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Descriptive Norms and Prototypes Predict COVID-19 Prevention Cognitions and Behaviors in the United States: Applying the Prototype Willingness Model to Pandemic Mitigation
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Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, prevention behavior adoption occurred in a rapidly changing context. In contrast to expectancy-value theories, the Prototype Willingness Model (PWM) is well-suited for investigating novel and socially informed behaviors. Purpose
We explored whether PWM social cognitions predicted coronavirus prevention behaviors. Method
A representative sample of United States adults (N = 738; Mage = 46.8; 51.8% women; 78% white; April 2020) who had not had COVID-19 reported PWM predictor variables (perceived vulnerability, prevention descriptive norms, prototypes engaging in prevention behavior, and prevention behavioral intentions). Two weeks later, participants reported their prevention behaviors (handwashing, mask-wearing, social distancing, etc.) and future public health behavioral willingness (contact tracing, temperature checks, etc.). Results
Controlling for putative demographic, past behavior, and coronavirus-contextual (e.g., local infection rates) covariates, mediation models indicated that higher norms and favorable prototypes were associated with greater prevention behavioral intentions, which in turn predicted increased prevention behavior, F(18, 705) = 92.20, p \u3c .001, R2 = .70. Higher norms and favorable prototypes associated both directly and indirectly (through greater prevention behavioral intention) with greater willingness to engage in emerging public health behaviors, F(15, 715) = 21.49, p \u3c .001, R2 = .31. Conclusions
Greater descriptive norms and favorable prototypes for prevention behavior predicted: (a) future prevention behaviors through increases in behavioral intentions and (b) willingness to participate in emerging public health behaviors. These results held across demographic groups, political affiliation, and severity of regional outbreaks. Public health efforts to curb pandemics should highlight normative prevention participation and enhance positive prototypes
“Very Nervous and Very Excited”: My Experience Developing a Pedagogical Partnership Program at Tufts University
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The geodiv r package: Tools for calculating gradient surface metrics
Get PDFThe geodiv r package calculates gradient surface metrics from imagery and other gridded datasets to provide continuous measures of landscape heterogeneity for landscape pattern analysis. geodiv is the first open-source, command line toolbox for calculating many gradient surface metrics and easily integrates parallel computing for applications with large images or rasters (e.g. remotely sensed data). All functions may be applied either globally to derive a single metric for an entire image or locally to create a texture image over moving windows of a user-defined extent. We present a comprehensive description of the functions available through geodiv. A supplemental vignette provides an example application of geodiv to the fields of landscape ecology and biogeography. geodiv allows users to easily retrieve estimates of spatial heterogeneity for a variety of purposes, enhancing our understanding of how environmental structure influences ecosystem processes. The package works with any continuous imagery and may be widely applied in many fields where estimates of surface complexity are useful
White Clinicians’ Way of Being with Their Black Clients
Get PDFWithin the context of pervasive racial social inequality in mental healthcare (Lund, 2020), this dissertation sought to explore how white people who inherently hold racial bias according to critical whiteness theory (Olcon, Gilbert, & Pulliam, 2019), navigate this within their therapeutic work and relationships as clinicians with Black clients. Using the framework of clinician way of being, the conscious attitudes and beliefs that clinicians hold towards clients (Fife, Whiting, Bradford, & Davis, 2014), this phenomenological study used semi-structured interviews with key informants, practicing white clinicians (N=19). Content analysis of verbatim transcripts suggests that whiteness and conscious navigations of emotions and pre-judgements about race influenced clinicians’ ways of being, therapeutic relationships, and techniques with Black clients oriented on a continuum from ignoring to reckoning with race. Findings suggest further research on how whiteness is implicated in interracial clinical dyads and offer insights into white clinicians’ need to interrogate their own whiteness
Listening to Student Voices as a Step toward Strengthening Inclusive and Intercultural Teaching Approaches
Get PDFNovel Insights to Be Gained From Applying Metacommunity Theory to Long-Term, Spatially Replicated Biodiversity Data
Get PDFGlobal loss of biodiversity and its associated ecosystem services is occurring at an alarming rate and is predicted to accelerate in the future. Metacommunity theory provides a framework to investigate multi-scale processes that drive change in biodiversity across space and time. Short-term ecological studies across space have progressed our understanding of biodiversity through a metacommunity lens, however, such snapshots in time have been limited in their ability to explain which processes, at which scales, generate observed spatial patterns. Temporal dynamics of metacommunities have been understudied, and large gaps in theory and empirical data have hindered progress in our understanding of underlying metacommunity processes that give rise to biodiversity patterns. Fortunately, we are at an important point in the history of ecology, where long-term studies with cross-scale spatial replication provide a means to gain a deeper understanding of the multiscale processes driving biodiversity patterns in time and space to inform metacommunity theory. The maturation of coordinated research and observation networks, such as the United States Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, provides an opportunity to advance explanation and prediction of biodiversity change with observational and experimental data at spatial and temporal scales greater than any single research group could accomplish. Synthesis of LTER network community datasets illustrates that long-term studies with spatial replication present an under-utilized resource for advancing spatio-temporal metacommunity research. We identify challenges towards synthesizing these data and present recommendations for addressing these challenges. We conclude with insights about how future monitoring efforts by coordinated research and observation networks could further the development of metacommunity theory and its applications aimed at improving conservation efforts
How a Multi-Year, Multifaceted, and Iterative Partnership Can Change Teaching, Learning & Research
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Vegetation effects on coastal foredune initiation: Wind tunnel experiments and field validation for three dune-building plants
Get PDFAs the land-sea interface, foredunes buffer upland habitats with plants acting as ecosystem engineers shaping topography, and thereby affecting storm response and recovery. However, many ecogeomorphic feedbacks in coastal foredune formation and recovery remain uncertain in this dynamic environment. We carried out a series of wind tunnel experiments testing how the morphology, density, and configuration of three foredune pioneer dune building plant species influence the most basic stage of dune initiation — nebkha formation around individual plants. We established monocultures of native Ammophila breviligulata and Panicum amarum and invasive Carex kobomugi in 1 m × 1 m planter boxes of sand to simulate approximate natural and managed densities and planting configurations on the US Mid-Atlantic coast. We subjected each box to constant 8.25 m/s wind for 30 min in a moveable-bed unilateral-flow wind tunnel with an unvegetated upwind sand bed. We quantified resulting topography with sub-millimeter precision and related it to plant morphology, density, and configuration. Plant morphology, density, and configuration all influenced the resulting topography. Larger plants produced larger nebkha with greater relief, height, and sand volume. However, nebkha area, height, and planform shape varied among species, and taller plants did not necessarily produce taller nebkha. The erect grasses, Ammophila and Panicum, produced more elongated, high-relief nebkha compared to the low-lying Carex, which produced lower and more symmetrical equant nebkha. A staggered planting configuration produced greater net sediment accumulation than non-staggered. We validated these results against high-resolution field topographies of foredune nebkha and found strong agreement between the datasets. Our results provide species-specific parameters useful in designing foredune plantings and beach management and can be used to parameterize vegetation in models of foredune evolution associated with different plant species. By first understanding the underlying ecogeomorphic feedbacks involved in nebkha formation, we can more effectively scale up to forecast coastal foredune evolution and recovery