Robert A. Logan

Effects of a Short Messaging Service–Based Skin Cancer Prevention Campaign in Adolescents

BACKGROUND Skin cancer prevention emphasizes early adoption and practice of sun protection behaviors. Adolescence represents a high-risk period for ultraviolet radiation exposure, presenting an opportunity for intervention. The ubiquity of mobile phones among teens offers an engaging medium through which to communicate prevention messages. PURPOSE To evaluate a skin cancer prevention intervention using short messaging service (SMS, or text messages) to impact sun-related knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors among adolescents. METHODS The intervention was conducted in middle school youth (N=113) recruited in April or October 2012. Participants were English speakers, 11-14 years old, routinely carried a mobile phone, and completed a 55-minute sun safety education program. Participants were sent three sun safety-themed SMS messages each week for 12 weeks. Skin and sun protective knowledge, beliefs, behaviors, and post-intervention program satisfaction were collected and analyzed at baseline and end of intervention (April/June 2012; October 2012/January 2013). Paired responses were tested for equality using Wilcoxon signed-rank tests. RESULTS Ninety-six students (85%) completed the study. At 12 weeks, significant positive changes were reported for sun avoidance during peak ultraviolet radiation, sunscreen application, wearing hats and sunglasses, and knowledge about skin cancer risk. Participants expressed moderately high satisfaction with the program, and 15% shared messages with family or friends. CONCLUSIONS A brief, SMS-based intervention affected youth skin cancer prevention behaviors and knowledge. Future research will determine whether program effects were sustained at 24 weeks and explore how sun safety parenting practices inform these effects.

Clinical, classroom, or personal education: attitudes about health literacy

PURPOSE This study explores how diverse attitudes about health literacy are assessed by medical librarians and other health care professionals. PROCEDURES An online survey of thirty-six items was conducted using Q methodology in two phases in spring 2005 and winter 2006. Respondents (n = 51) were nonrandomly self-selected from a convenience sample of members of the Medical Library Association and a group of environmental health consultants to the National Library of Medicine. FINDINGS Three factors were identified. Factor 1 is optimistic and supportive of health literacys transformative sociocultural and professional potential, if clinical settings become a launching point for health literacy activities. Factor 2 is less optimistic about health literacys potential to improve clinical or patient outcomes and prefers to focus health literacy initiatives on classroom education settings. Factor 3 supports improving the nations health literacy but tends to support health literacy initiatives when people privately interact with health information materials. CONCLUSIONS Each factors attitudes about the appropriate educational venue to initiate health literacy activities are different and somewhat mutually exclusive. This suggests that health literacy is seen through different perceptual frameworks that represent a possible source of professional disagreement.

The Korean press and Hwang’s fraud

This case study explores why South Korean journalists overlooked allegations of scientific misconduct against South Korean scientist Dr. Woo Suk Hwang and even indirectly defended him in 2005—6. Nineteen journalists, who covered Hwang’s story for five of South Korea’s leading daily newspapers, were interviewed. The interviewees added insights about the news coverage of the Hwang scandal not identified in previous literature, such as the difficulties among journalists to suspend their personal disbelief about the criticisms and evidence against Hwang. The findings suggest the news judgments that occurred in Korean newsrooms during the Hwang scandal reflected a socially constructed process of negotiation among news media professionals and between journalists and scientists. The findings also suggest it may be best to consider journalistic mores within a multidimensional framework that includes journalistic perceptions of socio-cultural norms, internal newsroom standards for evidence, newsroom competence and training, normative journalism ethics, news gathering techniques, perceived dissonance and professed risk avoidance.

Health literacy research’s growth, challenges, and frontiers

Abstract This chapter discusses how health literacy research has evolved. It provides a brief history, reviews some of health literacy’s conceptual underpinnings, notes the range of current research, addresses some current research gaps, and encourages future research. This chapter introduces the rapid expansion of health literacy research into diverse areas of clinical medicine, the health-care delivery system, nonclinical settings, and health communication areas. This chapter also explores some of the current challenges in health literacy research and provides a brief conclusion. Although this chapter emphasizes health literacy research and developments in the US, some international health literacy work is included. The topics within this chapter’s five sections are an introduction; four milestones (and other developments) in health literacy research’s growth; health literacy’s evolving definition and conceptual underpinnings; the spectrum of health literacy research; health literacy research’s current needs and frontiers; and a conclusion.

Understanding cancer survivors’ information needs and information-seeking behaviors for complementary and alternative medicine from short- to long-term survival: a mixed-methods study

Objective The research examined complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) information-seeking behaviors and preferences from short- to long-term cancer survival, including goals, motivations, and information sources. Methods A mixed-methods approach was used with cancer survivors from the “Assessment of Patients’ Experience with Cancer Care” 2004 cohort. Data collection included a mail survey and phone interviews using the critical incident technique (CIT). Results Seventy survivors from the 2004 study responded to the survey, and eight participated in the CIT interviews. Quantitative results showed that CAM usage did not change significantly between 2004 and 2015. The following themes emerged from the CIT: families’ and friends’ provision of the initial introduction to a CAM, use of CAM to manage the emotional and psychological impact of cancer, utilization of trained CAM practitioners, and online resources as a prominent source for CAM information. The majority of participants expressed an interest in an online information-sharing portal for CAM. Conclusion Patients continue to use CAM well into long-term cancer survivorship. Finding trustworthy sources for information on CAM presents many challenges such as reliability of source, conflicting information on efficacy, and unknown interactions with conventional medications. Study participants expressed interest in an online portal to meet these needs through patient testimonials and linkage of claims to the scientific literature. Such a portal could also aid medical librarians and clinicians in locating and evaluating CAM information on behalf of patients.

Seeking an expanded, multidimensional conceptual approach to health literacy and health disparities research

This chapter compares the conceptual foundations of health literacy and health disparities. It details some of the conceptual differences between health literacy and health disparities and explains some similarities that suggest the need for increased research collaboration. The chapter is among the first to address the structural and social determinants of health together and explain that future research needs to assess their interactions. Overall, the chapter creates a conceptual foundation as well as challenges future scholars/practitioners to take more multidimensional approaches to assess healths determinants. The chapter also attempts to demonstrate there is nothing more practical than good theory, or clear conceptual foundations. The chapter is divided into four sections that address the following topics: three conceptual frameworks about the determinants of health; opportunities in health disparities and health literacy research; seeking an expanded, multidimensional conceptual approach to health literacy and health disparities research; as well as a conclusion. The chapter suggests there are vacuums in current research knowledge that need future attention - especially regarding the integration of health literacy and health disparities research.

The NLM Evaluation Lecture Series: Introduction to the Special Section on Evaluating Health Communication Programs

This article introduces the Journal of Health Communications special section, Evaluating Health Communication Programs. This special section is based on a public lecture series supported by the National Library of Medicine titled “Better Health: Evaluating Health Communication Programs” designed to share best practices for using evaluation research to develop, implement, refine, and institutionalize the best health communication programs for promoting public health. This introduction provides an overview to the series, summarizes the major presentations in the series, and describe implications from the series for translational health communication research, interventions, and programs that can enhance health outcomes.

Research Methods in Information

The instant contribution of this introductory handbook about information and communication sciences research is its ecumenical attitude about qualitative and quantitative methods. Some descriptions of quantitative methods that suggest nonempirical approaches are ascientific. Alternatively, Pickard, University of Northumbria (UK), discusses research from both qualitative and quantitative angles and attempts to foster diverse approaches. Considering introductory graduate (or honors undergraduate) texts often are a students first exposure to research, Pickards even-handed approach provides a safe haven for exploration and thinking. Regardless of a students orientation, the text tours diverse approaches and promotes thinking about research. The handbook also emboldens faculty who wish to provide creative options for students, in lieu of steering them toward a predetermined path. The text is organized into four areas: ways to organize research, an introduction to research methods, data collection techniques, and data analysis and research presentation. The chapter topics in each range from ways to conduct a literature review and write research proposals in the first area to an introduction to experimental research and to grounded theory in the second. The third area, data collection techniques, addresses interviews and questionnaires, while the fourth area, data analysis and research presentation, discusses qualitative analysis and quantitative methods. This topic variety is at least as expansive as most similar research methods texts. Hence, the books range meets expectations for an introductory research class for students in the information-communication disciplines. Pickards initial description of both quantitative and qualitative paradigms (and their juxtaposition) borrows heavily from Lincoln and Gubas frequently cited book that was aimed at students in the communication sciences [1]. Further regarding the provision of context, it is easier to inspire students about research if they have an interest in a fields past, present, and future. In many graduate programs, this introduction often is provided in a separate course that uses a different text. Nevertheless, it helps anchor the relevance of a research methods text by starting with a short review of a fields unanswered questions, opportunities, methodological diversity, and research traditions as well as an explanation of how research methods are integral to a fields evolution. Similarly, all the books research methods chapters feature examples, such as scales or research abstracts that illustrate the type of approach under discussion. But the books research methods chapters focus on a broad introduction rather than applied uses of the method in question. The applications of research methods and tools are provided in chapter inserts or sidebars. Overall, Pickards commendably equitable approach is one of the books major strengths. Other assets include a good variety of topics, careful annotation, clear questions for readers to consider at each chapters end, a glossary, and consistently crisp writing. However, even a handbook with a reserve of commendable elements has blemishes, and a few areas of this text could use some further polishing. While a few additions are suggested, they are not intended to detract from the books fundamental fairness and the authors genuine attempt to provide diverse research options. It might help students distinguish among research approaches if survey and experimental research were clustered as normative examples of quantitative methods, while case studies, ethnography, delphi studies, action research, history, and grounded theory were more clearly identified as normative (and in some cases, iconic) examples of qualitative methods. Along the same lines, the book could use more discussion and examples of research with mixed methods. For example, it would be instructive to introduce research where investigators combine quantitative and qualitative methods in the same study. Finally, in providing examples of quantitative software, Pickard only mentions SPSS and MINITAB. This is a short list, which seems ripe for rebuttal by the publishers of SAS and other comprehensive statistical programs. Similarly, the only qualitative software mentioned is NUD.IST. Although a chapter devoted to research software is valuable, why not provide a more comprehensive list and briefly explain in what research areas they are frequently used? These quibbles aside, Pickard provides a diverse and methodologically balanced entry point for students. This is a laudable asset—especially for research novices and their mentors. The text is recommended for use in introductory research methods classes in the information and communication sciences.