Co-use of tobacco and cannabis: development and evaluation of tailored interventions

Tobacco and cannabis use often co-occur and are strongly interrelated. A growing body of literature indicates a need for dual-interventions for co-users of both substances. Based on three papers, this thesis aimed to develop and evaluate interventions for co-smokers of tobacco and cannabis. On the basis of expert interviews, two focus groups, and an online survey with cosmokers, Paper 1 highlighted a demand for and possible designs of such an intervention. Subsequently, a group cessation intervention for co-smokers was developed. Paper 2 evaluated this intervention regarding feasibility, safety, and effects, using a repeated-measures design with pre-, post-, and 6-month follow-up assessments (N = 77). The abstinence rates at the follow-up assessment were 10.4% (cigarettes), 19.5% (cannabis), and 5.2% (combined abstinence). Three participants discontinued participation due to severe problems during the treatment. Because Paper 1 also indicated only a modest readiness for simultaneous cessation, three brief, web-based and fully automated interventions to enhance this readiness were developed and evaluated using a randomised trial design with pre-, post- and 8-week followup assessment (N = 325). The readiness to quit tobacco and cannabis in the total sample was significantly increased at post-intervention but not at follow-up, and no intervention differences were found (Paper 3). In conclusion, simultaneous treatment of tobacco and cannabis use seems to be feasible but complex, and it may require more intensive interventions. Future research should take this complexity into account and evaluate the efficacy of dual-interventions with randomised controlled trials. ZUSAMMENFASSUNG Der Konsum von Tabak und Cannabis ist vielschichtig miteinander verwoben und in der Literatur werden zunehmend auf Co-Rauchende zugeschnittene Interventionen gefordert. Anhand von drei Artikeln (Papers 1, 2 und 3) zielte diese Dissertation auf die Entwicklung und Evaluation von Interventionen für Co-Rauchende ab. Mittels Online-Fragebogen, Interviews und Fokusgruppendiskussionen mit Co-Rauchenden und Experten wurden in einer Vorstudie zunächst der Bedarf an derartigen Interventionen bestätigt und Ideen für deren Ausgestaltung gesammelt, woraufhin ein Gruppen-Rauchstopp-Programm entwickelt wurde (Paper 1). In der sich anschliessenden Evaluationsstudie berichteten bei der Follow-up-Messung nach sechs Monaten 10.4% bzw. 19.5% der Teilnehmenden (N = 77) Abstinenz von Zigaretten bzw. Cannabis, und 5.2% erreichten kombinierte Abstinenz. Drei Teilnehmende brachen den Kurs wegen schwerer Probleme während der Intervention ab (Paper 2). Da die Vorstudie auf eine eher mässige Bereitschaft von Co-Rauchenden zum gleichzeitigen Rauchstopp hingedeutet hatte, wurden drei web-basierte, automatisierte Kurzinterventionen zur Erhöhung dieser Bereitschaft entwickelt und evaluiert (N = 325). Bei der Post-Messung, nicht aber bei der Follow-up-Messung, war die Bereitschaft in der Gesamtstichprobe signifikant höher als vor der Intervention, Interventionseffekte ergaben sich keine (Paper 3). Die gleichzeitige Behandlung von Tabak- und Cannabis-Konsum erscheint also machbar aber auch komplex. Zukünftige Forschung sollte diese Komplexität berücksichtigen und die Wirksamkeit gleichzeitiger Behandlung von Tabak- und Cannabis-Konsum mittels randomisiert-kontrollierter Studien untersuchen

Approval of George W. Bush: Economic and media impacts

George W. Bush\u27s approval rate had its shares of ups and downs. In this time series study I analyze the empirical evidence of the media\u27s and economy\u27s impact on his approval rate from 2001-2009. People tend to hold the president responsible for the country\u27s economic performance and the media influences people\u27s opinions of the president through agenda setting and priming. I operationalize the media influence on people into an independent variable. My economic independent variables are the monthly percent change in inflation rate, unemployment rate, and personal income. The dependent variable is the president\u27s approval rate. This study seeks to understand the relationship between the economy, media, and George W. Bush\u27s approval rate and add insight to the body of approval research

Generating intelligent tutoring systems for teaching reading: combining phonological awareness and thematic approaches

The objective of this thesis is to investigate the use of computers with artificial intelligence methods for the teaching of basic literacy skills to be applied eventually to the teaching of illiterate adults in Brazil.In its development many issues related to adult education have been considered, and two very significant approaches to the teaching of reading were focused on in detail: Phonological Awareness (PA) and Generative Themes. After being excluded from literacy curricula for a long time during the ascendancy of the "Whole Word" approaches, activities for the development of phonological awareness are currently being accepted as fundamental for teaching reading, and are being incorporated in most English literacy programmes. Generative Themes, in turn, were first introduced in Brazil in a massive programme for teaching reading to adults, and have since then been used successfully in a number of developing countries for the same purpose. However, these two approaches are apparently conflicting in their principles and emphasis, for the first (PA) is generally centred on the technical aspects of phonology, based on well controlled experiments and research, whereas the second is socially inspired and focused mainly on meaning and social relationships.The main question addressed in this research, consequently, is whether these two apparently conflicting approaches could be combined to create a method that would be technically PA oriented but at the same time could concentrate on meaning by using thematic vocabularies as stimuli for teaching. Would it be possible to find words to illustrate all the phonological features with which a PA method deals using a thematic vocabulary?To answer this question diverse concepts, languages and tools have been developed as part of this research, in order to allow the selection of thematic vocabularies, the description of PA curricula, the distribution of thematic words across PA curricula, the description of teaching activities and the definition of the teaching strategy rules to orient the teaching sequence.The resultant vocabularies have been evaluated and the outcomes of the research have been assessed by literacy experts. A prototype system for delivering experimental teaching activities through the Internet has also been developed and demonstrated

Locked down during the COVID-19 pandemic: The experience of mothers living alongside their child with social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) special educational needs, a psychosocial approach.

Between March and September, 2020, the U.K. government enforced a nationwide lockdown to protect citizens against Covid-19. Children with social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) special educational needs and their parents stayed at home, and parents were responsible for home schooling their children with variable support from the schools they attended. Emerging global qualitative research and articles from news outlets in the U.K. reported the significant negative impact the lockdown was having on family dynamics, including rises in mental health difficulties. Orientated to psychoanalytic theories of SEMH needs, an impetus developed for exploring the impact of lockdown on the relational dynamics between mother and child. A review of literature found a gap in research exploring experiences of parents home educating primary aged children with SEMH needs as separate case studies. A psychosocial methodological approach was taken, orientated in psychosocial ontological and epistemological positions. Three mothers were recruited from a specialist primary SEMH provision where their son attended, and they were interviewed using Free Association Narrative Interviewing (Hollway and Jefferson, 2013) on two occasions. Participant experiences were analysed using thematic and psychosocial analysis. Findings suggested the mothers experienced the lockdown as emotionally straining to lesser or greater extents according to their personal circumstances and past experiences. All mothers struggled to home-school their sons, feeling anxiety for differing reasons. The relational dynamics between the mother-child dyads intensified due to being forced together with limited breaks from each other, leading to emotional challenges and several unconscious processes to be enacted, including splitting, projection, rationalisation, and humour. The research was justified as useful for educational psychologist (EP) practice as it elucidated the experiences of parents of SEMH needs, the relationship dynamic within families during lockdowns, and insight for EPs working with parents who are forced to home educate their children in the future

Legibility of Musical Scores and Parallels with Language Reading

Following on the extensive literature within experimental psychology on the reading of natural language texts, I have undertaken a series of experiments on the sight-reading of musical scores that have shown that spacing of information, the structuring of the musical discourse, and the predictability of design in a score can aid its legibility in a manner similar to what has been shown in the language domain. Cultural studies of reading —particularly the works of Saenger— point in the same direction; according to these, the change in Medieval textual scripts from scriptura continua at the beginning of the eight century to the adoption of canonical separations between words, phrases, or paragraphs (which had fully spread throughout Europe by the mid-fourteenth century) significantly decreased the cognitive load and time that had previously been needed to decode a script. Crucially, this eliminated the need for the ancient techniques of the praelectio (initial decoding of the text by reading it aloud) and rote repetition for its comprehension, triggering a whole new culture of private fluent reading. Equally, the literature on music sight-reading (although lacking in systematic research based on objective measurements of legibility of texts) has proposed, based on surveys and studies of expertise, a series of cognitive models of the activity that prime, as factors that distinguish proficient readers from beginners: the integration of discursive elements into higher-order meaning units, the ability to predict upcoming information, and the awareness of the structuring of the text. The experiments reported here compared readings using conventional scores with readings using novel scores where the suggested advantages of information separation, integration and predictability were implemented in the design. Fluency of performance was measured primarily in terms of numbers of mistakes, results showing that readers played more accurately with the novel scores. Other, more qualitative, measurements —such as spectrogram coding of tempo stability, blind expert judgment of performance quality, and participant self-assessments— all showed strong positive correlations with the measurements of numbers of mistakes, with the novel scores producing performances that were more fluent and ranked as more trustworthy and musically satisfactory by experts and readers alike. These results will still need to be extrapolated to many other musical practices, but they serve to open a debate on the conventions of music publishing as they stand, and are well placed to open new lines of research in score legibility and design.Cambridge Home and EU Scholarship Scheme (CHESS