Measuring aggressive driving motivations: Instrument development and validation

There are a variety of different motivations that may provoke aggressive driving in individuals. Research on aggressive driving has mostly overlooked addressing these various motivations, however it can be argued that the best way to reduce aggressive driving is to understand the root causes of the behavior. These causes can be explained by individual differences in personality, specifically the characteristics of narcissistic and rigid personalities. These two types of personalities both become angry in the driving context, although they may be provoked for different reasons. To reduce aggressive driving researchers may design persuasive appeals that match these motivations. The purpose of the present research was to design an instrument that clearly measures these motives and to validate the instrument by comparing responses on the instrument to related and unrelated constructs. The Aggressive Driving Motivations Questionnaire scores evidenced good reliability, and satisfactory content and construct validity. After the instrument was validated, it was used to compare anger responses to both participant-generated and researcher-presented driving scenarios. Although both the rigid and narcissism subscales predicted higher anger responses, only the narcissism subscale successfully predicted past aggressive driving behavior. Further research using this validated narcissism sub-scale will hopefully be able to develop persuasive appeals that influence the anger and behavioral response of this type of aggressive driver

Expectancy confirmation effects: accumulation and moderation by social interaction

The confirmation of expectancies may result in either a self-fulfilling prophecy or perceptual bias, altering social reality. The current research posits that expectancy confirmation processes may become more powerful through accumulation of expectancy effects across perceivers. It also investigates the implicit question that these effects may be highly pervasive and have the potential to accumulate across perceivers who share similar false expectancies, but do not have contact with one another. There were two perceivers and one target in each group of participants for a total of 114 groups. Perceivers were induced with either a hostile or non-hostile expectancy and then interacted with targets in a discussion task. Results failed to support either a self-fulfilling prophecy or perceptual bias. Failure to find effects may have been due to social norms that conflicted with the hostile expectancy, but other paradigms may be more conducive for finding the accumulation of expectancy confirmation processes

Engaging Moms on Teen Indoor Tanning Through Social Media: Protocol of a Randomized Controlled Trial

BACKGROUND: Indoor tanning elevates the risk for melanoma, which is now the most common cancer in US women aged 25-29. Public policies restricting access to indoor tanning by minors to reduce melanoma morbidity and mortality in teens are emerging. In the United States, the most common policy restricting indoor tanning in minors involves parents providing either written or in person consent for the minor to purchase a tanning visit. The effectiveness of this policy relies on parents being properly educated about the harms of indoor tanning to their children. OBJECTIVE: This randomized controlled trial will test the efficacy of a Facebook-delivered health communication intervention targeting mothers of teenage girls. The intervention will use health communication and behavioral modification strategies to reduce mothers\u27 permissiveness regarding their teenage daughters\u27 use of indoor tanning relative to an attention-control condition with the ultimate goal of reducing indoor tanning in both daughters and mothers. METHODS: The study is a 12-month randomized controlled trial comparing 2 conditions: an attention control Facebook private group where content will be relevant to teen health with 25% focused on prescription drug abuse, a topic unrelated to tanning; and the intervention condition will enter participants into a Facebook private group where 25% of the teen health content will be focused on indoor tanning. A cohort of 2000 mother-teen daughter dyads will be recruited to participate in this study. Only mothers will participate in the Facebook groups. Both mothers and daughters will complete measures at baseline, end of intervention (1-year) and 6 months post-intervention. Primary outcomes include mothers\u27 permissiveness regarding their teenage daughters\u27 use of indoor tanning, teenage daughters\u27 perception of their mothers\u27 permissiveness, and indoor tanning by both mothers and daughters. RESULTS: The first dyad was enrolled on March 31, 2016, and we anticipate completing this study by October 2019. CONCLUSIONS: This trial will deliver social media content grounded in theory and will test it in a randomized design with state-of-the-art measures. This will contribute much needed insights on how to employ social media for health behavior change and disease prevention both for indoor tanning and other health risk behaviors and inform future social media efforts by public health and health care organizations. CLINICALTRIAL: Clinicaltrials.gov NCT02835807; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02835807 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6mDMICcCE)

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Expectancy confirmation effects: accumulation and moderation by social interaction

The confirmation of expectancies may result in either a self-fulfilling prophecy or perceptual bias, altering social reality. The current research posits that expectancy confirmation processes may become more powerful through accumulation of expectancy effects across perceivers. It also investigates the implicit question that these effects may be highly pervasive and have the potential to accumulate across perceivers who share similar false expectancies, but do not have contact with one another. There were two perceivers and one target in each group of participants for a total of 114 groups. Perceivers were induced with either a hostile or non-hostile expectancy and then interacted with targets in a discussion task. Results failed to support either a self-fulfilling prophecy or perceptual bias. Failure to find effects may have been due to social norms that conflicted with the hostile expectancy, but other paradigms may be more conducive for finding the accumulation of expectancy confirmation processes.</p

Measuring aggressive driving motivations: Instrument development and validation

There are a variety of different motivations that may provoke aggressive driving in individuals. Research on aggressive driving has mostly overlooked addressing these various motivations, however it can be argued that the best way to reduce aggressive driving is to understand the root causes of the behavior. These causes can be explained by individual differences in personality, specifically the characteristics of narcissistic and rigid personalities. These two types of personalities both become angry in the driving context, although they may be provoked for different reasons. To reduce aggressive driving researchers may design persuasive appeals that match these motivations. The purpose of the present research was to design an instrument that clearly measures these motives and to validate the instrument by comparing responses on the instrument to related and unrelated constructs. The Aggressive Driving Motivations Questionnaire scores evidenced good reliability, and satisfactory content and construct validity. After the instrument was validated, it was used to compare anger responses to both participant-generated and researcher-presented driving scenarios. Although both the rigid and narcissism subscales predicted higher anger responses, only the narcissism subscale successfully predicted past aggressive driving behavior. Further research using this validated narcissism sub-scale will hopefully be able to develop persuasive appeals that influence the anger and behavioral response of this type of aggressive driver.</p

School Sun-Protection Policies: Measure Development and Assessments in 2 Regions of the United States

BACKGROUND: In 2002, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that schools adopt policies that reduce exposure of children to ultraviolet radiation to prevent skin cancer. We report here the development of a school sun-safety policy measure and baseline descriptive statistics from the assessment of written policies collected in 2005-2007 from public school districts that enrolled in a randomized trial evaluating a policy promotion program. METHODS: Written policies were collected from 103 of 112 school districts in Colorado and Southern California prior to randomization. We developed methods for selecting policy headings/sections topics likely to contain sun-safety policies for students and for assessing the presence, strength, and intent of policies. Trained coders assessed the content of each policy document. RESULTS: Overall, 31% of districts had a policy addressing sun safety, most commonly, protective clothing, hats, sunscreen, and education at baseline. More California districts (51.9%) had these policies than Colorado districts (7.8%, p \u3c .001). Policy scores were highest in districts with fewer Caucasian students (b = −0.02, p = .022) in Colorado (b = −0.02, p = .007) but not California (b = 0.01, p = .299). CONCLUSION: The protocol for assessing sun-safety policy in board-approved written policy documents had several advantages over surveys of school officials. Sun-protection policies were uncommon and limited in scope in 2005-2007. California has been more active at legislating school policy than Colorado. School district policies remain a largely untapped method for promoting the sun protection of children

“Micro-assessments of Public Services Usability.” (Panel)

Micro-assessments of public services usability: Narrowly-focused, short assessment tools that can be quickly designed, implemented, analyzed and used to make changes to library services. In times of budget constraints and customer service orientation, we recognize improving services with limited resources are still a priority for libraries. We hope to inform our audience of quick and easy ways to assess services in order to help boost their assessment activities by creating opportunities to improve services utilizing micro-assessment strategies

The Accumulating Effects of Shared Expectations

This research examined whether self-fulfilling prophecies and perceptual confirmation effects accumulated across people. Trios of same-sex participants, each consisting of two interviewers and one target, were randomly assigned to one of three conditions that served to manipulate interviewers\u27 expectations (i.e., non-hostile vs. hostile) and the similarity of their expectations (i.e., similar vs. dissimilar) for targets. Each trio participated in an interaction in which interviewers asked targets questions. Targets\u27 hostility during the interaction and interviewers\u27 impressions of targets\u27 hostility following the interaction served as the primary dependent variables. Results indicated that perceptual confirmation effects accumulated across interviewers. Even though targets\u27 behavior during the interaction did not differ across conditions, interviewers nonetheless judged targets as more hostile when both interviewers expected targets to be hostile than when only one did. The authors discuss these findings in terms of the potential implications for those who have multiple inaccurate and unfavorable expectations held about them