Book Reviews : "Off Limits: a parent’s guide to keeping kids safe from sexual abuse" and "Smart Parenting for Safer Kids"

Two important books on the topic of child sexual abuse prevention were recently published: Off Limits: A Parent’s Guide to Keeping Kids Safe from Sexual Abuse (Wurtele & Berkower, 2010) and Smart Parenting for Safer Kids (Briggs, 2010). The authors of both books are highly credentialed with long experience researching and writing about child sexual abuse prevention. Sandy Wurtele, PhD, is author of landmark child- and parent-focused sexual abuse prevention programs conducted in the USA over the past 30 years. She has published over 80 journal articles and book chapters on this topic. Her co-author, Feather Berkower, MSW, has been conducting workshops for adults on this topic for 25 years. Freda Briggs, PhD, has over 40 years’ experience in child protection in Australia and has also published numerous scholarly works on the topic. She was the inaugural recipient of the Australian Humanitarian Award in 1998, was Senior Australian of the Year in 2000, and was awarded an Order of Australia in 2005.

Development of a Resource for Parents with Advanced Cancer: What do Parents Want?

OBJECTIVE: Parents coping with a diagnosis of advanced cancer experience distress and guilt about the impact of the disease on their children but report that there are few resources specific to advanced disease to guide and support them in discussions with their children. Although some resources have been developed to assist parents with advanced cancer, it appears that these are not widely disseminated. METHODS: To determine the need for a brief resource that could be given to parents at the point of diagnosis of advanced cancer, including its content, in-depth interviews were conducted with eight women with advanced breast cancer. RESULTS: Women confirmed that they had received minimal assistance from health professionals in discussing the diagnosis with their children, and even when professional counselors were accessed they were not always attuned to the specific needs of parents with advanced cancer. Women felt frustrated that information they did access focused on early disease and lacked the details women felt they needed in coping with advanced cancer. Women felt that there was a need for a brief resource that reassured parents about the impact of the cancer on their children, including practical strategies to help them cope and examples of the ways other parents had responded to difficult questions such as about parental death. A draft resource was developed, critically reviewed by the participants, and their comments incorporated into a final version. SIGNIFICANCE OF RESULTS: This article expands on the themes highlighted by women as important to assist parents with advanced cancer, including the final resource that was developed.

Identifying parent perspectives to guide active travel intervention with small populations : case study in Denver, Colorado

This paper investigates a strategy for guiding school-based active travel intervention. School-based active travel programs address the travel behaviors and perceptions of small target populations (i.e., at individual schools) so they can encourage people to walk or bike. Thus, planners need to know as much as possible about the behaviors and perceptions of their target populations. However, existing strategies for modeling travel behavior and segmenting audiences typically work with larger populations and may not capture the attitudinal diversity of smaller groups. This case study used Q technique to identify salient travel-related attitude types among parents at an elementary school in Denver, Colorado; 161 parents presented their perspectives about school travel by rank-ordering 36 statements from strongly disagree to strongly agree in a normalized distribution, single centered around no opinion. Thirty-nine respondents' cases were selected for case-wise cluster analysis in SPSS according to criteria that made them most likely to walk: proximity to school, grade, and bus service. Analysis revealed five core perspectives that were then correlated with the larger respondent pool: optimistic walkers, fair-weather walkers, drivers of necessity, determined drivers, and fence sitters. Core perspectives are presented—characterized by parents' opinions, personal characteristics, and reported travel behaviors—and recommendations are made for possible intervention approaches. The study concludes that Q technique provides a fine-grained assessment of travel behavior for small populations, which would benefit small-scale behavioral interventions

'A is for Anxiety' A parent's guide to managing children's anxiety

This book is literally the A to Z of techniques to help parents manage their anxious children. It is easy to read and based on proven principles for reducing fears and worries. It can be used either alone or in conjunction with the Worrybuster's story books.

Predictive modelling : parents’ decision making to use online child health information to increase their understanding and/or diagnose or treat their child’s health

Abstract Background The quantum increases in home Internet access and available online health information with limited control over information quality highlight the necessity of exploring decision making processes in accessing and using online information, specifically in relation to children who do not make their health decisions. Objectives To understand the processes explaining parents’ decisions to use online health information for child health care. Methods Parents (N = 391) completed an initial questionnaire assessing the theory of planned behaviour constructs of attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control, as well as perceived risk, group norm, and additional demographic factors. Two months later, 187 parents completed a follow-up questionnaire assessing their decisions to use online information for their child’s health care, specifically to 1) diagnose and/or treat their child’s suspected medical condition/illness and 2) increase understanding about a diagnosis or treatment recommended by a health professional. Results Hierarchical multiple regression showed that, for both behaviours, attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, (less) perceived risk, group norm, and (non) medical background were the significant predictors of intention. For parents’ use of online child health information, for both behaviours, intention was the sole significant predictor of behaviour. The findings explain 77% of the variance in parents’ intention to treat/diagnose a child health problem and 74% of the variance in their intentions to increase their understanding about child health concerns. Conclusions Understanding parents’ socio-cognitive processes that guide their use of online information for child health care is important given the increase in Internet usage and the sometimes-questionable quality of health information provided online. Findings highlight parents’ thirst for information; there is an urgent need for health professionals to provide parents with evidence-based child health websites in addition to general population education on how to evaluate the quality of online health information.

What parents want: Parent preference regarding sleep for their preschool child when attending Early Care and Education

Background While most children cease napping between the ages of 2 and 5 years, across a range of international settings the allocation of a mandatory naptime is a common feature of the daily routine in Early Care and Education (ECE) programs for children of this age. Evidence regarding the developmental effects of napping is limited but, beyond age 2, is consistently associated with delayed night sleep onset and increased number of awakenings. Objectives The present study examined parent preferences towards napping in ECE. Methods Participants were 750 parents of preschool-aged children attending a representative sample of Australian ECE programs across metropolitan, regional and rural sites in 2011. We analysed quantitative and open-ended questionnaire data from a large, longitudinal study of the effectiveness of Australian early education programs (E4Kids). Statistical analyses examined prevalence of parent preference for sleep and demographic correlates. Thematic analyses were employed to identify parents' rationale for this preference. Results The majority of parents (78.7%) preferred that their children did not regularly sleep while attending ECE. The dominant explanation provided by parents was that regular naps were no longer appropriate and adversely impacted their children's health and development. Parents of younger children were more likely to support regular naps. Conclusions The results highlight a disjuncture between parent preferences and current sleep policy and practices in ECE. Further research is needed to establish evidence-based guidelines to support healthy sleep-rest practices in ECE. Such evidence will guide appropriate practice and support parent-educator communication regarding sleep and rest.

The guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK Guide) : applicability and contribution to project success in Australia

The PMBOK Guide is one of the most influential publications concerning the knowledge of the project manangement. Moreover, the pervasion of this guide seems to be set to increase as the basis of accreditation - in conjunction with the increasing global trend toward obtaining project management professional status. However, despite the influence and strengthening profile of this guide, reports continue to be published that detail numerous project failures in a wide range of different industries. The PMBOK Guide comprises mainly declarative (know-what) and procedural (know-how) information. In this sense, the guide is largely normative and provides a very good example of the limitations of this approach as highlighted by proponents of a move to the genuine application of positibe theory in project management.----- The aim of this paper is to determine the applicability of the guide in Australia and to determine the extent to which project success can be attributed to the guide. Project Managers from a variety of organisations were surveyed. This postal survey yielded 48 replies. Descriptive statistics was used to assess the incidence and effectivieness of all the processes in the guide. The results indicate that there were no processes that could be considered as peripheral or as a candidate for elimination from the guide. More specifically, all the processes were identified as either a key routine process or a key selective process and positively related to the level of project success. However, the results also indicated that other major factors pertaining to causal knowledge (know-why) are, at least, equally important determinants of project success. It is concluded that declarative, procedural and causal knowledge are all valuable, and given the preponderance of the first two types of knowledge, there seems to be an urgent need to now ensure an equal quest for causal knowledge. In terms of developing causal knowledge, a good starting point would appear to be both positive theory from production and economics.

The influence of role models on students' entrepreneurial intentions

The Smart State initiative requires both improved education and training, panicularly in technical fields, plus entrepreneurship to commercialise new ideas. In this study, we propose an entrepreneurial intentions model as a guide to examine the educational choices and entrepreneurial intentions of first-year University students, focusing on the effect of role models. A survey of over 1000 first-year University students revealed that the most enterprising students were choosing to study in the disciplines of information technology and business, economics and law, or selecting dualdegree programs that include business. The role models most often identified for their choice of field of study were parents,followed by teachers and peers, with females identifying more role models than males. For entrepreneurship, students' role models were parents andpeers,followed by famous persons and teachers. Males and females identified similar numbers of role models, but males found starting a business more desirable and more feasible, and reponed higher entrepreneurial intention. The implications of these findings for Smart State policy are discussed.

A multiliteracies project in the middle school : Parents as coteachers

This paper examines the experiences of one middle years’ English and Studies of Society and Environment (SoSE) teacher who adopted a multiliteracies project-based orientation to a unit on War and Refugees. It details the multiliteracies teaching and learning cycle, which is based on four non-hierarchical, pedagogical orientations: situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing and transformed practice (New London Group, 2000; Kalantzis & Cope, 2005a). Following the work of Kalantzis and Cope (2005a), it draws out the knowledge processes exacted in each of these four phases: experiencing the known and the new; conceptualising by naming and theorising; analysing functionally and critically; and, applying appropriately and creatively. Two parents were invited to enter the study as coteachers with the teacher and researcher. Using Bourdieu’s (1992) construct of capital, the findings report on how the multiliteracies approach enabled them to engage in school-based literacy practices differently than they had done previously in classrooms. An unexpected finding concerns the teacher’s altered view about how his role and status were perceived by the parents.

The influence of role models on students' entrepreneurial intentions

The Smart State initiative requires both improved education and training, particularly in technical fields, plus entrepreneurship to commercialise new ideas. In this study, we propose an entrepreneurial intentions model as a guide to examine the educational choices and entrepreneurial intentions of first-year University students, focusing on the effect of role models. A survey of over 1000 first -year University students revealed that the most enterprising students were choosing to study in the disciplines of information technology and business, economics and law, or selecting dual degree programs that include business. The role models most often identified for their choice of field of study were parents, followed by teachers and peers, wish females identifying more role models than males. For entrepreneurship, students' role models were parents and peers, followed by famous persons and teachers. Males and females identified similar numbers of role models, but males found starting a business more desirable and more feasible, and reported higher entrepreneurial intention. The implications of these findings for Smart State policy are discussed.