Roxanne Parrott

Maintaining and Restoring Privacy through Communication in Different Types of Relationships

This investigation analysed the kinds of communicative acts that are considered privacy-invading, which communication strategies are used to restore privacy when it has been violated and how relationship type affects communication of privacy. A preliminary self-report survey and a pilot study employing open-ended interviews (n=43) led to the development of a questionnaire in which respondents (n=444) rated 39 possible actions on invasiveness and rated the likelihood of using 40 different tactics to restore privacy. Types of privacy violations formed five dimensions: (1) psychological and informational violations, (2) non-verbal interactional violations, (3) verbal interactional violations, (4) physical violations and (5) impersonal violations. Strategies used to restore privacy included: (1) interaction control, (2) dyadic intimacy, (3) negative arousal, (4) distancing, (5) blocking and (6) confrontation. Significant differences emerged across doctor-patient, employeremployee, teacher-student, parent-child, spouse-spouse and siblingsibling relationships.

Perceived Barriers to Internet-Based Health Communication on Human Genetics

The Internet has emerged as potential vehicle for distributing health communication to millions of individuals because it is interactive, user controlled, and offers breadth and depth of information. However, its widespread use by the public may be limited due to three overarching concerns: privacy and confidentiality, information accuracy and perceptions of credibility, including limited credibility of some government-sponsored web sites. To explore the potential of using the Internet, especially for delivering information on human genetics communication, 15 focus groups and one interview were conducted with African American and European American adult males and females in a southeastern town. We found that the participants recognized great potential in the Internet for health communication on human

An Exploratory Study of the Impact of News Headlines on Genetic Determinism

Critics have suggested that news headlines about genetics with inappropriately deterministic content will produce increased levels of determinism in the public, even when news article contents are not highly deterministic. This might result from a replacement effect (headlines stand in for the content of the article because few people read it fully) or from a framing effect (headlines frame the interpretation of the article content). A quantitative impact study and an interview method were used to test the impact of the framing effect in a news article on genes and diabetes. This exploratory study found no support for a framing effect. Directions for future research are discussed.

Exploration of the impact of messages about genes and race on lay attitudes

The effect of messages about genetics on lay audiences was assessed through an experimental study that exposed participants (n = 96) to a Public Service Announcement about race, genes, and heart disease. Participants who received a message that specified either ‘Whites’ or ‘Blacks’ as the subject of the message demonstrated elevated levels of racism, genetic basis for racism, and one dimension of genetic discrimination as compared to those receiving a version of the message with no race specification or in a no‐message control condition. The presentation of such messages to the public is not recommended until additional research clarifies this finding and perhaps describes mitigating vocabularies or approaches.

The role of "genetics" in popular understandings of race in the United States.

The increase in public representation of the science-based concept “genetics” in the mass media might be expected to have a major impact on public understanding of the concept of “race.” A model of lay understandings of the role of genetics in the contemporary United States is offered based on focus group research, random digit dial surveys, and community based surveys. That model indicates that lay people identify race primarily by physical features, but these identifications are categorized into a variety of groupings that may be regional, national, or linguistic. Although they believe that physical appearance is caused largely by genetics, and therefore that race has a genetic basis, they do not uniformly conclude, however, that all perceived racial characteristics are genetically based. Instead, they vary in the extent to which they attribute differences to cultural, personal, and genetic factors.

Improving women's preconceptional health: findings from a randomized trial of the Strong Healthy Women intervention in the Central Pennsylvania women's health study.

PURPOSE Improving the health of women before pregnancy is an important strategy for reducing adverse pregnancy outcomes for mother and child. This paper reports the first pretest-posttest results from a randomized trial of a unique, multidimensional, small group format intervention, Strong Healthy Women, designed to improve the health behaviors and health status of preconceptional and interconceptional women. METHODS Nonpregnant pre- and interconceptional women ages 18-35 were recruited in 15 low-income rural communities in Central Pennsylvania (n = 692). Women were randomized in a ratio of 2-to-1 to intervention and control groups; participants received a baseline and follow-up health risk assessment at 14 weeks and completed questionnaires to assess behavioral variables. The analytic sample for this report consists of 362 women who completed both risk assessments. Outcomes include measures of attitudinal and health-related behavior change. MAIN FINDINGS Women in the intervention group were significantly more likely than controls to report higher self-efficacy for eating healthy food and to perceive higher preconceptional control of birth outcomes; greater intent to eat healthy foods and be more physically active; and greater frequency of reading food labels, physical activity consistent with recommended levels, and daily use of a multivitamin with folic acid. Significant dose effects were found: Each additional intervention session attended was associated with higher perceived internal preconceptional control of birth outcomes, reading food labels, engaging in relaxation exercise or meditation for stress management, and daily use of a multivitamin with folic acid. CONCLUSIONS The attitudinal and behavior changes attributable to the intervention were related primarily to nutrition and physical activity. These results show that these topics can be successfully addressed with pre- and interconceptional women outside the clinical setting in community-based interventions.

Self-Efficacy and Rural Women's Performance of Breast and Cervical Cancer Detection Practices

Self-efficacy has become an important variable in multiple areas of human performance, including health behavior modification (Bandura, 1997). This study explores variables that lead to womens perceived self-efficacy in performing regular detection practices for breast and cervical cancer. A sample of southeastern U.S. farm women ( N = 206) completed surveys that assessed their perceived and actual knowledge of womens cancer detection practices, as well as their perceived social norms and perceived barriers related to obtaining these tests. Regression analyses of these data revealed that perceived peer norms and the barriers of time and embarrassment were significant predictors of womens confidence in their ability to follow through with cancer detection practices. Perceived knowledge and perceived family norms significantly predicted womens perceptions of difficulty associated with cancer detection practices as well as womens confidence in their skills to perform breast self-examination (BSE). Time was also a significant barrier to confidence in performing BSE. Implications for health communication campaigns are discussed.

Communicating about Youth’s Sun Exposure Risk to Soccer Coaches and Parents: A Pilot Study in Georgia

Efforts to increase the sun-protective behaviors of children were extended to outdoor recreational sports and youth soccer settings in this study. The pretest results of a pilot survey of coaches (n= 12), parents (n= 50), and youths (n= 61) on eight soccer teams in south Georgia were used to guide the development of a health education program for coaches. In the pilot program, half the coaches were trained to be involved in soccer-playing youths’ sun protection by acting as positive role models and promoting sun protection to youths and their parents. The pilot demonstrated coaches’ willingness to participate in sun protection promotion to youth: Youths indicated that coaches and parents were more likely to tell youths to wear sunscreen after the training than before, and coaches perceived getting youths to wear sunscreen to be less difficult than before.

Collective amnesia: the absence of religious faith and spirituality in health communication research and practice.

Health communication has focused largely on the translation of expert discourse into medical and public health messages for dissemination to lay audiences as a strategy to influence health beliefs and behaviors. Recognition that many health beliefs and behaviors are formed, maintained, and reinforced in less formal settings and not strategically designed to influence has increased health communication research associated with lay discourse about health and health care. This is especially true among health communicators who herald communication as their primary field of expertise (e.g., Beach, 2002; Condit, Parrott, & Harris, 2002; Parrott, Silk, & Condit, 2003). In conjunction with such work is recognition that lay theories about health and health care, which are often unspoken, impede efforts to understand expert discourse (Rowan, 2000). A primary premise of this special issue is that religious faith and spirituality comprise an integral component of lay discourse and lay theories associated with health. Individual predisposition to think, feel, or act based on belief in a spiritual power greater than humans affecting the course of nature and the role of humans within that realm has far-reaching health effects. Knowledge about lay discourse associated with religious faith and spirituality, therefore, is likely to reveal insights about lay theories associated with health, which may be used to facilitate health education, promotion, and counseling efforts across disciplinary boundaries associated with health communication. Literally hundreds of published empirical studies have explored relations between religion and physical health. One review in the early 1990s found more than 300 studies in a range of fields that included epidemiology, gerontology, and the HEALTH COMMUNICATION, 16(1), 1–5 Copyright

Lay people's understanding of and preference against the word “mutation”

Lay understandings of the term “mutation” are explored using three methodologies and three population bases. A community based sample (n = 848) employing a written survey to assess knowledge and understanding indicated good lay understanding of the basic concept of mutation. However, lay people associated mutation with reproductive outcomes, but not with changes in genes across the life span. A student sample (n = 241) employed a written survey to assess connotations of the term mutation. It showed a strong negative response to mutation. A community based sample (n = 120) employing focus groups also showed strong negative reactions to the term mutation and rejection of use of the term mutation in public service announcements (PSAs). The term variation had better response and is recommended as an alternative in genetic counseling and public media.