Maintenance of community change: enforcing youth access to tobacco laws

Youth access to tobacco remains a significant problem for this nation. Methods have been developed to reduce youth access to commercial outlets and these involve enforcement efforts of monitoring and fining merchant offenders. In the present study, over a three year period of time, readiness to participate in these types of enforcement programs were assessed in 11 communities. Several years after the research study was completed, enforcement activities were re-assessed. Findings indicated that those communities that had made the largest changes in community readiness to enforce youth access laws during the three year intervention were the ones most likely to continue enforcement activities into the follow-up period. There is a need to better understand how youth access to tobacco community-based interventions can be maintained.     

Do beliefs about psychologists’ political biases matter? Perceived political ideology moderates how laypeople construe research on wrongdoing

Two studies examine a possible consequence – namely, unwanted reactions to psychological research on wrongdoing – if laypeople perceive psychologists to have liberal tendencies. Study 1 replicated previous research by showing that when psychologists presented findings demonstrating situational (compared to dispositional or interactionist) influences on wrongdoing, they were perceived as assigning less responsibility to perpetrators. Further, this effect was stronger among participants who perceived psychologists to be politically liberal. Study 2 revealed that when psychologists were explicitly identified as liberals, participants believed they would downplay perpetrator responsibility across the board, but particularly when the responsibility attributional account was situational. Psychologists should be aware that laypeople’s perception of their political leanings could lead to discrepant construal of psychologists’ actual perspectives on human behavior.     

Are we there yet? En route to professionalism

The debate on the professional status of Communication Management/Public relations¹ has been high on the worldwide agenda for decades. While previous research has focused on the criteria for professionalism in this field, practitioners and academics often question the efforts of professional associations to adequately address the issue of implementing systems to facilitate professional status. The emergence of the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management (GA) as an umbrella body for various regional professional associations, as well as the increased emphasis on regulation, standards and governance in all spheres of the global business environment, have led to renewed questions about global efforts to achieve professional status for this field. This study focused on the goals and actions of member associations of the GA in relation to the question of professional status. In order to understand the current state of affairs an exploratory qualitative approach was followed in which member associations were surveyed and their websites reviewed. The fact that fewer than half of the 27 member associations responded to the survey suggests that a study about this matter is not deemed particularly important and/or that the issue of professional status is not widely pursued. However, the associations that participated in this study agree that professional status is important. The study has also found that many similarities exist across continents in terms of the mechanisms utilized to achieve professional status. Codes of ethics, contributions to a body of the knowledge and the provision of professional training opportunities are regarded as quite important while divergent viewpoints exist in relation to issues like accreditation and a standardized tertiary curriculum.     

Concerns About Identity and Services Among People with Autism and Asperger's Regarding DSM–5 Changes

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed. [DSM–5]; American Psychiatric Association, 2012 American Psychiatric Association. (2012). DSM–5 development . Retrieved from www.dsm5.org  [Google Scholar]) now includes a new autism spectrum diagnosis (ASD) with previous separate diagnoses of autism removed. This study explores the concerns of people with Asperger's syndrome (AS) and autistic disorder (AD). Discussion forum data of people with AS and AD (N = 76) were analyzed using phenomenological, inductive-content analysis to gather qualitative data about the concerns of people with AS and AD regarding the changes in the DSM–5. People with AS and AD were concerned about identity, community, the cure movement, and services. They also discussed using advocacy and solidarity to address their concerns.     

Ratings checklist for warnings: a prototype tool to aid experts in the adequacy evaluation of proposed or existing warnings

In the field of forensic human factors, experts are often called upon to assess and evaluate the adequacy of new or existing products' warnings or warnings systems. The usual goal of this evaluation is to arrive at a simple binary decision regarding the warning in question (i.e., does it "pass/fail", or is it "adequate/inadequate"). However, such a warning assessment process may in fact be quite complex and multidimensional in its execution. The existing warnings research literature has identified a fairly large number of warnings features or factors likely to have an impact on a given warning's effectiveness or adequacy. The tool addressed in this article is intended for use by a warnings expert (as opposed to one less knowledgeable and informed about complex warnings issues), and can serve as a reminder checklist to help ensure that the expert has taken into consideration the most relevant features or factors during such a warnings adequacy assessment.     

Seeing systems in health care organizations

"Systems" in health care organizations are difficult to visualize and understand by people across the organization. Systems exist as behaviors that have reasons and consequences rather than strict, linear cause and effect relationships. Learn how to sketch and see the systems at work in health care, and how to change them to help end the blame game.     

Death Education in the Helping Professions

Ours has been described as a death denying society. The removal of death taboos may be expected to help us control and modify pathological fears of our own death and the death of others. More positively, attempts to understand and accept the reality of death may promote richer appreciation of dimensions of living. Professional workers committed to helping others during such crises as dying and bereavement seem to have a special need to resolve their own fears and develop an understanding of the meaning of death as a psychosocial as well as a biological event. Yet little or no provision is made to meet such needs during professional education and training. This paper discusses the importance of death education in the helping professions, explores the content of death education courses, and makes suggestions regarding teaching and resource aids.     

Evaluating the Use of Commercially Available Wearable Wristbands to Capture Adolescents’ Daily Sleep Duration

Commercially available wearable devices are marketed as a means of objectively capturing daily sleep easily and inexpensively outside of the laboratory. Two ecological momentary assessment studies—with 120 older adolescents (aged 18–19) and 395 younger adolescents (aged 10–16)—captured nightly self‐reported and wearable (Jawbone) recorded sleep duration. Self‐reported and wearable recorded daily sleep duration were moderately correlated (r ~ .50), associations which were stronger on weekdays and among young adolescent boys. Older adolescents self‐reported sleep duration closely corresponded with estimates from the wearable device, but younger adolescents reported having an hour more of sleep, on average, compared to device estimates. Self‐reported, but not wearable‐recorded, sleep duration and quality were consistently associated with daily well‐being measures. Suggestions for the integration of commercially available wearable devices into future daily research with adolescents are provided.