Videotaped Life Review: Its Personal and Intergenerational Impact

While the literature reports therapeutic benefits of life review in the elderly, systematic involvement of family members and extensive use of video recording are uncommon. Outcomes of videotaped life reviews with 30 individuals in the general population, conducted in collaboration with family members, are described. Mutually enhanced sense of self and self-esteem were observed. Interviewees felt less fearful of traumatic events after reviewing them in the context of their entire lives. For family members afraid to ask their parents directly about painful events, the camera created safe transitional space and opportunity for more genuine connection. Using examples from popular media and the author’s videotaped work, this paper will define life review, describe the heightened need for life review in the latter stage of life, the value of systematically involving family members, and implications for including life review methods in psychotherapy.     

An extension of the classical A B C inventory control system

The conventional method of controlling inventories of relatively fast moving items in a store is based on an A B C classification of the stock items. An analysis is presented for the extension of this method to determine the number of categories that should be employed and the way in which the different items should be allocated to these categories. A case study is briefly described to illustrate the application of this methodology.     

Using process data to explain outcomes. An illustration from the Child and Adolescent Trial for Cardiovascular Health (CATCH)

The purpose of this article is to illustrate the use of process evaluation for understanding study outcomes. Data from the Child and Adolescent Trial for Cardiovascular Health (CATCH), a large school-based field trial, are used. Teacher characteristics, measures of classroom curriculum implementation, and competing influences are linked to changes in dietary knowledge, intentions, and self-efficacy of students in the intervention schools. Multiple regression analyses indicate that teacher characteristics did not predict program implementation. Teacher characteristics and program fidelity, or the number of modifications made to the classroom curriculum during implementation, had direct and independent effects on student outcomes.     

Knowledge gap effects in a health information campaign

The evaluation of a campaign to increase cardiovascular health knowledge indicates that within the treatment community, education was a significant predictor of knowledge before the campaign but was not a significant predictor after the campaign. Two variables related to motivation to acquire information about cardiovascular health (age and perceived threat of heart attack) were not significant predictors of knowledge before the campaign but were significant predictors afterwards. These results suggest that the infusion of information into a social system via the mass media can close as well as open knowledge gaps and that motivation to acquire information in a specific knowledge domain is a factor controlling gap effects.