories embodied in everyday spaces for both physical and conceptual containment in a form that is subject to hierarchies of meaning to which public space is ultimately accountable.     

Bridging the qualitative–quantitative divide: Experiences from conducting a mixed methods evaluation in the RUCAS programme

Quantitative and qualitative approaches to planning and evaluation in education for sustainable development have often been treated by practitioners from a single research paradigm. This paper discusses the utility of mixed method evaluation designs which integrate qualitative and quantitative data through a sequential transformative process. Sequential mixed method data collection strategies involve collecting data in an iterative process whereby data collected in one phase contribute to data collected in the next. This is done through examples from a programme addressing the ‘Reorientation of University Curricula to Address Sustainability (RUCAS): A European Commission Tempus-funded Programme’. It is argued that the two approaches are complementary and that there are significant gains from combining both. Using methods from both research paradigms does not, however, mean that the inherent differences among epistemologies and methodologies should be neglected. Based on this experience, it is recommended that using a sequential transformative mixed method evaluation can produce more robust results than could be accomplished using a single approach in programme planning and evaluation focussed on education for sustainable development.     

Taking Big Data apart: local readings of composite media collections

If we are to think critically about Big Data initiatives, we must learn to take them apart. This paper explains how to interrogate Big Data, not as large homogenous resources, but as heterogeneous collections with varied and discordant local ties. My argument focuses on the Big Data of media collections: composite digital repositories of texts, images, and video created in different contexts, but brought together online. The primary example used in this paper is the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), a collection composed of digitized library, museum and archive records from institutions across the United States. I demonstrate how local readings of DPLA data can uncover schemata, errors, infrastructures, classifications, absences, and rituals that have important origins. Moreover, I explain how identifying these local features can support new forms of scholarship, pedagogy, and advocacy in the face of Big Data. For this last point, I use two additional cases: NewsScape, a real-time archive of broadcast news, and Zillow, a marketplace for real estate listings. The range of examples demonstrates how the stakes change from one Big Data initiative to the next. The paper concludes with a set of speculative guidelines for attending to the local conditions in Big Data: get dirty, take a comparative approach, show context, use data to connect people, and create opportunities for the collection of counter-data. When working with Big Data, I argue that thinking locally is thinking critically.     

Unions and environmental regulation

Several logical reasons for union support of environmental regulation suggest union memberships will be larger where expenditures on environmental control are larger. If the relative cost of labor is reduced when additional capital is required to produce a unit of output and if the larger interests of union members and some of the interests of firms can be satisfied by environmental regulation, empirical evidence of those effects should be available. Two statistical tests reported in this paper support the hypothesis that unions will demand certain amounts and forms of environmental regulation. The author expresses appreciation to Fred Amobi for assistance in data collection and to John Warner for helpful comments and criticisms.