EVALUATING PDAS FOR DATA COLLECTION IN FAMILY RESEARCH WITH NON-PROFESSIONAL COUPLES

Repeated measures designs such as daily diary methods provide flexibility for examinations of fluid phenomena. The focus of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) as data collection tools with an end of the day (EOD) diary design and a non-professional sample. Participants reported the PDA was easy to use, convenient and enhanced the privacy of their responses. The PDAs minimized data entry errors and increased the data validity because responses were time stamped. Given the overall positive nature of participant reactions and the additional data PDAs make available to the researcher, the technology is recommended for further use in collecting data with non-professionals or in other couple or family research.     

A Preliminary Report on the Relationship Between Microaggressions Against Black People and Racism Among White College Students

Previous efforts to understand microaggressions have surveyed stigmatized group members’ experiences of receiving microaggressions. This report presents the first attempt to measure self-reported likelihood of delivering microaggressions rather than receiving microaggressions and to explore the association between the likelihood of delivering microaggressions and racial prejudice. We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 33 black and 118 non-Hispanic white undergraduate students at a large public Southern/Midwest university. Black students reported the degree to which a series of statements would be experienced as microaggressive. White students reported their likelihood of delivering those statements and completed measures of racial prejudice. White students’ self-reported likelihood of engaging in microaggressive acts was significantly related to all measures of racial prejudice. The single item “A lot of minorities are too sensitive” was the strongest predictor of negative feelings toward black people. Results offer preliminary support that the delivery of microaggressions by white students is not simply innocuous behavior and may be indicative of broad, complex, and negative racial attitudes and explicit underlying hostility and negative feelings toward black students.     

Systematic review of primary prevention human papillomavirus interventions targeting college students

ABSTRACT. Objectives: The purpose of this research was to systematically analyze human papillomavirus (HPV) interventions targeting college students. Methods: Completed interventions targeting general HPV prevention, HPV vaccine uptake, or antecedents of HPV vaccination uptake that used any quantitative design, published from January 2000 to January 2014 in the English language, were reviewed. Results: Twelve interventions met the criteria. Ten interventions produced 1 or more significant outcomes on primary or secondary variables of interest. Conclusions: Efficacy of interventions can be enhanced through tailoring materials and pretesting by sex, operationalizing theories, incorporating process evaluations, employing HPV vaccine uptake outcome measures, and utilizing Web-based delivery of programs.     

Fear of acquaintance versus stranger rape as a "master status": towards refinement of the "shadow of sexual assault"

Using a sample of 1010 women from a southeastern state university, we explore whether associations between fear of sexual assault and other crime-specific fears vary based on presumed victim-offender relationship. More specifically, we assess the extent to which fear of stranger- and acquaintance-perpetrated sexual assaults differ in the extent to which they are correlated with fear of other crime victimizations. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that both fear of stranger-perpetrated sexual assault and fear of acquaintance-perpetrated sexual assault were positively associated with nearly all other crime-specific fears under examination. However, associations were particularly strong between fear of sexual assault by a stranger and fear of other stranger-perpetrated crimes. Findings have significant implications for how academic institutions should comprehensively address direct and indirect negative influences of violence against college women.     

Exploring How an Elementary Teacher Plans and Implements Social Studies Inquiry

Social studies continues to be marginalized in elementary grades, yet the C3 Framework and its Inquiry Arc offer possibilities for high-quality elementary social studies instruction. However, the C3 Framework requires that teachers possess an adequate understanding of how to implement inquiry within the various social studies disciplines, which we argue is an aspect of the pedagogical content knowledge necessary for effective elementary social studies instruction. This single-case study follows an elementary teacher through her use of the C3 Framework, Inquiry Arc, and a related curriculum approach called the Inquiry Design Model as she conceptualized, planned, and implemented inquiries in her fifth-grade classroom. By incorporating this new knowledge into her existing understanding of social studies pedagogy, as well as her knowledge of her students and specific educational context, the teacher was able to successfully navigate some of the challenges associated with implementing social studies inquiry in elementary classrooms.     

People with visual impairment ‘watching’ television? Leisure pursuits of people with visual impairment in Ghana

Leisure pursuits of people with visual impairment is one of the under-researched concepts in disability discourse. Employing focus group discussions, this study explored the leisure pursuits of people with visual impairment. Their leisure pursuits include chatting, sleeping, listening to radio, meditation and watching television. The watching of television is traditionally considered unconventional for people with visual impairment; however, this was pursued for multiple reasons including as a form of resistance to traditional stereotypes on visual impairment as well as its educational and informative values. Reasons underlying their leisure pursuits include availability and accessibility, desire to obtain information and relaxation.     

Global‐Before‐Basic Object Categorization in Connectionist Networks and 2‐Month‐Old Infants

A 3‐layered backpropagation connectionist network, configured as an autoassociator, learned to form global (e.g., mammal) before basic‐level (e.g., cat) category representations from perceptual input. To test the predicted global‐to‐basic order of category learning of the network, 2‐month‐olds were administered the familiarization/novelty‐preference procedure and examined for representation of global and basic‐level categories. Infants formed a global category representation for mammals that excluded furniture but not a basic‐level representation for cats that excluded elephants, rabbits, or dogs. The empirical results are consistent with the global‐to‐basic learning sequence observed in the network simulations.     

Comparing the Utility of a Modified Diagnostic Interview for Gambling Severity (DIGS) with the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) as a Research Screen in College Students

The South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) is compared in reliability to a modified version of the Diagnostic Interview for Gambling Severity (DIGS-S) for use as a pathological gambling (PG) screen in college students. Seventy-two undergraduates (83.3% male, mean age of 18.8) from the University of Georgia completed the measures, completing a longitudinal design with 3 sessions over a 2-month time period. The DIGS-S and the SOGS demonstrated good internal consistency over the 3 sessions, with Cronbach’s Alphas ranging from 0.73 to 0.89, as well as strong concurrent validity, with correlations of .50 to .80 (Ps < .001) between the 2 measures across the 3 sessions. Both Cronbach’s alpha and test–retest reliability were higher with the DIGS-S than the SOGS. Given this, and given that the DIGS directly measures symptoms of pathological gambling, future research could benefit from the use of the DIGS-S as a PG screening tool in a college-aged sample.