Jesus Tanguma

A pilot walking program for Mexican-American women living in colonias at the border.

Purpose. To test the effectiveness of ¡Vamos a Caminar! (Lets Walk!), an intervention for Mexican-American women living in economically disadvantaged, poorly urbanized areas in the South Texas border region. Design. This was a nonexperimental, one-group, pretest and posttest intervention with a duration of 12 weeks. Setting. The intervention was conducted in Hidalgo County, Texas, 1 of the 10 poorest counties in the United States, located at the border with Mexico. Participants resided in areas known as colonias, which are unincorporated and impoverished settlements along the border where many people live in trailers or self-built houses and lack basic services. Subjects. Spanish-speaking Mexican-American women (n = 16) 18 years of age and older. Intervention. The program was home-based, culturally sensitive, theoretically driven, and facilitated by community health workers. Measures. Changes in walking levels, depressive symptoms, and stress levels were assessed. Analysis. Descriptive statistics and the Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks test were used. Results. A majority of participants were unemployed, had low levels of education, were born in Mexico, and were obese. After exposure to the program, the participants reported a significant increase in walking (915.8 metabolic equivalent min/wk; p = .002) and lower depressive symptoms (p = .055) and stress level scores (p = .017). Conclusions. Culturally sensitive programs promoting walking in underserved, minority populations are promising in reducing physical activity disparities. (Am J Health Promot 2011;25[3]:172–175.)

A case study of mediated learning, delayed auditory feedback, and motor repatterning to reduce stuttering

A case study of DW, an 11-yr. old monolingual, English-speaking boy who exhibits stuttering, language delay, and ADHD is presented. DW experienced only limited improvement during stuttering therapy received in public schools, according to parents and the public school clinician. The purpose of this case study was to assess whether fluency treatment which incorporated Mediated Learning, Delayed Auditory Feedback, and Speech Motor Repatterning would enhance progress. Therapy was delivered in two treatments, with each treatment being 5 wk. of intense therapy, separated by one year. Treatment 1 of combined Mediated Learning and Delayed Auditory Feedback yielded improvement in fluency, judged by parents and the teacher to be clinically significant. The improved fluency was maintained for one year when DW was pretested for participation in Treatment 2, which combined Mediated Learning, Delayed Auditory Feedback, and Speech Motor Repatterning Exercises. As no conclusions are possible, further study is needed.

Let Me In! The Predictive Validity of Graduate Management Admissions Test and Other Variables in the Admission System of Masters of Business Administration Programmes

Data were collected from a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) program in a public university in the southern part of Texas. Analysis of variance results indicate that there are gender as well as ethnicity effects. Similarly, regression results indicate that only ethnicity and gender of the subjects contributed significantly in predicting the students’ graduate grade point average. However, different predictors account for the variance depending on the ethnicity/gender. Women scored lower graduate management admissions tests, but they surpassed their counterparts in academic performance during the MBA programme, raising questions as to the predictive validity of such exam. Finally, a change in the graduate admission system calls for consideration of soft issues when engaging in processes reengineering.

Interpretation of Logistic Regression Models in Marketing Journals

According to Hosmer, Taber, and Lemeshow (1991), when our research question is asking for prediction of dichotomous results, many researchers have turned to logistic regression as the tool of choice. In fact, Akinci, Kaynak, Atilgan, and Aksoy (2007) analyzed the application of logistic regression models in marketing journals and found that marketing scholars are using this tool in a number of different research streams that included: consumer behavior, international marketing, branding, societal marketing, promotion, retailing, business markets, health services marketing, and research techniques.

Hybrid learning and effects on student assessment outcomes

As more and more courses or portions of a course are being offered online, student performance, retention and satisfaction are expected to become critical accreditation benchmarks. Given the proliferation of online offerings, it is critical that more rigorous attempts be made to assess the performances and opinions of diverse students who took the courses via the internet and with those who received Face-to-Face (F2F) instruction. This study examines the effects of hybrid learning on student performance, attrition and satisfaction as indicated on the faculty evaluations. Using either online or F2F quizzes, this study found that students enrolled in the former provided the instructor with better faculty evaluation results. There were differences in student performances as measured by the test scores. Moreover, the attrition rate using the F2F method was also higher. However, there was insufficient evidence to show that the proportion of grades attained were different.