The reliability of environmental measures of the college alcohol environment

Much of what we know about students' drinking patterns and problems related to alcohol use is based on survey research. Although local and national survey data are important to alcohol-prevention projects, they do not sufficiently capture the complexity of the alcohol environment. Environmental prevention approaches to alcohol-related problems have been shown to be effective in community settings and researchers have begun to study and adapt such approaches for use on college campuses. Many environmental approaches require systematic scanning of the campus alcohol environment. This study assessed the inter-rater reliability of two environmental scanning tools (a newspaper content analysis form and a bulletin analysis form) designed to identify alcohol-related advertisements targeting college students. Inter-rater reliability for these forms varied across different rating categories and ranged from poor to excellent. Suggestions for future research are addressed.     

Gender differences in the marriage and cohabitation income premium*

Using data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I identify causal effects of marriage and cohabitation on total family income. My goals are to compare men's and women's changes in financial status upon entering unions and to assess the relative contributions of adjustments in own income, income pooling, and changes in family size. Changes in own income that are due to intrahousehold specialization prove to be minor for both men and women relative to the effects of adding another adult's income to the family total. Women gain roughly 55% in needs-adjusted, total family income, regardless of whether they cohabit or marry, whereas men's needs-adjusted income levels remain unchanged when men make these same transitions.     

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.     

Recombinative Generalization of Tacts Through Matrix Training with Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Foss (Journal of Experimental Psychology, 76, 450–459, 1968a; Journal of Experimental Psychology, 77, 341–344, 1968b) compared overlap and non-overlap instruction to promote recombinative response generalization using a matrix training procedure. In the present study, we used a similar set of procedures to teach tacting of kitchen items and prepositions (i.e., relational autoclitics) to three females ages 13–20, diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. We taught some kitchen items/prepositions as tacts (e.g., “the strainer is to the right of the box”) according to a non-overlap instructional sequence. Subsequently, we taught more combinations in an overlap instructional sequence. Each training procedure was followed by probes of untrained relations. Two participants demonstrated recombinative generalization of untrained combinations following the first non-overlap phase, while the third participant demonstrated some response generalization of untrained relations after a few additional training sequences. All three participants demonstrated generalized tacting of object components while two participants showed generalized tacting of preposition components.