Debra M. McCallum

Translating the REACH Caregiver Intervention for Use by Area Agency on Aging Personnel: the REACH OUT Program

PURPOSE The aim of this study was to translate the evidence-based Resources for Enhancing Alzheimers Caregiver Health (REACH) II intervention for use in 4 Area Agencies on Aging (AAAs). A secondary aim was to examine possible moderators of treatment outcome. DESIGN AND METHODS We used a quasi-experimental pre-post treatment design with no control group. A partnership was formed between the Alabama Department of Senior Services and the University of Alabama. The partnership trimmed the REACH II intervention used in the clinical trial for feasible use in a social service agency. The condensed REACH intervention, termed REACH OUT, was delivered to 272 dementia caregivers during 4 home visits and 3 phone calls for a period of 4 months. The assessment examined pre-post treatment effects on a number of outcomes, including care recipient risk, mood, memory, and behavior problems; caregiver stress and emotional well-being; caregiver health; and program satisfaction. All aspects of the program except for training, periodic consultation, and data analysis were controlled by the AAA staff. RESULTS Analyses were conducted on the 236 dyads that completed at least 3 of the 4 planned sessions. Significant positive pre-post effects were found on caregiver subjective burden, social support, caregiver frustration, depression, caregiver health, care recipient behavior problems and mood, and 2 of 4 care recipient risk behaviors. Site of intervention and certain participant characteristics (e.g., caregiver relationship) moderated several pre-post differences. A caregiver survey and interventionist focus group reported high acceptability of the program IMPLICATIONS This project suggests that the REACH II intervention can be modified for feasible and effective use in AAAs. The next step is to integrate the intervention into usual service delivery to achieve sustainability.

Hopelessness and Violence Among Inner-City Youths

Objectives: Ethnographic literature on inner-city life argues that adolescents react to their uncertain (and objectively bleak) future by abandoning hope; this, in turn, leads them to engage in risk behaviors, including violence, with considerable frequency. This study empirically measures the pervasiveness of hopelessness and uncertainty about the future among inner-city adolescents and documents the link between hopelessness, uncertainty, and risk behavior. Methods: We surveyed a sample of 583 adolescents (aged 9–19) living in public housing in Huntsville, AL; this constitutes 80% of the eligible population. Each participant in the survey received

Neighboring and Community Mobilization in High-Poverty Inner-City Neighborhoods

10. Their responses yielded empirical distributions for hopelessness, uncertainty about the future, and four violent behaviors. Using OLS regression, we examined the effect of hopelessness on these violent behaviors. Results: Hopelessness about the future was relatively rare, affecting only 20–30% of the respondents. However, it was a strong predictor of fighting and carrying a knife for females, and of carrying a knife, carrying a gun, and pulling a knife or gun on someone else for males. Uncertainty about the future was more prevalent, but unrelated to the violent behaviors. Conclusions: These results suggest that the conclusions of the ethnographic literature are only partially valid: While hopelessness is, in fact, strongly related to risk behavior, it is not nearly so prevalent as is generally assumed.

Low-Income African-American Women Talk About Stress

This research considers how empowerment, sense of community, and neighboring behavior affect the likelihood that residents living in high-poverty neighborhoods engage in discussion about community issues (i.e., teen pregnancy, STDs, and violence) that directly affect their lives and the lives of their neighbors. The present study is conducted in homogeneous, very high-poverty (i.e., public housing) neighborhoods located in a moderate-size city. Data generated by telephone interviews with 257 public housing residents show that sense of community and neighboring behaviors, but not empowerment, are predictors of discussion about these issues, with neighboring behaviors being the most important. Neighboring behaviors also predicted working with others to solve neighborhood problems and contacting elected officials about neighborhood issues. Based on these findings, the viability of different organizing strategies that might be applied to high-poverty, inner-city neighborhoods is explored.

Peer impressions in open source organizations: A survey

Research on stress has focused primarily on life-change events and daily hassles as sources of stress that can affect physical and mental health. There is evidence, however, that chronic conditions causing stress may be more characteristic of the lives of poor, African Americans. For this study, 45 African-American women living in low-income neighborhoods participated in focus group discussions about sources of stress in their lives. Major categories of stressors were coded from transcripts and notes of each discussion. The womens descriptions of their sources of stress help to shed light on the phenomenology of stress among poor, African-American women. Correspondence between the emergent categories from these discussions and the categories outlined by D. Watts-Jones (1990) was also analyzed. The most often discussed source of stress for the participants was lack of adequate resources and the consequences of this. Other categories receiving considerable attention by the participants were role-functioning, relationship conflict, and health concerns.

What we know about the effectiveness of farm safety day programs and what we need to know.

Abstract In virtual organizations, such as Open Source Software (OSS) communities, we expect that the impressions members have about each other play an important role in fostering effective collaboration. However, there is little empirical evidence about how peer impressions form and change in virtual organizations. This paper reports the results from a survey designed to understand the peer impression formation process among OSS participants in terms of perceived expertise, trustworthiness, productivity, experiences collaborating, and other factors that make collaboration easy or difficult. While the majority of survey respondents reported positive experiences, a non-trivial fraction had negative experiences. In particular, volunteer participants were more likely to report negative experiences than participants who were paid. The results showed that factors related to a persons project contribution (e.g., quality and understandability of committed codes, important design related decisions, and critical fixes made) were more important than factors related to work style or personal traits. Although OSS participants are very task focused, the respondents believed that meeting their peers in person is beneficial for forming peer impressions. Having an appropriate impression of ones OSS peers is crucial, but the impression formation process is complicated and different from the process in traditional organizations.

College Students Must Overcome Barriers to Use Calorie Labels in Fast-Food Restaurants

BACKGROUND Farm safety day camps are grassroots educational interventions organized and conducted by members of a local community. These events are held in an effort to promote safety knowledge and behavior in children who live on family farms or are exposed to the hazards of the agricultural industry. Since the dramatic increase in farm safety day camps beginning in the 1990s, researchers have been called upon to evaluate their effectiveness. PURPOSE The current paper reviews more than a decade of research, describing what is currently known about the effectiveness of farm safety days and suggesting potential methods for addressing questions regarding gaps in what we know about their effectiveness. CONCLUSIONS The results of these evaluations indicate that farm safety days have a positive impact on childrens safety behavior and knowledge; however, much remains to be investigated regarding the effectiveness and impact of these interventions.

Racial Differences in College Students' Assessments of Campus Race Relations

OBJECTIVE To explore predictors of intention of college students to use calorie labels on fast-food menus and differences in calories ordered after viewing calorie information. DESIGN Quasi-experimental design. Participants selected a meal from a menu without calorie labels, selected a meal from the same menu with calorie labels, and completed a survey that assessed demographics, dietary habits, Theory of Planned Behavior constructs, and potential barriers to use of calorie labeling. SETTING A southern university. PARTICIPANTS Undergraduate university students (n = 97). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Predictors of intention to use calorie labels and whether calories selected from the nonlabeled menu differed from the labeled menu. ANALYSIS Confirmatory factor analysis, exploratory factor analysis, multiple regression, and paired t tests. RESULTS Participants ordered significantly fewer calories (P = .02) when selecting from the labeled menu vs the menu without labels. Attitudes (P = .006), subjective norms (P < .001), and perceived behavioral control (P = .01) predicted intention to use calorie information but did not predict a difference in the calories ordered. Hunger (P = .03) and cost (P = .04) were barriers to using the calorie information. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS If students can overcome barriers, calorie labeling could provide information that college students need to select lower-calorie items at fast-food restaurants.

Assessing Public Support for State Government Social Welfare Expenditures

Guided by the principles of critical race theory, we sought to understand how race and racism help explain differences in White and Black students’ assessments of race relations on a predominantly White college campus. The authors employed data from a campuswide survey conducted in Spring 2013 at the University of Alabama; the sample numbered 3,219 students. For Blacks and Whites, a strong relationship was observed between perception of campus race relations and a measure of symbolic racism, such that higher symbolic racism scores predicted a more positive perception of race relations.

Antismoking Mass Media Campaigns and Support for Smoke-Free Environments, Mobile County, Alabama, 2011–2012

Abstract This study compared two different approaches to assessing the level of public support for social welfare spending at the state government level. The first approach focuses on the degree to which the public supports state governments involvement in public welfare spending. The second approach identifies the importance the public places on social welfare spending when compared to other possible functions of state government. Using Alabama data, the paper examined changes in general and comparative public support for state budget expenditures from 1980 to 2000 in Alabama. In addition, we examined the effectiveness of sociodemographic and attitudinal characteristics of respondents as predictors of both general and comparative support for three social welfare functions of state government. Support for “benefits for poor people” grew both generally and comparatively in the 20-year period; support for programs for older people remained steady; and support for mental health services declined. Sociodemographic predictors of general and comparative sup port were generally consistent with a self-interest model