Eulàlia Hernández

Testing the Feasibility of DARWeb: An Online Intervention for Children With Functional Abdominal Pain and Their Parents.

Objectives:To test the feasibility of an online intervention (DARWeb) for children with functional abdominal pain and their families. Methods:An online intervention (with 7 units for children and 7 for parents) was developed from a cognitive-behavioral perspective. A total of 15 families were given access to the intervention and asked to rate their satisfaction with each unit and the overall program (using scales from 0 to 10). Moreover, they were interviewed at the end of the program to obtain more information about their impressions of the program. Results:Nine families (60%) completed the entire program. Parents rated each unit above a median of 8; children also rated all of the units except the first 2 above a median of 8. Global ratings were also very positive. Qualitative data reinforce the idea that the participants were quite satisfied with the intervention, they appreciated the fact that it was online, and they learned coping strategies (they were especially happy with relaxation) and to give less importance to pain. Although they appreciated the available resources, they would like to have more multimedia and interactive resources, and some form of professional contact. Parents also suggest that it was a burden (in terms of time) to supervise their children’s progress in the program. Discussion:DARWeb has been shown to be a feasible intervention, and it seems to be well designed. However, some improvements need to be considered based on the experiences of these participating families, and further research should be conducted to test its efficacy.

Working women's lifestyles and quality of life in the information society.

We investigate the lifestyles of Spanish women workers engaged in the information and communication society and analyze key indicators of lifestyle as predictors of their quality of life. In this study, 207 women aged between 19 and 54 years responded to questions related to daily activities and to a quality-of-life questionnaire. We concluded that Spanish women in this study show regular and healthy habits in diet and prevention behaviors, and we also identify important quality-of-life predicting factors in issues related to personal time management.

Towards a Web-Based Teaching Tool to Measure and Represent the Emotional Climate of Virtual Classrooms

This paper presents the first results of a teaching innovation project named “Emotional Thermometer for Teaching” (ETT) carried out at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. The ETT project intersects the scopes of eLearning and Affective Computing with the aim of collecting and managing emotional information of online students during their learning process. Such information allows lecturers to monitor the overall emotional climate of their virtual classrooms whilst detecting critical moments for timely interventions, such as assisting in certain learning tasks that generate negative emotions (anxiety, fear, etc.). To this end, an innovative teaching tool named ETT was developed as a functional indicator to measure and represent the classroom emotional climate, which is dynamically evolving as the course goes by. In this paper, the technical development of the ETT tool is described that meets the challenging requirement of correctly identifying the overall emotional climate of virtual classrooms from the posts sent by students to in-class forums. First, a machine learning approach combined with Natural Language Processing techniques is described to automatically classify posts in terms of positive, neutral and negative emotions. Then, a web-based graphical tool is presented to visualize the calculated emotional climate of the classroom and its evolution over time. Finally, the post classification approach is technically tested and the initial results are discussed.

Quantitative and qualitative testing of DARWeb: An online self-guided intervention for children with functional abdominal pain and their parents:

The main objective of this study was to preliminary explore the effects of DARWeb on different outcomes. A Quasi-experimental, one-group, pretest–posttest design was used. Parents and children were asked to complete questionnaires and questions (separately) about quality of life, abdominal pain severity, and satisfaction. Semi-structured interviews with families were also performed. This study focuses on 17 families. Results showed that parent’s ratings of children’s abdominal pain severity were significantly lower after finishing the intervention and at the 3-month follow-up, and quality of life scores had increased significantly after 3 months. From children’s ratings, mean abdominal pain severity scores were significantly lower after the intervention compared to the preintervention assessment. Both parents and children were quite satisfied with the intervention. In qualitative interviews, families suggested that DARWeb helped them to give less importance to pain and to learn coping strategies. In conclusion, this study showed the potential usefulness of DARWeb for children with functional abdominal pain and for their parents.