Theory-based evaluation of a comprehensive Latino education initiative: an interactive evaluation approach

Latino student access to higher education has received significant national attention in recent years. This article describes a theory-based evaluation approach used with ENLACE of Hillsborough, a 5-year project funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation for the purpose of increasing Latino student graduation from high school and college. Theory-based evaluation guided planning, implementation as well as evaluation through the process of developing consensus on the Latino population of focus, adoption of culturally appropriate principles and values to guide the project, and identification of strategies to reach, engage, and impact outcomes for Latino students and their families. The approach included interactive development of logic models that focused the scope of interventions and guided evaluation designs for addressing three stages of the initiative. Challenges and opportunities created by the approach are discussed, as well as ways in which the initiative impacted Latino students and collaborating educational institutions.     

Participatory ergonomics intervention in a sterile processing center: a case study

The following case study describes an ergonomics intervention program, designed and implemented by an occupational therapist (OT), which included principles of participatory ergonomics, had full support of management and administration, and addressed the work, worker, and environment. The ergonomics program took place in the Sterile Processing Center (SPC) of a 398 bed, mid-western hospital. The SPC was responsible for the collection, sterilization, and reassembling of hospital surgical equipment. The 30 employees of the SPC were vulnerable to injury, having experienced 19 in only two years (of the 19 injuries, 9 were WMSD or ergonomics-related injuries). Over a two and a half year period, the OT and SPC manager conducted ergonomic evaluations, implemented employee training, designed a new SPC department, and modified work processes and equipment. In the year following the training and changes, the SPC staff experienced no injuries. Because of it's success, the program is continuing on a quarterly basis to ensure new problems are addressed quickly, new processes or equipment are evaluated, and new staff are properly trained.     

The Eudaimonic and Hedonic Components of Happiness: Qualitative and Quantitative Findings

This paper illustrates a new project developed by a cross-country team of researchers, with the aim of studying the hedonic and eudaimonic components of happiness through a mixed method approach combining both qualitative and quantitative analyses. Data were collected from 666 participants in Australia, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and South Africa. A major aim of the study was to examine definitions and experiences of happiness using open-ended questions. Among the components of well-being traditionally associated with the eudaimonic approach, meaning in particular was explored in terms of constituents, relevance, and subjective experience. The Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) was also administered to quantitatively assess the hedonic dimension of happiness. Results showed that happiness was primarily defined as a condition of psychological balance and harmony. Among the different life domains, family and social relations were prominently associated with happiness and meaningfulness. The quantitative analyses highlighted the relationship between happiness, meaningfulness, and satisfaction with life, as well as the different and complementary contributions of each component to well-being. At the theoretical and methodological levels, findings suggest the importance of jointly investigating happiness and its relationship with other dimensions of well-being, in order to detect differences and synergies among them.     

Education-related inequity in healthcare with heterogeneous reporting of health

Reliance on self-rated health to proxy medical need can bias estimation of education-related inequity in healthcare utilization. We correct this bias both by instrumenting self-rated health with objective health indicators and by purging self-rated health of reporting heterogeneity that is identified from health vignettes. Using data on elderly Europeans, we find that instrumenting self-rated health shifts the distribution of visits to a doctor in the direction of inequality favouring the better educated. There is a further, and typically larger, shift in the same direction when correction is made for the tendency of the better educated to rate their health more negatively.     

Individual progress toward self-selected goals among older adults enrolled in a physical activity counseling intervention

The purpose of this study was to examine what happens to goals over the course of a physical activity counseling trial in older veterans. At baseline, participants (N = 313) identified 1 health-related goal and 1 walking goal for their participation in the study and rated where they perceived themselves to be relative to that goal at the current time. They rated their current status on these same goals again at 6 and 12 mo. Growth-curve analyses were used to examine longitudinal change in perceived goal status. Although both the intervention and control groups demonstrated improvement in their perceived proximity to their health-related and walking goals (L = 1.19, p < .001), the rates of change were significantly greater in the intervention group (β = -.30, p < .05). Our results demonstrate that this physical activity counseling intervention had a positive impact on self-selected goals over the course of the intervention.     

Spanish Validation of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents (ERQ‐CA): Introducing the ERQ‐SpA

Research on emotion regulation is now extensive and shows the benefits of the adaptive management of emotions for social functioning and psychological well‐being. Our purpose was to test the psychometric properties of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents with a sample of nonclinical Spanish adolescents. A total of 462 secondary education students (223 girls, mean age = 13.89 years, SD = 1.38) participated. The instrument proved to be two‐factor and gender‐invariant. Results revealed the temporal stability of both emotion regulation strategies, while the predictive validity study revealed that depressive symptoms were negatively related to cognitive reappraisal, and positively related to expressive suppression. Our findings support the use of the ERQ‐SpA in Spanish adolescents.     

Mobilizing intercultural education for equity and social justice. Time to react against the intolerable: A proposal from Spain

Abstract

Education is suffering from the consequences of strengthening neoliberal policies, which impose an education model that serves the interests of the hegemonic economic system. The market rationale is being implemented in schools, moving the interests from equity to efficiency, from equal opportunities to performance. Starting from setting out a panoramic view of the way in which the intercultural focus in Spain has been used, with an approach to the different educational spheres in which we have carried out our work and research –educational policies, teacher education, school practice and education outside the school – we discuss the paradoxes and ambiguities that remove the transformative capacity of intercultural education and propose the reformulation of interculturality as an ethical and political project to subvert inequality by mobilizing to collectively create and enable images of education that contribute to a sustained way of building an equitable and fair society. Assuming our role as academics, we design a specific collective proposal on who mobilizes, with whom, as well as the attributes of the processes to be generated are discussed as well.