Worksite e-mail health promotion trial: Early lessons

In preparation for an electronic mail (e-mail) and web-based health promotion intervention across multiple worksites, secure, regulatory-compliant, user-friendly e-mail and Internet applications were used to recruit potential participants across worksites, to enroll participants, and to collect baseline health assessment data. Specific hardware and software information technology environments were required of the 19 participating worksites. Sequential e-mails introduced the study and invited participation. Twenty-four percent of all employees (1106 of approximately 4600) provided consent. E-mail delivered a web link for the baseline study assessment, and reminder e-mails were sent to prompt completion. Of those who consented, 888 (80%) completed baseline health and behavior data surveys. An HTML-native web survey software was more stable across computing environments. Using e-mail and web assessment, this research recruited, enrolled, and collected data from more than 850 participants. Technical and operational challenges emerged at each step. Solutions and recommendations are discussed. Overall, this experience suggests that the use of e-mail and web software can facilitate recruitment, enrollment, and data acquisition through direct contact with study participants. This experience yields a series of lessons learned for using e-mail and the Internet to support multi-site trials.     

Predictors of retention in an alcohol, tobacco, and other drug prevention study

This article explored retention patterns, as well as factors that predicted these patterns, in the evaluation of a relationship-based substance abuse prevention intervention study that targeted inner-city African American youth. A total of 851 contacts were made to retain 82% (n = 104) of the baseline sample (N = 127) in the evaluation. Results from multinomial regression analyses indicated that participants who were retained in the evaluation were more likely to perceive alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use as less risky and were more likely to report higher levels of family supervision than were evaluation attrits. Those who were easy to retain reported lower family conflict and fewer family relocations during the past year than those who were difficult to retain. Implications of these findings for developing retention strategies, as well as future research, are discussed.     

Tests of association between survival time and a continuous covariate

Proportional hazards model(Cox, 1972) is reviewed for the case of grouped data with one continuously measured covariate. This leads to a logit-rank procedure for tied data which is reduced to the test proposed by O’Brien(1978) and studied by O’Quigley and Prentice(1991) in the absence of ties. The proposed test is then applied to a special ranking method in order to study non-monotonic associations.     

Testing Variability in the Two-Sample Case

A number of robust methods for testing variability have been reported in previous literature. An examination of these procedures for a wide variety of populations confirms their general robustness. Shoemaker's improvement of the F test extends that test use to a realistic variety of population shapes. However, a combination of the Brown–Forsythe and O'Brien methods based on testing kurtosis is shown to be conservative for a wide range of sample sizes and population distributions. The composite test is also shown to be more powerful in most conditions than other conservative procedures.     

Getting real: heuristics in sociological knowledge

Theory and Society - This article examines the connections among heuristics, the epistemological and ontological presuppositions that underlie theorizing, and substantive explanations in sociology....     

Exploring intergenerational communication and stress in refugee families

More than half of the refugees who have resettled to the United States in recent years have been youth. Refugee youth have often witnessed or experienced violence and family separation prior to resettlement and face barriers to successful resettlement such as language and educational challenges. These factors elevate risk for mental and emotional distress, and protective factors like strong familial relationships are important to promoting mental well‐being. This study utilized focus groups with 36 refugees ages 18 to 25 from four ethnic groups to explore conceptualizations of and communication about mental and emotional distress within and outside of family systems. Youth reported a nuanced conceptualization of their premigration and postmigration stressors and their patterns of communication about distress in three domains: (a) exposure to traumatic stress prior to resettlement, (b) stressful experiences in resettlement, and (c) communication about mental health inside and outside of family groups.     

The role of woodpeckers (family: Picidae) as ecosystem engineers in urban parks: a case study in the city of Madrid (Spain)

Urban Ecosystems - Many species of the family Picidae, such as the woodpeckers, excavate the tree-cavities where they nest. Frequently the cavities are used during a single breeding season and...     

Real Jobs: the perspectives of workers with learning difficulties

In a central New Zealand region, 14 people with learning difficulties who were identified by disability agencies as successfully employed were interviewed. Semistructured interviews with the paid workers covered topics such as getting and learning their work, pay, choices about social opportunities and career paths. Interviews were transcribed and constant discussion, and challenging of qualitative data identified the following themes: the effect of paid work on lifestyles, how other people were important for support and workers' aspirations for the future. The effect of paid work has meant major changes for a few people by becoming independent of the benefit system and buying their own home. For other workers, it meant having to learn to use the public transport system and choosing their own social activities. Workers' perspectives were used to provide better understanding of the supports needed by adults with learning difficulties to enhance their employment rates and careers in the paid workforce.