1,720,961 research outputs found
Increasing Sexual Assault Survivors' Help Seeking Via Advertised Messages
Get PDFSexual assault is a common occurrence on Canadian university campuses, yet women who experience sexual assault typically do not seek immediate help. This pattern of silence is problematic because when survivors talk about the assault with someone whose responses are perceived as supportive, their suffering is often alleviated (Campbell, Ahrens, Sefl, Wasco, & Barnes, 2001). This study examined the efficacy of messages designed to encourage sexual assault survivors to seek help. Community members submitted 118 messages designed to encourage help seeking to a poster contest. These were combined with 34 messages gathered from existing sources. Three of these messages were judged to be exemplary by a panel of experts. Women (n = 633) recruited through the university of Windsor and online advertisements were randomly assigned to view one of these three help seeking messages, or to a control group. Reactions to these messages were measured at one week and one month intervals. Women who experienced rape or attempted rape (n = 138) had significantly less positive attitudes, subjective norms, and intention towards help seeking, endorsed less help seeking behaviour and encouraged a friend to seek less help than participants who did not experience sexual assault (n = 186). Exposure to a poster designed to increase help seeking behaviour did not improve beliefs about help seeking and did not increase actual help seeking behaviour. Exposure to one poster did encourage hypothetical help seeking regardless of level of distress. Encouragingly, exposure to another poster did increase actual help seeking among participants with high levels of self-blame. Some improvements in hypothetical advice to a friend were noted. Findings suggest that emphasizing a message of solidarity (e.g. you are not alone) may motivate some changes in help seeking behaviour. More effective content for future posters is discussed
How Animal-Assisted Therapy Is Understood and Perceived by Health Care Providers and the General Public in Canada
No full textThe incorporation of dogs to assist humans with various activities has been documented for centuries. When a dog is included in treatment to meet an individual’s therapeutic goal it is known as Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT). Little is known about how AAT is understood and perceived among healthcare professional and public populations in Canada. Although AAT has increased in popularly, limited research exists regarding its efficacy. Further, variation exists in the understanding and perceptions of AAT among the general pubic and healthcare professionals, possibly due to a lack of awareness of existing operational definitions and distinctions between classifications of “assistance animals.” According to the diffusion of innovation theory an innovation, defined as a new idea or practice, must be properly communicated to all appropriate channels before it may be adopted into practice. Thus, misunderstandings about AAT pose a barrier for future research and adoption of an intervention. This may further inhibit the success of AAT as an intervention, as both administrator and recipient’s attitudes and knowledge of a treatment may impact the treatment’s success. In the present study, health care professionals and the general public in Canada were surveyed regarding their knowledge of AAT, their attitude toward AAT, and their interest in learning more about AAT. Further, attitude toward dogs, openness to experience, agreeableness, and subjective distress were investigated for their influence on attitude toward AAT. Results suggest that both professional and public populations have limited knowledge of AAT and are interested in learning more about the intervention, yet are hesitant to recommend, administer, or receive the intervention without further information. Although attitude toward dogs appears to be positively associated with attitude toward AAT, the impact of openness to experience, agreeableness, and subjective distress is limited. Limitations and future directions are discussed
Altering Assessment for Greater Achievement: An Evaluation of Students’ Attitudes and Level of Engagement with mTuner
Get PDFWith technology at the fingertips of most undergraduate students, it has been difficult for instructors to fully engage them in the classroom, which has resulted in the creation of several innovative interventions, such as mTuner. mTuner integrates several cognitive learning strategies within an assessment, with the goal of actually enhancing learning, as opposed to just measuring it. In the current study, students’ attitudes, level of engagement, and performance were evaluated, with specific explorations into academic entitlement (AE), test anxiety (TA), learning orientation (LO) and grade orientation (GO). Results indicated that students had very positive attitudes toward mTuner, especially in comparison to traditional multiple-choice paper and pencil (MCPP) formats. Additionally, students had very high performance scores on the mTuner assessment despite their limited engagement in the cognitive learning features, putting to question mTuner’s facilitation of long-term learning. Implications and future recommendations of mTuner implementation in educational environments are discussed
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Writing Proficiency Among Graduate Students in Higher Education Programs
Get PDFThis study explored the extent to which graduate students enrolled in Higher Education courses were proficient at writing. While writing proficiency has been extensively studied in elementary students, high school students, and undergraduates, little attention has been paid to formally evaluating graduate student proficiency. Despite the relatively new idea of assessing graduate student writing, it is a concern for graduate faculty and a valid area for study. This study was based on a sample of graduate students enrolled in at least one course in Higher Education at public institutions of higher education in the United States. A total sample size of 97 students was obtained. Two instruments were administered to the participants: A General Information and Writing Experience Questionnaire (G-WEQ) and the SAT II: Writing Test, Part B. The G-WEQ was designed to capture demographic information about the participants, as well as allow participants to provide a self-assessment of writing and describe the writing experiences they are currently encountering in graduate school. To assess writing proficiency for the participants, the SAT II: Writing Test, Part B was used. The purpose of the test is to "measure [test takers'] ability to...recognize faults in usage and structure, and to use language with sensitivity to meaning" (Educational Testing Service, 1999-2000, p.7). The z-Statistic for a Single Sample Mean significance test was used to determine whether the sample mean scored significantly higher than the population mean on the SAT II: Writing Test. This was not the case (z=0.295, p<0.38). The graduate students in this sample did not score significantly higher on the SAT II: Writing Test, Part B than the typical high school senior whose scores enter into the norm group
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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