A Collaborative University Model for Employee Wellness

Abstract

Universities are taking a more active approach in understanding and monitoring employees’ modifiable health risk factors and chronic care conditions by developing strategies to encourage employees to start and sustain healthy behaviors. WellBama, the University of Alabama's signature health and wellness program, utilizes a collaborative model in partnership with select colleges and departments to implement strategies to improve employees’ health status. The program provides onsite health screenings and assessments, timely health advising sessions, assistance in setting and monitoring individual health goals to promote improved health, and preventive examination referrals.     

Interpersonal consequences of legal handgun carrying on college campuses

Abstract

Objective: This study assessed whether college students felt less safe or were less likely to work with another student when they thought the person they would work with was carrying a handgun than when they did not.

Participants: Seventy participants were recruited from a public US university where campus carry was legal.

Methods: Participants were led to believe a confederate was carrying a handgun or not. Participants’ perceived safety and willingness to work with others was assessed.

Results: No difference was found in participants’ perceived safety. Participants who believed another student was carrying a concealed handgun reported they would be less likely to perform certain tasks with the handgun carrier than they would with the non-carrier.

Conclusions: People do not feel less safe around a handgun-carrying confederate and that allowing concealed handguns on campus might affect handgun carriers’ interpersonal interactions with others in suboptimal ways.     

Building Career PATHS (Postschool Achievement Through Higher Skills) for Young Women With Disabilities

The PATHS (Postschool Achievement Through Higher Skills) curriculum is designed to address the career development needs of young women with disabilities and other barriers. Participants (N = 110) in a pilot test of the curriculum showed increases in vocational self‐efficacy, social efficacy, and awareness of disability/gender issues related to career planning, whereas those in the comparison group did not make similar gains. Qualitative findings from focus groups (N = 68) revealed that PATHS participants improved in self‐confidence, self‐awareness, ability to identify strengths, knowledge of multiple career options, and the capacity to set goals and plan for future careers.     

Short Reviews

Books reviewed in this article: Max Essex, Souleymane Mboup, Phyllis J. Kanki, Richard G. Marlink, and Sheila D. Tlou (eds.) AIDS in Africa, Second Edition Virginie Guiraudon and Christian Joppke (eds.) Controlling a New Migration World Anke Niehof and Firman Lubis (eds.) Two Is Enough: Family Planning in Indonesia under the New Order 1968–1998 Donald T. Rowland Demographic Methods and Concepts Thomas Scharping Birth Control in China, 1949–2000: Population Policy and Demographic Development Nelly P. Stromquist Education in a Globalized World: The Connectivity of Economic Power, Technology, and Knowledge United Nations World Urbanization Prospects: The 2001 Revision Yunxiang Yan Private Life Under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949–1999     

Are People Emotionally Predisposed to Experience Lower Quality of Life? The Impact of Negative Affectivity on Quality of Life in Patients Recovering from Cardiac Surgery

Negative affectivity has been defined as a predisposition to experience intense states of negative emotions. As a trait concept it is a dimension that reflects stable and pervasive differences in negative mood and self-concept. There has been systematic evidence linking negative affectivity to anxiety, depression, psychosomatic complaints, pain symptoms, and adherence to life style changes. Several studies have demonstrated a link between negative affectivity and quality of life. However, as the majority of these studies have been cross-sectional, it has been difficult to establish causal relations between quality of life and negative affect. The present study is a longitudinal investigation of negative affectivity and quality of life in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (N = 157). Negative affectivity and quality of life were assessed with the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and with the MacNew Quality of Life after Myocardial Infarction Questionnaire (MacNew QLMI) on admission day, one, and six months after the operation. Causal and reciprocal relationships were tested using a cross-lagged designs analysis via structural equation modeling. Results indicated that the causal model represented the best fit to the data. Results of the study are discussed in terms of the clinical importance of identifying patients at risk of experiencing severe restrictions in their quality of life.     

Housing and wealth inequality: Racial-ethnic differences in home equity in the United States

In our study, we took a first step toward broadening our understanding of the sources of both housing and wealth inequality by studying differences in housing equity among blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and non-Hispanic whites in the United States. Using data from the American Housing Survey, we found substantial and significant gaps in housing equity for blacks and Hispanics (but not for Asians) compared with whites, even after we controlled for a wide range of locational, life-cycle, socioeconomic, family, immigrant, and mortgage characteristics. Furthermore, the payoffs to many factors are notably weaker for minority than for white households. This finding is especially consistent across groups for the effects of age, socioeconomic status, and housing-market value. Blacks and Hispanics also uniformly receive less benefit from mortgage and housing characteristics than do whites. These findings lend credence to the burgeoning stratification perspective on wealth and housing inequality that acknowledges the importance of broader social and institutional processes of racial-ethnic stratification that advantage some groups, whites in this case, over others.     

Infants' discrimination of consonant contrasts in the presence and absence of talker variability

To learn speech-sound categories, infants must identify the acoustic dimensions that differentiate categories and selectively attend to them as opposed to irrelevant dimensions. Variability on irrelevant acoustic dimensions can aid formation of robust categories in infants through adults in tasks such as word learning (e.g., Rost and McMurray, 2009) or speech-sound learning (e.g., Lively et al., 1993). At the same time, variability sometimes overwhelms learners, interfering with learning and processing. Two prior studies (Kuhl & Miller, 1982; Jusczyk, Pisoni, & Mullennix, 1992) found that irrelevant variability sometimes impaired early sound discrimination. We asked whether variability would impair or facilitate discrimination for older infants, comparing 7.5-month-old infants' discrimination of an early acquired native contrast, /p/ vs. /b/ (in the word forms /pIm/ vs. /bIm/), in Experiment 1, with an acoustically subtle, non-native contrast, /n/ vs. /ŋ/ (in /nIm/ vs. /ŋIm/), in Experiment 2. Words were spoken by one or four talkers. Infants discriminated the native but not the non-native contrast, and there were no significant effects of talker condition. We discuss implications for theories of phonological learning and avenues for future research.     

Discussion of Behavioral Principles in Journal of Organizational Behavior Management: An Update

This study replicated the methods of a previous review and assessed the frequency with which discussions of basic behavioral principles occurred in a sample of research and case studies published in Journal of Organizational Behavior Management. A total of 127 research and case studies published between 2006 and 2015 were reviewed; 67 included a discussion of behavioral principles. The percentage of research articles and case studies discussing behavioral principles was higher than that found in previous research. The most frequently described principle was reinforcement. Our findings also documented a higher percentage of laboratory studies discussed behavioral principles.