Incorporating Prototyping and Iteration Into Intervention Development: A Case Study of a Dining Hall–Based Intervention

Abstract

Background: Previous research from the fields of computer science and engineering highlight the importance of an iterative design process (IDP) to create more creative and effective solutions. Objective: This study describes IDP as a new method for developing health behavior interventions and evaluates the effectiveness of a dining hall–based intervention developed using IDP on college students’ eating behavior and values. Participants: participants were 458 students (52.6% female, age = 19.6 ± 1.5 years [M ± SD]). Methods: The intervention was developed via an IDP parallel process. A cluster-randomized controlled study compared differences in eating behavior among students in 4 university dining halls (2 intervention, 2 control). Results: The final intervention was a multicomponent, point-of-selection marketing campaign. Students in the intervention dining halls consumed significantly less junk food and high-fat meat and increased their perceived importance of eating a healthful diet relative to the control group. Conclusion: IDP may be valuable for the development of behavior change interventions.     

Genealogy of tabunka kyōsei: A Critical Analysis of the Reformation of the Multicultural Co-living Discourse in Japan

The Japanese government started to accept semi-skilled foreign workers officially under the newly established tokutei ginō status in 2019, and national policies for supporting foreign residents are gradually being developed. However, it is unclear how the principles of tabunka kyōsei (multicultural coexistence or co-living), the official slogan for supporting foreign residents since the mid-2000s, have changed as a result of recent policy trends. In this article, I examine the transformation of logics for legitimizing policies for foreign residents using discourse analysis of the official government documents on tabunka kyōsei. Previous critical studies have revealed that tabunka kyōsei is based on the logic of a binary opposition between “Japanese” and “foreigners”. This was combined with the neoliberal logic of “supports for self-reliance”, a paternalism that sees foreigners as being in need of support if they can live "just as" Japanese. This paternalism has prevented the development of recognizing the human rights and cultural differences of foreign residents as de facto immigrants. In addition, a logic has explicitly emerged in the tabunka kyōsei discourse at the end of the 2010s that sees foreigners as a threat to national security and that their acceptance should be strictly governed by the border control policy and socially controlled from the viewpoint of national interests. To deal with this situation, tabunka kyōsei must be recreated as a principle for recognizing foreign residents as immigrants and guaranteeing their human rights and cultural differences.     

Dissociation in Medical Practice: Social Distress and the Health Care System

The average physician has developed several different headv, each representing another selfon the same body. One is that ofthe conventional, ethical professional who wants nothing more than to improve mankind’s health and well-being, the standard model. Another is the scientist who intends to be perceived as calculating, cold, and factual in determining what will or will not assist the ailing patient (Uexkull & Hannes, 1986). His tools are drugs, surgery, and hospitalization for presumed physical and mental ills. The third, and the one that concerns us the most, is what I will call “the neo-capitalist professional hero” (Lifton, 1971). This persona is an evolution of our American dominated internationaL cuLture which the medical profession as a group has honored by honing and poli5hing with extraordinary skil, second only to politicians and bankers, maximizing it to the ftuther detriment of the entire society. Though the body needv all three to function, none of these heads willingly acknowledges or suppOl1s the importance of the others. In what follows, a variety of media, journals, professional books, and a survey are refen"ed to in documenting data about ethical Laxity and fraud in the medical profession. Institutional, social concepts are developed that explain the data, and revealing how sociaL distress is the embodiment of the neo-capitalist professional hero. There are also suggestions for remedies in what follows, which are presented without realistic hope for implementation very soon, unfortunately, since they involve deep changes in established sociaL institutions. However, the country at large has developed some awareness of a problem which has reached epidemic propOrlions in the medical profession. FUrlher increments in awareness promise to tip the balance into positive government action.     

Risk,Recovery and Resilience

Abstract

From 1999 to 2004, the Child and Youth Care Agency for Development (CYAD), a South African Non-Government Agency (NGO), has been working in partnership with the University of Victoria's International Institute for Child Rights and Development (IICRD) and Aboriginal Liaison Office (ABLO) to identify and reinforce community and cultural assets in supporting child and family resilience. The project, entitled Circles of Care: Community and Support for Children Affected by HIV/AIDS, has developed and piloted a model for community capacity building that supports traditional African community values, beliefs and governance structures (understood as Setso) in reinforcing child resilience through child rights based advocacy that partners children and traditional leaders (identified as Morena) and healers (called Dingaka).     

Toward Measuring Proactivity in Person-Environment Transactions in Late Adulthood

Abstract

Both a life-span developmental control perspective as well as an environmental gerontology view, particularly Lawton's notion of environmental proactivity, served as the theoretical background to suggest a new dimension of domain-specific control, namely housing-related control beliefs. The newly developed 23-item Housing-Related Control Beliefs Questionnaire (HCQ) is based on the widely used dimensions of Internal Control, External Control: Powerful Others, and External Control: Chance. In two studies of older adults (N= 485; 66-69 years and N= 107; 65-91 years), we examined the psychometric quality of the questionnaire and explored its relation with socio-structural variables, general control beliefs, and a set of housing-related aspects. Psychometric results indicate satisfactory levels of internal consistency and re-test stability in all three scales of the instrument and factor analysis supported the theoretically expected three-factor solution. Also, HCQ's external control subscales were correlated with higher age, lower education, and lower income and the correlational pattern between the HCQ and a general control measure was substantial and consistent with theoretical expectations. Relations between the HCQ and objective and subjective housing-related variables tended to be low in size. These preliminary findings suggest the potential usefulness of the HCQ as a measure to address environmental proactivity in late adulthood.     

Assessing symptoms of hypogonadism by self-administered questionnaire: qualitative findings in patients and controls

Background. Current screening instruments for hypogonadism lack adequate specificity and diagnostic accuracy. A new self-administered questionnaire of hypogonadism symptoms is being developed to address this need. The process for questionnaire development and results from the first (qualitative) phase are presented.

Methods. Qualitative interviews were conducted based on a new conceptual model of hypogonadism and according to standards for questionnaire development. An item pool was generated from focus groups and in-depth interviews with two groups of hypogonadal patients, treated (N = 26) and untreated (N = 26), and age-equivalent controls (N = 28). Standardized scoring of the qualitative interviews was used to confirm conceptual domains in the model and to generate questionnaire items for further validation.

Results. Key domains identified in both patients and controls included: (a) physical function; (b) bodily signs and symptoms; (c) sexual function and libido; (d) sleep function; (e) mood and affective function; (f) memory and cognitive function. The final domain is distress or bother associated with hypogonadism symptoms. This domain was only relevant to the patient groups.

Conclusions. The first stage in the design of a new hypogonadism screener has been completed. Seven domains were identified and draft items were developed in each domain according to current standards of patient-reported outcomes.     

Retheorising Emile Durkheim on society and religion: embodiment,intoxication and collective life

In this paper we argue that Emile Durkheim's sociology contains within it a theory of society and religion as a form of embodied intoxication that is implicit in his writings on effervescent assemblies but has not yet been explicated or developed fully by subsequent commentators. This holds that for social or religious collectivities to exist, the bodies of individuals must be both marked by insignia, customs and techniques that facilitate the possibility of culturally normative patterns of recognition, interaction and action, while also being excited, enthused or intoxicated sufficiently to be inhabited as collective rather than egoistic beings. Our paper begins by investigating the central features of Durkheim's theory – including his interest in the ritual steering of these processes – as developed most fully in his last major study, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. We then develop our own analysis of Durkheim's concern that modernity has stimulated a rise in ‘abnormal’ forms of embodied intoxication that fail to attach individuals to the wider societies in which they live, and demonstrate the utility of our analytical framework by employing it to assess the recent resurgence of charismatic Christian revivalism.     

Diagnosing physical abuse using Bayes' Theorem: a preliminary study

Objectives. To perform a preliminary study to compare the patterns of bruises in a physically abused group of children and a control group; to investigate whether these could be modelled statistically to enable probabilities of typical bruise patterns to be calculated; to apply Bayes' Theorem to find the probability that a child with a given bruise pattern has been the subject of physical abuse. Design. An observational study. Setting. Cardiff and Vale of Glamorgan. Subjects. Children who have suffered child physical abuse, 0–14 years. The diagnosis was confirmed at a case conference in all cases. A control group of 289 children who presented to the Accident and Emergency Department at the Cardiff Royal Infirmary after an accidental injury. Main outcome measures. The distribution bruise pattern in three regions of the body. The posterior probability of abuse for a given bruise pattern. Results. The bruise distribution in physically abused and control children was well described by a negative binomial distribution. There was a different distribution for the three different regions of the body in physically abused children. The bruising frequency and distribution for the physically abused group was very different from that of the controls. We were able to use parameters derived from these distributions to calculate posterior probabilities of physical abuse given a particular pattern of bruises using Bayes' Theorem. Conclusions. This preliminary study demonstrates that we can use Bayes' Theorem to combine prior probabilities of physical abuse with observed patterns of bruising in given children to obtain posterior probabilities of abuse. This principle has considerable potential for better diagnosis of the physically abused child. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Successful societies: Decision-making and the quality of attentiveness

Combining moral philosophy with sociological theory to build on themes introduced in Hall and Lamont’s Successful Societies (2009), the paper outlines a distinctive perspective. It holds that a necessary condition of successful societies is that decision-makers base their decisions on a high level of attentiveness (concern and comprehension) towards subjectively valued and morally legitimate forms of life. Late modern societies consist of a plurality of forms of life, each providing grounds for what Alasdair MacIntyre has called internal goods—valued and morally valuable practices. The status of such goods is examined, and distinctions are drawn between their manifest and latent, and transposable and situationally specific, characteristics. We integrate this refined idea of internal goods into a developed conception of habitus that is both morally informed and situationally embedded. The sociological approach of strong structuration theory (SST) is employed to demonstrate how this conception of habitus can guide the critique of decision-making that damages internal goods. We identify the most pervasive and invidious forms of damaging decision-making in contemporary societies as those involving excessive forms of instrumental reasoning. We argue that our developed conception of habitus, anchored in the collectively valued practices of specific worlds, can be a powerful focus for resistance. Accounts of scholarship in higher education and of the white working class in America illustrate the specificities of singular, particular, social worlds and illuminate critical challenges raised by the perspective we advocate.     

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation in Personality: Assessing Knowledge Profiling and the Work Preference Inventory in a Thai Population

Abstract

Personality trait theories are often used to identify particular personality or behavioural characteristics of potential employees by human resource management departments. However, this can be enhanced by understanding how motivation plays a role in personality, and particularly within the context of knowledge-based personality processes. The paper draws on knowledge management theory called Knowledge Profiling (KP) in which a theoretical construct has been developed representing personality through a set of three traits and their polar values. This model has previously been linked to the trait theory of personality called Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). This research adopts KP, develops its linkage with MBTI, and elaborates on its connection with motivation. The resulting model, referred to as Knowledge Profiling Motivational (KPM) model, is developed by connecting it with the Work Preference Inventory (WPI), which assesses individual differences in Intrinsic and Extrinsic motivational orientations. Analysis indicates that KPM is an improvement on the KP model in representing personality. Moreover, the research suggests that personality traits are not limited to a bipolar relationship but that there are relationships between traits as well.     

Arsenic exposure associated with decreased bone mineralization in male

Abstract

Objective: Arsenic (As) exposure may cause several medical problems. There were a few studies investigated whether it has affected bone tissue in women. However, there was no study in men. The aim of this study was to evaluate associations between bone mineral density (BMD) and As exposure in men subjects.

Material and methods: We enrolled in this study 254 subjects who due to chronic As exposure suspected and 82 subjects as a control group. Hair As levels were detected by a hair analysis (Varian AA240Z Zeeman Atomic Absorption Spectrometer, USA). BMD measurements were obtained using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry instrumentation. We investigated associations between the hair As levels and BMD measurements.

Results: The frequency of osteoporosis and osteopenia was found to be 0.8% and 54.5%, respectively, in the As exposure group. The frequency of osteoporosis was found to be 1% and osteopenia was 32.4% in control subjects. There was significant difference between two groups (p?<?0.001). Hair As level has a median 1.01 (min: 0.06 and max: 25.71). There were no significant correlation between hair As levels and BMD measurements.

Conclusion: According to our observations, As exposure was associated with bone metabolism. Possible cause of osteopenia may be exposure to As. Further investigations are needed to estimate the relationship between As and bone metabolism.     

Institutionalization of Mongolian shamanism: from primitivism to civilization

This article traced the construction of the Mongolian term and concept böö mörgöl, which denotes ‘shamanism’, later developed to böögiin shashin meaning ‘shamanic religion’. Although the term bö’e (alternatively böge or böö), referring to spiritual practitioners such as shamans, appears early in the literature from the thirteenth century onward, the combination böö mörgöl and khara shajin meaning ‘black religion’ is fairly recent and first appeared in sources from the nineteenth century. Its latest version, böögiin shashin, has an even shorter history dating as recently to 1980s, and has spread rapidly over the last two decades. I argue that ‘shamanism’ in Mongolia has been constructed in scholarly works mostly by public involvement and shamans themselves. More precisely, academic discourses have played a key role in institutionalizing individual spiritual practitioners in two fields, first by creating a history for ‘Mongolian shamanism’ and second by creating archetypes for miscellaneous spiritual practices and practitioners. The concept böö mörgöl have been used in translating and importing the Western construction of ‘shamanism’ while in the next step of development, böögiin shashin was important in institutionalizing a national religion of shamanism versus world religions. As a result, Mongols have an original religion which has been the main building block in constructing Mongolian ‘nomadic civilization’.     

An Andragogical Application to the Training of Social Workers

This paper presents a critical consumer model for teaching social work research. Critical consumption is defined as the ability to understand, evaluate, utilize, and apply the results of social work research. The authors describe the use of this approach in their classroom and summarize a battery of “critical questions” they have used successfully to teach the skills of critical consumption. Although this model was developed in an undergraduate context, it has considerable relevance for teaching social work research at other educational levels as well.     

Exploratory Evaluation of a School-Based Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Program

Internationally, efficacy studies of school-based child sexual abuse prevention programs display a series of methodological shortcomings. Few studies include adolescent participants, recording of disclosures has been inconsistent, and no studies to date have assessed presenter adherence to program protocols or summated the costs of program implementation. A pretest–posttest waitlist control design was used to evaluate the Tweenees program delivered to grade 6 (n?=?88) and grade 7/8 students (n?=?117) compared to a control (n?=?185). Outcome measures included a knowledge/skills questionnaire, systematic coding of disclosures, and video interaction analysis of lessons. Costs were calculated per student, class, and school. Adolescents made small knowledge and skills gains indicating a program ceiling effect. Implementation analysis suggests low levels of adult control facilitated disclosures. Program costs were relatively inexpensive. Recommendations are made for future research.     

Support for Resilience Theory with Female Adolescents Who Are Violent: A MIMIC Model

Resilience theory has been shown to explain aggression and violence in adolescents in general. No studies were found that supported this theory specifically with female adolescents. A multiple indicators multiple causes (MIMIC) model was developed from the review of the literature. Structural equation modeling was then used to quantitatively test this theoretical MIMIC model. Results indicate that the direct effect of the demographic contingencies are significantly related to violent behavior: race (β = ?.53, t = 0.04, p < .001), community supports (β = ?0.55, t = ?0.04, p < .001), and subsidized income supports (β = 0.54, t = 0.04, p < .001). These results suggest demographic contingencies play an important role in predicting violent behavior in female adolescents.     

U.S. Adults’ Pornography Consumption and Attitudes Toward Adolescents’ Access to Birth Control: A National Panel Study

Objectives: The conditions under which adolescents should have access to birth control has been debated by U.S. policy makers and health officials for some time. Given the variability and fluidity of law and policy in this area and the high stakes described by advocates for and against access, identifying predictors of electorate opinion is important. Methods: This study utilized national panel data gathered in 2008 (T1) and 2010 (T2) to examine associations between U.S. adults' pornography consumption and attitudes toward adolescents' access to birth control. Results: Consistent with a social learning perspective on media, pornography consumption at T1 was associated with more positive attitudes toward adolescents' access to birth control at T2, even after accounting for T1 birth control attitudes and multiple potential third-variables. Consistent with Wright's (2011 Wright, P. J. (2011). Mass media effects on youth sexual behavior: Assessing the claim for causality. Communication Yearbook, 35, 343–386. [Google Scholar]) acquisition, activation, application model (3AM) of media sexual socialization, this association was stronger for more morally individualistic adults. Contrary to a selective exposure perspective on media, birth control attitudes at T1 did not predict pornography consumption at T2. Conclusions: These findings have implications for the prediction of birth control attitudes specifically and the socializing influence of pornography more generally.     

Exploring Epistemologies: Social Work Action as a Reflection of Philosophical Assumptions

Abstract

Using Habermas' (1971) Grand Theory and Schaefer's (1979) notion of Theory as Fiction, two major philosophical assumptions that undergird the literature, practice and teaching of social work are reviewed. Empiricism dominates social work theory and aims at technical control. Existentialism has been an important but marginal voice and attempts to explain subjective meaning. Two newer theoretical positions also are introduced: Critical theory, which considers humanity's ability to reflect on history to be an agent of societal change; and deconstruction, which questions the validity of any structure. The article concludes with a consideration of the implications of using each position as a context for teaching.     

Reward Seeking and Cognitive Control: Using the Dual Systems Model to Predict Adolescent Sexual Behavior

Research has provided support for the dual systems model of adolescent risk taking, but the model has rarely been applied to sexual behavior. Using data from the NICHD SECCYD (N = 958; Mage = 15.07, SD = 0.18), this study examined the effects of cognitive control, reward seeking, and their interaction on sexual behavior. Results of structural equation models revealed that performance on behavioral tasks assessing reward seeking and cognitive control uniquely predicted sexual intercourse, but the interaction between them was not significant. For oral sex, only cognitive control was a significant predictor. The findings provide additional support for the dual systems model, and suggest that reward seeking and cognitive control make unique contributions to adolescent sexual behavior.     

A longitudinal study of the effects of a university human sexuality course on sexual attitudes

This study tested the hypotheses that students taking a university human sexuality course will have different attitudes over a 2‐year period than students not taking such a course, and more accepting attitudes toward the sexual behaviors of others, over a 2‐year period, than toward their own sexual behavior. Sexual attitudes of 127 human sexuality class students and 114 control class students at the University of Northern Iowa were measured at the beginning of class (pretest), the end of class (posttest), and 2 years after the end of class (follow‐up). There were no pretest differences between the treatment and control groups in university classification, marital status, political affiliation, religious affiliation, sex, age, grade point average, or sexual attitudes. Both hypotheses were supported. Human sexuality students developed more accepting attitudes and became more accepting of behaviors for others compared to behaviors for self. Control group students developed less accepting attitudes and became less accepting of behaviors for others compared to behaviors for self. The sex of the students and the session they attended class were also found to influence sexual attitudes.     

Securitizing America: Strategic Incapacitation and the Policing of Protest Since the 11 September 2001 Terrorist Attacks

During the 1970s, the predominant strategy of protest policing shifted from ‘escalated force’ and repression of protesters to one of ‘negotiated management’ and mutual cooperation with protesters. Following the failures of negotiated management at the 1999 World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle, law enforcement quickly developed a new social control strategy, referred to here as ‘strategic incapacitation’. The US police response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks quickened the pace of police adoption of this new strategy, which emphasizes the goals of ‘securitizing society’ and isolating or neutralizing the sources of potential disruption. These goals are accomplished through (1) the use of surveillance and information sharing as a way to assess and monitor risks, (2) the use of pre‐emptive arrests and less‐lethal weapons to selectively disrupt or incapacitate protesters that engage in disruptive protest tactics or might do so, and (3) the extensive control of space in order to isolate and contain disruptive protesters actual or potential. In a comparative fashion, this paper examines the shifts in United States policing strategies over the last 50 years and uses illustrative cases from national conventions, the global justice movement and the anti‐war movement to show how strategic incapacitation has become a leading social control strategy used in the policing of protests since 9/11. It concludes by identifying promising questions for future research.