Nebraska Adolescents' HIV/Aids Attitudes, Knowledge and Related Practices: 1989

This Prevention Center Paper (No. 22) describes the HIV/AIDS related knowledge, attitudes and practices of a random sample of 1240 Nebraska adolescents in grades 9-12. The data were gathered in 1989. Data were gathered by staff of Health Education, Inc., a Nebraska-based nonprofit research and development corporation, as part of a contract with the Nebraska Department of Education. The Nebraska Department of Education has a major HIV /AIDS cooperative agreement with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. Schools were selected at random from each of the six classifications of Nebraska schools established by the Nebraska Department of Education. Two to three classrooms for each grade 9-12 were then randomly selected within each sampled school. All students in the classes on the day of the survey voluntarily completed CDC's HIV / AIDS adolescent survey. All responses were anonymous. Classroom teachers and school administrators 'were not involved in the data collection in any way. A data collection protocol was followed to ensure validity in this self-report survey. This report is divided into four parts: Part 1 deals with students' acceptance of HIV/AIDS instruction and of people with HIV / AIDS. Part 2 describes students' access to HIV / AIDS information: Part 3 is about students ' knowledge of HIV / AIDS, and Part 4 discusses Nebraska adolescents' practices that increase the risk of HIV/AIDS.

Nurturing Young Students' Writing Knowledge, Self-Regulation, Attitudes, and Self-Efficacy: The Effects of Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of implementing the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model of instruction (Graham & Harris, 2005; Harris & Graham, 1996) on the writing skills and writing self-regulation, attitudes, self-efficacy, and knowledge of 6 first grade students. A multiple-baseline design across participants with multiple probes (Kazdin, 2010) was used to test the effectiveness of the SRSD instructional intervention. Each participant was taught an SRSD story writing strategy as well as self-regulation strategies. All students wrote stories in response to picture prompts during the baseline, instruction, independent performance, and maintenance phases. Stories were assessed for essential story components, length, and overall quality. All participants also completed a writing attitude scale, a writing self-efficacy scale, and participated in brief interviews during the baseline and independent performance phases. Results indicated that SRSD can be beneficial for average first grade writers. Participants wrote stories that contained more essential components, were longer, and of better quality after SRSD instruction. Participants also showed some improvement in writing self-efficacy from pre- to post-instruction. All of the students maintained positive writing attitudes throughout the study.

Nebraska Wind Power: A Comparitive Study of Knowledge and Attitudes

Abstract The goal of this project is to assess the knowledge and attitudes of Nebraskans on the issue of wind power. The point of this research is to learn whether the presence of wind power has a positive effect on a person’s knowledge about and attitudes toward wind power and wind turbines. Using mail surveys, qualitative and quantitative data were collected from the towns of Pierce and Ainsworth Nebraska. The surveys aided in seeing patterns of knowledge about wind power and wind turbines and positive and negative attitudes and major concerns regarding wind power.