Research Staff Members Research Articles

The readability levels of cancer-prevention materials targeting African Americans.

Several studies have examined the readability levels of cancer-prevention materials, but the readability levels of materials targeting African Americans have not been documented. The Cancer Prevention Materials and African-Americans project, funded in 1994 by the Texas Cancer Council, was developed to assess the readability levels and cultural sensitivity of cancer-prevention materials targeting African Americans. This study assessed the readability of 100 cancer-prevention materials using McLaughlin's SMOG grading. Illustrations and point sizes were also examined by research staff members. Seventy-two percent of the material contained illustrations and 88% were printed using a 12-point font. An overall mean SMOG grade of 9.32 was found, which suggests that ninth graders can read and comprehend the text. Although this grade level is lower than those indicated by previous studies, many of the printed materials may not be appropriate for African Americans at high risk for cancer: those with low incomes and little education. Health professionals should focus on decreasing the reading levels of print materials, pretesting audiences to determine their actual reading levels, and examining other factors that influence readability and comprehension.

Public-Academic Partnerships: The Thresholds-Dartmouth Partnership and Research on Shared Decision Making

Public-Academic Partnerships: The Thresholds-Dartmouth Partnership and Research on Shared Decision Making

Why do dominant personalities attain influence in face-to-face groups? The competence-signaling effects of trait dominance.

Individuals high in the personality trait dominance consistently attain high levels of influence in groups. Why they do is unclear, however, because most group theories assert that people cannot attain influence simply by behaving assertively and forcefully; rather, they need to possess superior task abilities and leadership skills. In the present research, the authors proposed that individuals high in trait dominance attain influence because they behave in ways that make them appear competent--even when they actually lack competence. Two studies examined task groups using a social relations analysis of peer perceptions (D. A. Kenny & L. LaVoie, 1984). The authors found that individuals higher in trait dominance were rated as more competent by fellow group members, outside peer observers, and research staff members, even after controlling for individuals' actual abilities. Furthermore, frequency counts of discrete behaviors showed that dominance predicts the enactment of competence-signaling behaviors, which in turn predicts peer ratings of competence. These findings extend researchers' understanding of trait dominance, hierarchies in groups, and perceptions of competence and abilities.

A framework of operating models for interdisciplinary research programs in clinical service organizations

A framework of operating models for interdisciplinary research programs in clinical service organizations is presented, consisting of a “clinician–researcher” skill development model, a program evaluation model, a researcher-led knowledge generation model, and a knowledge conduit model. Together, these models comprise a tailored, collaborative approach to enhancing research-informed practice in community-based clinical service organizations. The models place different degrees of emphasis on the development of research-related skills in practitioners, the generation of knowledge tailored to clinical practice, and knowledge sharing. The nature, philosophical basis, roles of research staff members, outputs and impacts, and strengths and limitations of each model are described, in the context of a long-standing, interdisciplinary research program in a children's rehabilitation service organization. The use of the model framework as a tool for the design of interdisciplinary, community-based research programs is discussed.

Superconducting Lines for the Transmission of Large Amounts of Electrical Power Over Great Distances: Garwin–Matisoo Revisited Forty Years Later

In 1966, following a decade of discovery and development on A15 compounds, Richard Garwin and Juri Matisoo [1], two research staff members then in the IBM Research Division, submitted for publication a paper examining the prospect to employ one of the most promising of these materials, Nb3Sn, in a cable system for transmission of electricity. The scale of their proposal was truly enormous -100 GW (+/100 kV at 500 kA direct current) over a distance of 1000 km, the entire length refrigerated by liquid helium. At the time, such a cable would have been capable of carrying half the entire electric power generated in the United States, and about one-tenth today. This paper will revisit their vision in the context of the subsequent discovery of high temperature superconductivity twenty years later, and the now emerging availability of long lengths of high performance wire and tape for operation in the 20-80 K range. Whereas the scenario set by Garwin and Matisoo addressed the one-way transmission of electricity from remote coal and nuclear generation multi-plant farms to large population centers, we will extend their picture to include two-way transmission on a diurnal or longer period to take advantage of regional electricity pricing and production which has resulted from the deregulation of generation. We conclude that the advent of high temperature superconductivity substantially extends and brings closer both the technical and economic feasibility of Garwin and Matisoo's dream. However, we note, as did they, the caveat that whether it is desirable or necessary is another matter entirely. We believe this question will be decided in the affirmative as societal demands continue to increase for the clean, reliable and ecologically gentle delivery of large amounts of electric power, a need that was foreseen but not as overriding forty years ago as it is now.

High-Dose Oral Erythromycin Decreased the Incidence of Parenteral Nutrition-Associated Cholestasis in Preterm Infants

Background & Aims: Feeding intolerance because of functional gastrointestinal dysmotility and parenteral nutrition-associated cholestasis (PNAC) are common problems in preterm, very-low-birth-weight (VLBW) infants. This double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study aimed to assess the effectiveness of “high-dose” oral erythromycin as a prokinetic agent in decreasing the incidence of PNAC. Two secondary end points, including the time to achieve full enteral feeding and the duration of parenteral nutrition, were also evaluated. Methods: Infants consecutively admitted to the neonatal unit were randomized to receive erythromycin (12.5 mg/kg/dose every 6 hours for 14 days) or an equivalent volume of normal saline (placebo) if they attained less than half the total daily fluid intake (<75 mL/kg/day) as milk feeds on day 14 of life. Results: Of 182 VLBW infants enrolled, 91 received erythromycin. The incidence of PNAC was significantly lower in erythromycin-treated infants (18/91) compared with placebo infants (37/91; P = .003). Treated infants achieved full enteral nutrition significantly earlier (mean, 10.1; SE, 1.7 days; P < .001), and the duration of parenteral nutrition was also significantly decreased by 10 days (P < .001). Importantly, fewer infants receiving erythromycin had 2 or more episodes of septicemia (n = 4) compared with placebo patients (n = 13, P = .03). No serious adverse effect was associated with erythromycin treatment. Conclusions: High-dose oral erythromycin can be considered as a rescue measure for VLBW infants who fail to establish adequate enteral nutrition and in whom anatomically obstructive pathologies of the gastrointestinal tract have been excluded.

Psychotherapy, Symptom Outcomes, and Role Functioning Over One Year Among Patients With Bipolar Disorder

Psychotherapy, Symptom Outcomes, and Role Functioning Over One Year Among Patients With Bipolar Disorder

Organizational socialization, career aspirations and turnover intentions among design engineers

PurposeTurnover intention is one's behavioural intention to quit. The purpose of this study is to compare the relative influences of organizational socialization and career aspirations on turnover intentions of design engineers and to address the design of more effective development programmes and the reduction of dysfunctional turnover.Design/methodology/approachA study of 442 engineers staffed within “design and development” units is presented, and a research model is tested using structural equation modelling techniques.FindingsThe analysis indicates that design engineers report lower levels of turnover intention when organizational socialization is prominent and an adequate range of opportunities that satisfy career aspirations exist within the organization.Research limitations/implicationsThe cause‐effect relationships among constructs that are empirically derived from the analysis should be further supported by a longitudinal study. Future research should be aimed at exploring the different patterns of turnover intentions of engineers with different career orientations and in organizations with or without rigid formalized career advancement system.Practical implicationsManagers of technical staff are advised to put an effort to develop and encourage lateral career moves of research and development staff members, particularly for newcomers, by offering a variety of experiences, that is likely to speed up their prompt creation of a better defined self‐concept.Originality/valueThe originality of the research lies in that it addresses an explanation of engineers’ turnover based on a theoretical framework that jointly combines internal career anchors as well as external career opportunities and socialization, thus striving to fill a gap in existing literature.

Internet Cancer Support Groups

Internet Cancer Support Groups (ICSGs) are an emerging form of support group on Internet specifically for cancer patients. Previous studies have indicated the effectiveness of ICSGs as a research setting or a data-collection method. Yet recent studies have also indicated that ICSGs tend to serve highly educated, high-income White males who tend to be at an early stage of cancer. In this article, a total of 317 general ICSGs and 229 ethnic-specific ICSGs searched through Google.com, Yahoo.com, Msn.com, AOL.com, and ACOR.org are analyzed from a feminist perspective. The written records of group discussions and written memos by the research staff members were also analyzed using content analysis. The idea categories that emerged about these groups include (a) authenticity issues; (b) ethnicity and gender issues; (c) intersubjectivity issues; and (d) potential ethical issues. The findings suggest that (a) researchers adopt multiple recruitment strategies through various Internet sites and/or real settings; (b) researchers raise their own awareness of the potential influences of the health-related resources provided by ICSGs and regularly update their knowledge related to the federal and state standards and/or policies related to ICSGs; and (c) researchers consider adopting a quota-sampling method.

Research productivity and career status

Measurement of the productivity of economists, economics departments at universities and economics institutes has a tradition, which dates back to the 1950s. This study attempts to show that such measurement can be used to explain long-run changes in the overall productivity of university departments and institutes involved in research. The underlying notion in this study is that the productivity of departments and institutes in terms of total output (publications) decreases when the productivity of research staff members and their position (career status) in their departments or institutes do not correlate well. The empirical data used by this study relates to an economics research institute and cover a period of 30 years. The hypothesis that a mismatch between productivity and position leads to a decline in the overall productivity of departments and institutes could not be refuted.

Rate of psychiatric illness 1 year after traumatic brain injury.

Neurobehavioral symptoms are not uncommon after a traumatic brain injury. However, psychiatric syndromes per se have rarely been studied in patients with such an injury. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the type and extent of psychiatric syndromes in patients with traumatic brain injury. One hundred ninety-six hospitalized adults were studied 1 year after a traumatic brain injury with the use of a two-stage psychiatric diagnostic procedure. Psychiatric diagnoses were made according to ICD-10 criteria on the basis of data from the Schedules for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry interview. Of 164 patients interviewed, 30 (18.3%) had an ICD-10 diagnosis of a psychiatric illness. Among the 120 patients who were 18-64 years old, 21.7% had a psychiatric illness, compared with 16.4% in a study of the general population. A depressive illness was present in 13.9% of the traumatic brain injury patients, compared with 2.1% of the general population, and panic disorder was present in 9.0%, compared with 0.8% of the general population. In comparison with the general population, a higher proportion of adult patients had developed psychiatric illnesses 1 year after a traumatic brain injury; the rates of depressive episode and panic disorder were significantly higher in the study group. A history of psychiatric illness, an unfavorable global outcome according to the Glasgow Outcome Scale, a lower score on the Mini-Mental State examination, and fewer years of formal education seemed to be important risk factors in the development of a psychiatric illness. Compensation claims, however, were not associated with the rate of psychiatric illness.

Teaching research in the emergency medicine residency curriculum

Research in emergency medicine is a necessary component for the growth and development of the academic discipline. Although the need exists for competent physician investigators, most graduates of emergency medicine residencies have had little structured education in research design or methodology. This is particularly true in community hospital programs with little funding allocated to research, limited facilities, and few staff members actively involved in research. Our purpose is to describe a research curriculum designed to operate within a community-based residency program. This curriculum identifies a detailed set of educational objectives in research techniques with the expectation that on completion of the residency program, the resident will be able to critically evaluate medical literature and independently design a research project. We have developed a specific plan for meeting these objectives with coordinated seminars, readings, journal clubs, research projects or exhibits, and professional conferences. We suggest some practical methods of motivating residents and attending staff to pursue clinical investigation.

New position at Lamont‐Doherty

Three scientists at the Lamont‐Doherty Geological Observatory have been appointed to the position of Doherty Senior Research Scientist, newly created to recognize members of the observatory's senior research staff who have demonstrated “the highest levels of scholarship, scientific leadership, and promise of continuing excellence.”William Ruddiman, associate director of the observatory's Oceans and Climate Division, Taro Takahashi, associate director of the Geochemistry Division, and Dennis Kent, known for his research in paleomagnetics and rock magnetism, were each appointed to 5‐year terms as Doherty Senior Research Scientists.

Establishing a medical research computer facility

We report on the design and implementation of a computer facility (called the Data Bank) for medical research. The system was designed to be accessible to medical researchers and their staff. Its chief requirements were ability to handle large volumes of data efficiently and be reasonably user-friendly, since most medical research staff members are computer-naive. We describe how we set-up a user friendly system and report on the problems we had in making it accessible. The chief problems were caused by difficult communication between computer staff and medical research staff. We discuss the ways we have attempted to overcome the problems.

The social skills intake interview: Reliability and convergent validity assessment

Interview data on 77 hospitalized male psychiatric patients were compared to professional staffs' in vivo evaluations, trained judges' evaluations of video-taped role-plays, as well as patients' self-report evaluations of their social skill. The results on overall skill ratings showed good reliability between two senior research staff members who conducted the interviews ( r=0.66) and between the video judges ( r=0.92). While the convergent ratings of professionals corresponded significantly with the interview ratings, the self-report ratings did not. Agreement between raters and correspondence among rating sources are discussed in the context of the amount of structure in each observational setting.

The Evaluation of Reading Instruction

Why Johnny can't read has repeatedly surfaced in the national news media as a topic of public controversy and concern in recent years. In April 1979, during the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in San Francisco, a symposium presented by three Research, Development and Evaluation Center staff members of the Eugene Oregon Public School District (Barber, Note 1; Hendrickson, Note 2; Stephens, Note 3) offered some clues concerning reading obstacles based on results of a total school district reading evaluation which was conducted over an 18-month span. The core of the matter appeared to be that there was a lack of coordinated com-

ENERGY ANALYSES AND THE DETERMINATION OF MULTIREGIONAL PRICES

In the last decade, many analysts have tried to investigate energy supplies, demands, and distribution. Most of the studies in the United States have been conducted using a partial equilibrium framework and have concentrated on national supplies, demands, and distribution. In this paper, a theoretical general equilibrium framework is set forth that can be used to trace both the regional and industrial repercussions of changes in wages, prices, or demands in the energy industries. An example of the type of some of the empirical results that are obtainable is also given. Between 1972 and 1976 the price of coal in New England rose from $0.50 per million Btu to $1.26, and the price of oil rose from $0.56 to $1.87. Such increases are very large compared with the usual changes in industrial prices and have led to growing concern over possible repercussions on other industrial prices, on private and public expenditures, and on output and employment. Of particular concern in the present study are the differential regional impacts caused by changes in regional energy costs. The purpose of this paper is to outline a comprehensive and systematic multiregional theoretical framework that can be used to study regional price changes. A primal version of the multiregional input-output (MRIO) model was used in 11974 to analyze the interactions between energy and transportation (Polenske [10]). As far as is known, only two other versions of the MRIO model are being developed at the present time for use in energy analyses. One is the model by Park and Sandoval [9], the other a model by Goettle, Cherniavsky, and Tessmer [5]. Both models are developed for the primal version of the MRIO model, within a linear programming framework. For the present study, a dual version of the MRIO model has been developed. 1 It is an extension of the national price models that have been described by LeonThe author is associate professor of Regional Planning in the Department Of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She acknowledges with gratitude the valuable assistance received from Nathaniel Ng, Ananna S. Tse, and William H. Crown. The data for the multiregional input-output accounting system for 19 industries and 9 regions used for this study were constructed by Nathaniel Ng and Ananna Tse. The calculations for this paper were made by William H. Crown. 1 The theoretical work on various multiregional dual price models was done as a team effort by members of the MRIO research staff. Members participating with the author in this work since 1976 were: Patrick Del Duca, Gary Kaitz, Gregory Pai, Ananna Tse, and Jeffrey Young. Several studies using the dual MRIO system are in progress--Del Duca [3], Pai [8], Young [11].

Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University

The Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University is a research institute established officially in 1965 after several years of unofficial existence and now has an establishment of twenty-three permanent research staff members and four visiting foreign scholars. It plays a central role in promoting area research on Southeast Asia at Kyoto University. There are also more than one hundred scholars at other faculties and research institutes of Kyoto University who have been engaged in Southeast Asian Studies. As affiliated members of the Center, they can participate in the Center's various research projects. The research results are made available both in Japanese and English in South East Asian Studies (a quarterly journal), Japanese and English monographs, reprint series and discussion papers. Information on these publications is provided in SEAS: The Second Report 1969–1972 (with supplement), a copy of which is available free of charge from the Kyoto Center.

Bathroom gas water heaters and the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning

A number of cases of carbon monoxide poisoning accidents in bathrooms indicated the need to investigate the performance of the bathroom gas water heater and the behaviour of the bathroom user. This paper describes an exploratory study of these aspects in North-East Bristol involving members of the Health Education Council's Medical Research Division and staff of the South Western Gas Board. The results indicate that in the representative sample of 66 heaters a concentration of 1 % or more of carbon monoxide could be detected in the flue gases of 13% of the cases, and 12% produced toxic room atmospheres, i.e. CO ≥500 ppm. Prolonged exposure to these concentra tions of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere represent a danger to the bathroom user. The awareness of the bathroom user of the dangers asso ciated with gas water heaters in bathrooms, which are implicit in the recommendations laid down by the Gas Board for safe behaviour, is discussed. Results suggest that over one third of the users have a poor understanding of the relevant dangers.

Delivery Systems for Continuing Education

THIS paper, like the preceding one, is, in my judgment, very academic. In fact, we might say that this entire section of the program is a very important subject for academia today. Today's environment calls on us to develop a new sophistication, a broader program that will tax the discipline and provide an expanding opportunity to serve society. Today we, like every other discipline in the university, are being challenged. We are being challenged as to our reason for being. We are being asked the question, are you useful? Are you worth our tax dollars? Are we, as taxpayers, getting a product that is valuable to us as we work through the institutional and personal changes that are associated with a rapidly changing society? We are being challenged from many sources because we have assisted one segment of rural America but have virtually ignored another segment. We have been eager to help in building an efficient agriculture, but we have not been as eager to work with those rural Americans who are not sharing proportionally in the wealth of the nation, economically, socially, or culturally. We have not given this problem the recognition it merits in our research and extension programs. The statistics suggest that this recognition is long past due. Today per capita outlays for social services are three to four times greater in urban areas than in rural areas; non-metropolitan counties account for two-thirds of the substandard housing but receive one-sixth of the federal funds; and non-metropolitan counties have onehalf of the children in disadvantaged circumstances but only receive 20 to 41 percent of the monies allocated to programs concerned with such children. This situation represents a great challenge to the land grant university. While the university is not the sole cause for this condition, it must accept an educational responsibility for providing assistance in the future. The questions and the challenge must be answered and, in my judgment, can be answered very positively and effectively. The questions can be answered within our present framework in the land grant university. However, I believe we must examine our output as we attempt to answer the challenge. To be effective our output must contain knowledge which can be used by the decision makers on a day-to-day basis. To be used it must be understood, and to be understood it must be placed in a framework and in a language that has meaning to the recipient. To be useful this product must be conveyed to the public in a way that makes it relatively easy for the potential user to participate in the educational process. These two conditions cannot be met unless we as extension and research staff members have an intimate knowl-