Adolescent Adaptation to Parental Incarceration

This qualitative transcendental phenomenological study considered the lived experience of having a parent or parental figure incarcerated during one’s adolescence. The study analyzed 15 in-depth, in-person, semi-structured interviews with six participants between the ages of 18 and 29 from the city of Chicago. Textural-structural analysis indicated five separate results: the influence of parental incarceration on the developmental experience, the emotional influence of parental incarceration, the social influence of parental incarceration, the spiritual influence of parental incarceration, and the three key aspects of the experience (truth, the kind of relationship the participant had with the incarcerated parent, and the availability of an attuned subsequent caregiver). The analysis indicated that an adolescent’s adaptation to the world after experiencing this phenomenon fell into one of three spheres of adaptation. A number of clinical and social justice implications were identified along with avenues for future research to better understand the phenomenon and how it affects those who experience it.     

Predictors of well-being in the lives of student service members and veterans

Objective: The current study examined predictors of well-being, including quality of life and academic engagement, in a sample of student service members and veteran college students. Methods: Eighty-seven student service members/veterans (SSM/V) completed an online survey containing questions about post-deployment social support, emotion regulation skills, psychological distress, academic engagement, quality of life, and demographics. Participants were recruited from September 2012 through May 2014. Results: Results provided partial support for the proposed bi-directional mediational relations between post-deployment social support and emotion regulation predicting to quality of life and academic engagement. Path models indicated that both post-deployment social support and emotion regulation skills partially mediated the relation with quality of life while accounting for the effect of psychological distress, and that emotion regulation skills fully mediated the relation between social support and academic engagement. Conclusions: These findings suggest that both social support and emotion regulation skills may be useful targets for health promotion and intervention efforts for this population. Limitations and clinical implications for the development of on-campus SSM/V focused health promotion services are discussed.     

Status of personal health requirement for graduation at institutions of higher education in the United States

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the proportion of higher education institutions in the United States that require a personal health course (PHC) for graduation and to describe the nature of such requirements. Participants: This study included a random sample of public and private institutions of higher education (IHE) with undergraduate programs within the United States (N = 310). Data were collected between September 2014 and May 2015. Methods: University catalogs were accessed from the institutions' public Web sites to determine whether a PHC was offered, and whether it was exclusively or optionally required for graduation. Results: The majority (55.8%) of the sample offered at least 1 PHC, with only 10% exclusively requiring the course and an additional 10% optionally required the course. Conclusions: Although the utility of undergraduate students completing a PHC is clear, the majority of institutions do not require such a course for degree conferral.     

Teaching Problem Explanations Using Instructive Feedback

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - Instructive feedback (IF) is a procedure in which extra information is presented to a participant during the consequence portion of instruction for other skills....     

Critical reflections on emancipatory partnerships in transition research: discerning perspectives of New Zealand Students on the autism spectrum

Transition from school involves different perspectives. Those most silenced in the process are transitioning students with significant disability, and similarly, they are alienated from the conduct of research. In this empirical project, three young men with complex autism conditions in Aotearoa New Zealand reclaimed their position as experts on their own transitions, and moreover, their contributions to research on the subject. Over a six-month ethnography, unique methodological adaptions were used to access personal insights and capabilities through emancipatory partnerships. The research forged collaborations that have the potential to be mirrored in future practices applicable to a transition with dignity.     

Calorie Intake and Gambling: Is Fat and Sugar Consumption ‘Impulsive’?

Excessive calorie intake constitutes a global public health concern, due to its associated range of untoward outcomes. Gambling is commonplace and gambling disorder is now considered a behavioral addiction in DSM-5. The relationships between calorie intake, gambling, and other types of putatively addictive and impulsive behaviors have received virtually no research attention. Two-hundred twenty-five young adults who gamble were recruited from two Mid-Western university communities in the United States using media advertisements. Dietary intake over the preceding year was quantified using the Dietary Fat and Free Sugar Short questionnaire (DFS). Clinician rating scales, questionnaires, and cognitive tests germane to impulsivity were completed. Relationships between dietary fat/sugar intake and gambling behaviors, as well as other measures of psychopathology and cognition germane to addiction, were evaluated using correlational analyses controlling for multiple comparisons. Greater dietary fat and sugar intake were associated with lower educational levels and with male gender. Controlling for these variables, higher dietary fat and sugar intake were correlated significantly with worse gambling pathology and anxiety scores. Dietary sugar intake was also significantly associated with higher depressive scores, more alcohol intake, lower self-esteem, and with greater risk of having one or more mental disorders in general. Dietary intake did not correlate significantly with ADHD symptoms, presence of one or more impulse control disorders, Barratt impulsiveness, or cognitive functioning. These data suggest a particularly strong relationship between fat/sugar intake and symptoms of gambling pathology, but not most other forms of impulsivity and behavioral addiction (excepting alcohol intake). Providing education about healthy diet may be especially valuable in gamblers and in community settings where gambling advertisements feature prominently. Future work should explore the mediating mechanisms between calorie intake and gambling symptoms, such as whether this could be driven by environmental factors (e.g. advertising) or common dysfunction of brain reward pathways.     

Social media approaches to modeling wildfire smoke dispersion: spatiotemporal and social scientific investigations

Wildfires have significant effects on human populations, economically, environmentally, and in terms of their general well-being. Smoke pollution, in particular, from either prescribed burns or uncontrolled wildfires, can have significant health impacts. Some estimates suggest that smoke dispersion from fire events may affect the health of one in three residents in the United States, leading to an increased incidence of respiratory illnesses such as asthma and pulmonary disease. Scarcity in the measurements of particulate matter responsible for these public health issues makes addressing the problem of smoke dispersion challenging, especially when fires occur in remote regions. Crowdsourced data have become an essential component in addressing other societal problems (e.g., disaster relief, traffic congestion) but its utility in monitoring air quality impacts of wildfire events is unexplored. In this study, we assessed if user-generated social media content can be used as a complementary source of data in measuring particulate pollution from wildfire smoke. We found that the frequency of daily tweets within a 40,000?km² area was a significant predictor of PM2.5 levels, beyond daily and geographic variation. These results suggest that social media can be a valuable tool for the measurement of air quality impacts of wildfire events, particularly in the absence of data from physical monitoring stations. Also, an analysis of the semantic content in people’s tweets provided insight into the socio-psychological dimensions of fire and smoke and their impact on people residing in, working in, or otherwise engaging with affected areas.     

Boosting flexible functional regression models with a high number of functional historical effects

We propose a general framework for regression models with functional response containing a potentially large number of flexible effects of functional and scalar covariates. Special emphasis is put on historical functional effects, where functional response and functional covariate are observed over the same interval and the response is only influenced by covariate values up to the current grid point. Historical functional effects are mostly used when functional response and covariate are observed on a common time interval, as they account for chronology. Our formulation allows for flexible integration limits including, e.g., lead or lag times. The functional responses can be observed on irregular curve-specific grids. Additionally, we introduce different parameterizations for historical effects and discuss identifiability issues.The models are estimated by a component-wise gradient boosting algorithm which is suitable for models with a potentially high number of covariate effects, even more than observations, and inherently does model selection. By minimizing corresponding loss functions, different features of the conditional response distribution can be modeled, including generalized and quantile regression models as special cases. The methods are implemented in the open-source R package FDboost. The methodological developments are motivated by biotechnological data on Escherichia coli fermentations, but cover a much broader model class.     

Child-Parent Relationship Therapy with Extra-Familial Abused Children

Sexual abuse by a perpetrator outside of the family is the most prevalent form of child sexual abuse. It is associated with serious consequences for both the child and his family. Surprisingly, however, the issue of extra-familial sexual abuse has received very little research and clinical attention. The purpose of the current study was to explore the effectiveness of Child-Parent Relationship Therapy (CPRT), which uses nondirective play therapy tools, among parents of extra-familial abused children and their parents. In order to do so, data was collected from 51 parents who participated in CPRT, at three points in time: pretreatment stage, at the beginning of the first meeting; and in the post treatment stage. The data included the parents’ reports via three questionnaires: Parenting Stress Inventory (PSI), Compassion Fatigue Self-Test (CFST), Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Overall, the results indicated a decrease in internalizing and externalizing symptoms among the children, as well as in parenting stress and in parental secondary trauma symptoms. This study contributes to the literature on interventions with victims of extra-familial child abuse and their parents. Specifically, the results highlight the benefits and importance of involving both parents and children in therapeutic interventions for victims of extra-familial child sexual abuse, with particular emphasis on the benefits of Child-Parent Relationship Therapy.     

Employee work-to-family role boundary management in the family business

Family-owned organizations present a unique opportunity to study work-to-family boundary management. Boundary theory suggests that work-to-family boundary dynamics may be different in family businesses, and that family businesses are not a neutral ground for individual employees’ segmentation preferences. The present study draws on the sociocognitive processes underlying boundary theory to explain how the family business context may affect family and nonfamily employees’ work-to-family role management differently. The study examines the work-to-family role boundary configurations of 149 family and non-family employees in family businesses. Results suggest that family employee status buffers against undesirable effects of segmentation preferences in the family business context. For family employees, segmentation preferences were associated with lower work-to-family conflict and unassociated with turnover intentions. For non-family employees, segmentation preferences were associated with higher work-to-family conflict and turnover intentions. Implications for work–family theory and family business successorship and work–family policy are discussed.