Possible selves of inner city fourth graders: What do they believe about their future education and occupation?

Possible selves, a component of self-concept, are the thoughts people have about their future. The overall purpose of this study was to examine the educational and occupational possible selves of inner city children. Specific aims of the study were to: 1) Assess the similarities and differences between the level of schooling inner city children hope to complete and expect to complete, and 2) Assess the similarities and differences between the jobs inner city children hope to have in the future and expect to have. As part of a larger study designed to pilot test a health promotion intervention, fourth grade students (n = 19) completed two measures: the Level of Schooling Questionnaire and the Jobs Questionnaire. No significant differences were found between students' hoped-for and expected educational possible selves or their hoped-for and expected occupational possible selves. Future studies can explore methods and strategies to support, encourage, and cultivate inner city children's possible selves.^

Data Accuracy in Medical Record Abstraction

Clinical Research Data Quality Literature Review and Pooled Analysis We present a literature review and secondary analysis of data accuracy in clinical research and related secondary data uses. A total of 93 papers meeting our inclusion criteria were categorized according to the data processing methods. Quantitative data accuracy information was abstracted from the articles and pooled. Our analysis demonstrates that the accuracy associated with data processing methods varies widely, with error rates ranging from 2 errors per 10,000 files to 5019 errors per 10,000 fields. Medical record abstraction was associated with the highest error rates (70–5019 errors per 10,000 fields). Data entered and processed at healthcare facilities had comparable error rates to data processed at central data processing centers. Error rates for data processed with single entry in the presence of on-screen checks were comparable to double entered data. While data processing and cleaning methods may explain a significant amount of the variability in data accuracy, additional factors not resolvable here likely exist. Defining Data Quality for Clinical Research: A Concept Analysis Despite notable previous attempts by experts to define data quality, the concept remains ambiguous and subject to the vagaries of natural language. This current lack of clarity continues to hamper research related to data quality issues. We present a formal concept analysis of data quality, which builds on and synthesizes previously published work. We further posit that discipline-level specificity may be required to achieve the desired definitional clarity. To this end, we combine work from the clinical research domain with findings from the general data quality literature to produce a discipline-specific definition and operationalization for data quality in clinical research. While the results are helpful to clinical research, the methodology of concept analysis may be useful in other fields to clarify data quality attributes and to achieve operational definitions. Medical Record Abstractor’s Perceptions of Factors Impacting the Accuracy of Abstracted Data Medical record abstraction (MRA) is known to be a significant source of data errors in secondary data uses. Factors impacting the accuracy of abstracted data are not reported consistently in the literature. Two Delphi processes were conducted with experienced medical record abstractors to assess abstractor’s perceptions about the factors. The Delphi process identified 9 factors that were not found in the literature, and differed with the literature by 5 factors in the top 25%. The Delphi results refuted seven factors reported in the literature as impacting the quality of abstracted data. The results provide insight into and indicate content validity of a significant number of the factors reported in the literature. Further, the results indicate general consistency between the perceptions of clinical research medical record abstractors and registry and quality improvement abstractors. Distributed Cognition Artifacts on Clinical Research Data Collection Forms Medical record abstraction, a primary mode of data collection in secondary data use, is associated with high error rates. Distributed cognition in medical record abstraction has not been studied as a possible explanation for abstraction errors. We employed the theory of distributed representation and representational analysis to systematically evaluate cognitive demands in medical record abstraction and the extent of external cognitive support employed in a sample of clinical research data collection forms. We show that the cognitive load required for abstraction in 61% of the sampled data elements was high, exceedingly so in 9%. Further, the data collection forms did not support external cognition for the most complex data elements. High working memory demands are a possible explanation for the association of data errors with data elements requiring abstractor interpretation, comparison, mapping or calculation. The representational analysis used here can be used to identify data elements with high cognitive demands.

UNDERSTANDING NURSE CREATED COGNITIVE ARTIFACTS: PERSONALLY-CREATED-COGNITIVE-ARTIFACTS AS EXTERNAL REPRESENTATIONS OF DISTRIBUTED COGNITION

Manuscript 1: “Conceptual Analysis: Externalizing Nursing Knowledge” We use concept analysis to establish that the report tool nurses prepare, carry, reference, amend, and use as a temporary data repository are examples of cognitive artifacts. This tool, integrally woven throughout the work and practice of nurses, is important to cognition and clinical decision-making. Establishing the tool as a cognitive artifact will support new dimensions of study. Such studies can characterize how this report tool supports cognition, internal representation of knowledge and skills, and external representation of knowledge of the nurse. Manuscript 2: “Research Methods: Exploring Cognitive Work” The purpose of this paper is to describe a complex, cross-sectional, multi-method approach to study of personal cognitive artifacts in the clinical environment. The complex data arrays present in these cognitive artifacts warrant the use of multiple methods of data collection. Use of a less robust research design may result in an incomplete understanding of the meaning, value, content, and relationships between personal cognitive artifacts in the clinical environment and the cognitive work of the user. Manuscript 3: “Making the Cognitive Work of Registered Nurses Visible” Purpose: Knowledge representations and structures are created and used by registered nurses to guide patient care. Understanding is limited regarding how these knowledge representations, or cognitive artifacts, contribute to working memory, prioritization, organization, cognition, and decision-making. The purpose of this study was to identify and characterize the role a specific cognitive artifact knowledge representation and structure as it contributed to the cognitive work of the registered nurse. Methods: Data collection was completed, using qualitative research methods, by shadowing and interviewing 25 registered nurses. Data analysis employed triangulation and iterative analytic processes. Results: Nurse cognitive artifacts support recall, data evaluation, decision-making, organization, and prioritization. These cognitive artifacts demonstrated spatial, longitudinal, chronologic, visual, and personal cues to support the cognitive work of nurses. Conclusions: Nurse cognitive artifacts are an important adjunct to the cognitive work of nurses, and directly support patient care. Nurses need to be able to configure their cognitive artifact in ways that are meaningful and support their internal knowledge representations.

Methodological guidelines for reusing general ontologies

Currently, there is a great deal of well-founded explicit knowledge formalizing general notions, such as time concepts and the part_of relation. Yet, it is often the case that instead of reusing ontologies that implement such notions (the so-called general ontologies), engineers create procedural programs that implicitly implement this knowledge. They do not save time and code by reusing explicit knowledge, and devote effort to solve problems that other people have already adequately solved. Consequently, we have developed a methodology that helps engineers to: (a) identify the type of general ontology to be reused; (b) find out which axioms and definitions should be reused; (c) make a decision, using formal concept analysis, on what general ontology is going to be reused; and (d) adapt and integrate the selected general ontology in the domain ontology to be developed. To illustrate our approach we have employed use-cases. For each use case, we provide a set of heuristics with examples. Each of these heuristics has been tested in either OWL or Prolog. Our methodology has been applied to develop a pharmaceutical product ontology. Additionally, we have carried out a controlled experiment with graduated students doing a MCs in Artificial Intelligence. This experiment has yielded some interesting findings concerning what kind of features the future extensions of the methodology should have.

Edna Chavis

As an advocate for the elderly, Edna Chavis has made many improvements for matured people. She worked for the Social Security Administration for eleven years, where she recognized that “older people are the same as anyone else with the same wants and desires.” Since then, she gained educational experience to assist her in understanding the self-concept of older people. She earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Social Science and a teaching certificate from Eastern Michigan University in 1972, a Master of Science Degree in Adult Education from Tuskegee Institute in 1975, and a PhD Degree in Social Gerontology and Adult Education from the University of Missouri in 1979. Some of her accomplishments include her position as the head of the Missouri Delegates to the White House Conference on Aging and her lobbying efforts toward Missouri’s first Governor’s Conference on Aging. She was also awarded the Lt. Governor’s Nursing Home Task Force Certificate of Appreciation. As an adjunct instructor at Lincoln University, Chavis emphasizes to her students that aging is a natural process. She has had a great impact on her students, several of whom have continued on related career paths. Following her own advice that “Aging successfully is to never sit down and do nothing,” Chavis continues to teach, work as a gerontologist, and serve on committees within the Department of Health and Senior Services.

VIOLÊNCIA PSICOLÓGICA CONJUGAL EM UNIVERSITÁRIOS: ESTUDO DE FATORES DE RISCO

A pesquisa aborda a violência psicológica tal como é definida pela Organização Mundial de Saúde (KRUG, 2002) Usamos também a definição de violência psicológica utilizada por Straus e Sweet (1992). Nosso objetivo geral foi identificar a ocorrência de violência psicológica conjugal entre estudantes universitários, e a correlação desta com fatores de risco. E os específicos foram verificar sua correlação com a auto-estima, a ingestão de álcool, a faixa etária, o número de filhos e o rendimento familiar dos participantes. Tivemos respondentes de ambos os gêneros, casados ou em união estável, com idades entre 16 e 60 anos e alunos da Universidade Metodista de São Paulo. A pesquisa de campo foi realizada na Universidade Metodista de São Paulo e abordou universitários da graduação, graduação tecnológica e cursos seqüenciais. Esta pesquisa é uma pesquisa descritiva e sua amostragem foi não-probabilística de conveniência, responderam ao instrumento 246 pessoas, que foram escolhidas com base nos critérios de inclusão e na sua disponibilidade imediata para responder à pesquisa. Obtivemos mais respondentes do gênero feminino (145) do que do masculino (100). O instrumento foi composto por: Escala de Táticas de Conflito (CTS1), Escala de Auto-Estima e Autoconceito de Rosenberg e um Questionário Sócio-demográfico Adaptado. A CTS 1 foi usada para medir a violência familiar, a escala de auto-estima foi usada para verificar a atitude positiva ou negativa das pessoas e o questionário foi usado para complementar dados sobre a história pessoal e conjugal dos respondentes. Foram analisados 246 instrumentos através do Estatístico SPSS 13,0 for Windows. Os resultados demonstraram que aproximadamente 30% das pessoas de ambos os gêneros e da amostra total apresentaram alto grau de violência psicológica. Verificamos que existe uma tendência de que quanto menor a auto-estima dos respondentes maior o grau de violência psicológica. Constatamos também a inexistência de correlação linear entre violência psicológica, costume de ingerir bebida alcoólica e quantidade de bebida alcoólica ingerida pelos respondentes. Este dado não é corroborado pela literatura pesquisada. Portanto, percebemos que o álcool em si diz pouco enquanto fator de risco para a ocorrência da violência psicológica. Sua articulação merece ser mais investigada e melhor delineada por meio da busca de conhecimentos e práticas que contribuam para a saúde da população. Concluímos que a violência psicológica conjugal muitas vezes é banalizada e tida como natural

VIOLÊNCIA PSICOLÓGICA CONJUGAL EM UNIVERSITÁRIOS: ESTUDO DE FATORES DE RISCO

A pesquisa aborda a violência psicológica tal como é definida pela Organização Mundial de Saúde (KRUG, 2002) Usamos também a definição de violência psicológica utilizada por Straus e Sweet (1992). Nosso objetivo geral foi identificar a ocorrência de violência psicológica conjugal entre estudantes universitários, e a correlação desta com fatores de risco. E os específicos foram verificar sua correlação com a auto-estima, a ingestão de álcool, a faixa etária, o número de filhos e o rendimento familiar dos participantes. Tivemos respondentes de ambos os gêneros, casados ou em união estável, com idades entre 16 e 60 anos e alunos da Universidade Metodista de São Paulo. A pesquisa de campo foi realizada na Universidade Metodista de São Paulo e abordou universitários da graduação, graduação tecnológica e cursos seqüenciais. Esta pesquisa é uma pesquisa descritiva e sua amostragem foi não-probabilística de conveniência, responderam ao instrumento 246 pessoas, que foram escolhidas com base nos critérios de inclusão e na sua disponibilidade imediata para responder à pesquisa. Obtivemos mais respondentes do gênero feminino (145) do que do masculino (100). O instrumento foi composto por: Escala de Táticas de Conflito (CTS1), Escala de Auto-Estima e Autoconceito de Rosenberg e um Questionário Sócio-demográfico Adaptado. A CTS 1 foi usada para medir a violência familiar, a escala de auto-estima foi usada para verificar a atitude positiva ou negativa das pessoas e o questionário foi usado para complementar dados sobre a história pessoal e conjugal dos respondentes. Foram analisados 246 instrumentos através do Estatístico SPSS 13,0 for Windows. Os resultados demonstraram que aproximadamente 30% das pessoas de ambos os gêneros e da amostra total apresentaram alto grau de violência psicológica. Verificamos que existe uma tendência de que quanto menor a auto-estima dos respondentes maior o grau de violência psicológica. Constatamos também a inexistência de correlação linear entre violência psicológica, costume de ingerir bebida alcoólica e quantidade de bebida alcoólica ingerida pelos respondentes. Este dado não é corroborado pela literatura pesquisada. Portanto, percebemos que o álcool em si diz pouco enquanto fator de risco para a ocorrência da violência psicológica. Sua articulação merece ser mais investigada e melhor delineada por meio da busca de conhecimentos e práticas que contribuam para a saúde da população. Concluímos que a violência psicológica conjugal muitas vezes é banalizada e tida como natural

Narrative Therapy and Stigma Management: Restorying the Patient Experience of Being Told, “You have MS

The purpose of this investigation was to determine if the way patients are informed of the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS) affects their feelings about themselves as people with MS. Building on illness narrative, I hoped to examine how patients “storied” their experience of being informed of the diagnosis of MS and whether this “storying” had a lasting impact on their self-concept. The alternative would be that no connection exists between how a neurologist informs a patient of the diagnosis and how a person makes sense of their diagnosis and life with MS. Due to study limitations (e.g., small sample size, threat of response bias), the results are unclear about whether the way in which the news is broken has a lasting effect on patients' perceptions. However, review of the literature and patient responses indicate that there is a need for psychological intervention when patients are diagnosed with MS.

Diferencias de género y edad en autoconcepto en estudiantes adolescentes chilenos

Investigaciones previas han puesto de manifiesto la importancia del estudio del autoconcepto durante la adolescencia. El objetivo de este estudio consistió en analizar las diferencias de género y edad en las distintas dimensiones del autoconcepto en una muestra de 1414 estudiantes chilenos de entre 13 y 18 años. El autoconcepto fue evaluado mediante la versión breve del SDQII. Los resultados evidenciaron diferencias de género para las dimensiones Autoconcepto Verbal, Apariencia Física, Sinceridad/Veracidad y Autoestima en favor de las jóvenes, así como diferencias en el Autoconcepto Matemático, Habilidades Físicas, Estabilidad Emocional y Relación con los Padres en favor de los varones. También se observó una tendencia en los alumnos de mayor edad a puntuar más alto en Autoconcepto Académico General, Habilidades Físicas, Apariencia Física, Relaciones con el Sexo Opuesto y Autoestima, que sus iguales de menor edad. Este mismo patrón, pero a la inversa, se obtuvo para las dimensiones de Autoconcepto Matemático, Verbal y Estabilidad Emocional. Los resultados no replicaron la tendencia de los varones, reportada en estudios previos, a valorar más positivamente su físico y a poseer una autoestima más elevada que las mujeres, así como a percibir más negativamente sus relaciones paterno-filiales.

Actitudes hacia las matemáticas y rendimiento académico en función de los estudios de acceso y curso en futuros maestros

En este trabajo se analizan las actitudes hacia las Matemáticas de los estudiantes del Grado en Educación Primaria de la Universidad de A Coruña en función del curso y de los estudios de acceso a la Universidad. También se estudia el rendimiento académico según estas dos variables. Se aplica el cuestionario de actitudes PAC de Naya, Soneira, Mato y Torre (2014) con una fiabilidad Alfa de Cronbach de 0.921 a una muestra de 307 estudiantes. El instrumento está formado por 19 ítems con cinco opciones de respuesta tipo Likert y tres dimensiones que miden el autoconcepto, la percepción que tiene el alumno de su profesor y el agrado hacia las Matemáticas. Los resultados muestran que existen diferencias significativas en las actitudes y en el rendimiento en función del itinerario de acceso a la titulación.

Linking superiority bias in the interpersonal and intergroup domains

The author conducted 2 studies to explore the link between superiority bias in the interpersonal and intergroup domains. Australian university students evaluated the extent to which various personality traits were more or less applicable to themselves than to other Australian university students in general. They then evaluated the extent to which the same traits were more or less applicable to Australians than to people from other countries in general. As expected, the more participants evaluated themselves as superior to other university students, the more they evaluated Australians as a whole as superior to people from other countries. This link between interpersonal and intergroup superiority biases explained 22.1% of variance in Study 1 and 33.6% of variance in Study 2. The author interprets the results of the 2 studies as support for fundamental principles of social identity theory: (a) that self-concept consists of not only one's personal self but also the social groups to which one belongs and (b) that people are motivated to view both levels of self in a relatively positive fashion.

Physical activity of young children

Occupational therapists concerned with the long-term health and welfare of children need to be aware of the decline. in physical activity of children in most Western societies. The current study examined the extent of physical activity in the lives of 50 Australian children with a mean age of 7.74 years through questionnaires completed by the children's parents and pedometer (step) data collected from the children during 4 days. The current data show that higher self-perception of physical competence, child's levels of physical skill, and low parental perception of peer teasing were the best predictors of physical activity. Higher family socioeconomic status was found to be a significant predictor of more steps being taken on weekends, and partner's (usually a father's) level of exercise was an important predictor of the number of weekend steps. Children who were perceived to experience more peer teasing completed fewer steps on the weekend. The findings from this study indicate that children's physical activity levels may depend on the availability of family resources, and that children in their early school years may already experience negative effects from teasing that, combined with reduced self-confidence, may lay the foundation for their with drawing from physical activity as they get older.

Automated layout of small lattices using layer diagrams

Good quality concept lattice drawings are required to effectively communicate logical structure in Formal Concept Analysis. Data analysis frameworks such as the Toscana System use manually arranged concept lattices to avoid the problem of automatically producing high quality lattices. This limits Toscana systems to a finite number of concept lattices that have been prepared a priori. To extend the use of formal concept analysis, automated techniques are required that can produce high quality concept lattice drawings on demand. This paper proposes and evaluates an adaption of layer diagrams to improve automated lattice drawing. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.

Motivations for group membership: The role of subjective importance and uncertainty reduction

An experiment was conducted to investigate the idea that an important motive for identifying with social groups is to reduce subjective uncertainty, particularly uncertainty on subjectively important dimensions that have implications for the self-concept (e.g., Hogg, 1996; Hogg & Mullin, 1999). When people are uncertain on a dimension that is subjectively important, they self-categorize in terms of an available social categorization and, thus, exhibit group behaviors. To test this general hypothesis, group membership, task uncertainty, and task importance were manipulated in a 2 x 2 x 2 between-participants design (N = 128), under relatively minimal group conditions. Ingroup identification and desire for consensual validation of specific attitudes were the key dependent measures, but we also measured social awareness. All three predictions were supported. Participants identified with their group (H1), and desired to obtain consensual validation from ingroup members (H2) when they were uncertain about their judgments on important dimensions, indicating that uncertainty reduction motivated participants towards embracing group membership. In addition, identification mediated the interactive effect of the independent variables on consensual validation (H3), and the experimental results were not associated with an increased sense of social awareness and, therefore, were unlikely to represent only behavioral compliance with generic social norms. Some implications of this research in the study of cults and totalist groups and the explication of genocide and group violence are discussed.

Spatial indexing for scalability in FCA

The paper provides evidence that spatial indexing structures offer faster resolution of Formal Concept Analysis queries than B-Tree/Hash methods. We show that many Formal Concept Analysis operations, computing the contingent and extent sizes as well as listing the matching objects, enjoy improved performance with the use of spatial indexing structures such as the RD-Tree. Speed improvements can vary up to eighty times faster depending on the data and query. The motivation for our study is the application of Formal Concept Analysis to Semantic File Systems. In such applications millions of formal objects must be dealt with. It has been found that spatial indexing also provides an effective indexing technique for more general purpose applications requiring scalability in Formal Concept Analysis systems. The coverage and benchmarking are presented with general applications in mind.