78 research outputs found
The Impact of Negative Political Advertisements: Perceptions and Realities
Past research on negative political advertisements has focused primarily on how these ads impact voter turnout, voter evaluations of candidates, and the democratic process as a whole. This research attempts to expand the body of knowledge by examining the phenomenon of negative political advertising using a mixed-methods approach. By examining 2002 and 2004 Congressional candidates' negative ad content, this research seeks to determine if a candidate's gender impacts message content. Findings indicate that a candidate's gender does indeed impact the type of content found in a negative advertisement. Next, an experiment was created to determine if the gender of a candidate impacts the viewer's perception of negativity in the ad. Significant findings indicate that gender of a political candidate does alter a viewer's perception of negativity. Finally, professional campaign consultants were asked to respond to a series of questions in an attempt to gain a practical understanding of negativity in political advertising. A comparison between consultants' responses and academicians' research was completed, finding that in most cases these groups agree on the impacts of negative advertisements. However, a key gender gap finding indicates one major exception to the general consensus. The significant findings in this research expand our understanding of negative political advertising, and contribute to the field of political science
Training Peer Educators
Peer educators have become increasingly common on college campuses across America. Peer educator programs have primarily been created to help incoming students transition from high school to college by connecting incoming students to knowledgeable, helpful, and experienced peers. During my time as the first year experience coordinator at a public institution in the Midwest, I was primarily responsible for preparing a group of students to serve as peer educators. One of the highlights of my duties in this position was to create a training program specifically designed to prepare students to serve as peer educators in classrooms across campus. In this paper, the approach to the training program I developed will be outlined, and some of the materials used in training will be made available. Support for the training program is provided through feedback from student evaluations of the training. Existing literature regarding peer educators is somewhat limited and focuses primarily on the benefits of using students in the classroom and the importance of training these individuals. Most of the literature does not specifically address how to train students to successfully navigate their role as peer educators. The purpose of this paper is to fill a gap in peer educator literature by offering practical guidelines for use in peer educator training programs and to offer suggestions for training improvements based on the information gathered from the program I was responsible for
Gender Differences and Negative Political Advertising
The purpose of this study was to examine negative political advertisements to determine if gender influenced the content of the ads. Over 600 political advertisements from the 2002 election cycle were coded for content. A content analysis was done of the advertisements to determine whether there were differences in negative advertisements that could be attributed to gender. Gender does appear to influence the content of negative political advertisements. Female candidates are more likely to focus on policy related issues, and male candidates are more apt to focus on personal issues. However, both male and female candidates will use contrast ads to present negative information about the opponent while providing positive information about their own campaign. While it does appear that humor is used more often by male candidates, this finding is not statistically significant and should be studied further at a later date.Political Scienc
Sociodemographic correlates of cervical cancer screening rates in Calgary, AB: Matched Trend analysis of 2006, 2011 and 2016
Introduction
Cervical Cancer Screening (CCS) has reduced the incidence and mortality rates of cervical cancer (CC). However, the benefits are distributed unevenly since 30% of eligible women have not been screened within three years in Alberta. Women who have never been screened or are screened irregularly are most at risk for CC.
Objectives and Approach
The aim of this study was to understand who gets CCS and who does not, in Calgary, Alberta and analyze the CC policy implications since 2006-2016. CCS information of women aged 25-69 were obtained from Calgary Laboratory Services for the years 2006, 2011 and 2016 and matched with Canadian Census data. Negative binomial regression and Generalized Estimating Equations were used to test associations of CCS rates with socio-demographic variables for eligible women. CCS spatial trends over the years was studied using the GIS Hotspot analysis.
Results
Major age and geographical variations were observed in CCS rates in Calgary. CCS rates in the recommended age groups varied from 40.6 % to 23.6 %. For age groups between 25 and 54, CCS rates were above 33\%, which implies that many women are having tests more than once every three years. Use was positively associated with median household income, education, Chinese ethnicity and negatively associated with ‘Black’ visible minority status. Women living in lower socio-economic areas of Calgary are screened at lower rates. Hotspot analysis maps revealed heterogeneous testing patterns in the city with relatively higher testing in the downtown, Southeast and Northwest quadrants of the city and relatively decreased CCS in the Northeast quadrant of Calgary
Conclusion/Implications
Screening programs need to be strengthened with greater focus on including specific demographic groups and reducing overuse. Understanding current testing patterns are important in assessing the benefit to harm ratio of CCS and for monitoring and evaluation of CCS program
Does the family physicians’ characteristics affect Cervical Cancer Screening rates?
Introduction
While the effectiveness of cervical cancer-screening (CCS) programs is well accepted, concern is growing regarding Family physicians (FP) poor adherence to CCS guidelines resulting in over and under screening. In Canada, it is a FP responsibility to ensure that the CCS is done as per guidelines and with appropriate follow-up.
Objectives and Approach
To identify primary care physicians’ characteristics that are associated with over and under CCS for eligible women in Calgary, Alberta.
We accessed the Calgary Laboratory Services data for 1475 FPs practicing in Calgary and linked it with the Physicians database of College of Physicians and Surgeons Alberta database. We then matched FP’s gender, country and year of medical school graduation, years since medical school graduation, certification in family medicine and their clinic address with their CCS testing patterns. Using doctors as their own controls, we compared data from 2010-2016 to determine practice variations in CCS patterns subsequent to guideline changes.
Results
We analyzed approximately 2,400,000 Pap test requisitions (approx. 300,000 per year) to identify screening patterns from 2010-2016 of 1475 family practitioners practicing in Calgary. Our preliminary results identified significant variations in the test ordering patterns of FPs. Approx. half of the male FPs were not performing CCS tests on their eligible female patients. Female FPs ordered more CCS tests than their male counterparts. FP trained in North America, were ordering more pap tests than FPS trained elsewhere. Decreased CSS was also observed among FPs practicing in Northeast Calgary.
Conclusion/Implications
We detected three CCS patterns: FPs who never perform CSS on eligible female patients; FPs who followed recommended guidelines for performing CCS tests and FPs who performed CCS tests, not following the guidelines. To ensure appropriate use of CSS, identifying intention-behavior relationships and innovative educational interventions for FPs are required
Evidence for Reduced Specific Star Formation Rates in the Centers of Massive Galaxies at z = 4
We perform the first spatially-resolved stellar population study of galaxies
in the early universe (z = 3.5 - 6.5), utilizing the Hubble Space Telescope
Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS)
imaging dataset over the GOODS-S field. We select a sample of 418 bright and
extended galaxies at z = 3.5 - 6.5 from a parent sample of ~ 8000
photometric-redshift selected galaxies from Finkelstein et al. (2015). We first
examine galaxies at 3.5< z < 4.0 using additional deep K-band survey data from
the HAWK-I UDS and GOODS Survey (HUGS) which covers the 4000A break at these
redshifts. We measure the stellar mass, star formation rate, and dust
extinction for galaxy inner and outer regions via spatially-resolved spectral
energy distribution fitting based on a Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm. By
comparing specific star formation rates (sSFRs) between inner and outer parts
of the galaxies we find that the majority of galaxies with the high central
mass densities show evidence for a preferentially lower sSFR in their centers
than in their outer regions, indicative of reduced sSFRs in their central
regions. We also study galaxies at z ~ 5 and 6 (here limited to high spatial
resolution in the rest-frame ultraviolet only), finding that they show sSFRs
which are generally independent of radial distance from the center of the
galaxies. This indicates that stars are formed uniformly at all radii in
massive galaxies at z ~ 5 - 6, contrary to massive galaxies at z < 4.Comment: Accepted to ApJ, 20 pages, 15 figure
Spectroscopic Confirmation of Faint Lyman Break Galaxies at Redshifts Four and Five in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field
We present the faintest spectroscopically confirmed sample of redshift four
and five Lyman break galaxies to date. The sample is based on slitless grism
spectra of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field region from the GRAPES (Grism ACS
Program for Extragalactic Science) and PEARS (Probing Evolution and
Reionization Spectroscopically) projects, using the G800L grism on the HST
Advanced Camera for Surveys. We report here confirmations of 39 galaxies,
pre-selected as candidate Lyman break galaxies using photometric selection
criteria. We compare a "traditional" V-dropout selection to a more liberal one
(with V-i > 0.9), and find that the traditional criteria are about 64% complete
and 81% reliable. We also study the Lyman alpha emission properties of our
sample. We find that Lyman alpha emission is detected in about 1/4 of the
sample, and that our broad-band color selected sample includes 55% of
previously published line-selected Lyman alpha sources. Finally, we examine our
stacked 2D spectra. We demonstrate that strong, spatially extended (arcsecond
scale) Lyman alpha emission is not a generic property of these Lyman break
galaxies, but that a modest extension of the Lyman alpha photosphere (compared
to the starlight) may be present in those galaxies with prominent Lyman alpha
emission.Comment: Submitted to The Astrophysical Journal. Reduced spectra from both
GRAPES and PEARS are available from STScI, at
http://www.stsci.edu/science/grapes/ and at
http://archive.stsci.edu/prepds/pears
A CANDELS WFC3 Grism Study of Emission-Line Galaxies at z~2: A Mix of Nuclear Activity and Low-Metallicity Star Formation
We present Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3 slitless grism
spectroscopy of 28 emission-line galaxies at z~2, in the GOODS-S region of the
Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS). The
high sensitivity of these grism observations, with 1-sigma detections of
emission lines to f > 2.5x10^{-18} erg/s/cm^2, means that the galaxies in the
sample are typically ~7 times less massive (median M_* = 10^{9.5} M_sun) than
previously studied z~2 emission-line galaxies. Despite their lower mass, the
galaxies have OIII/Hb ratios which are very similar to previously studied z~2
galaxies and much higher than the typical emission-line ratios of local
galaxies. The WFC3 grism allows for unique studies of spatial gradients in
emission lines, and we stack the two-dimensional spectra of the galaxies for
this purpose. In the stacked data the OIII emission line is more spatially
concentrated than the Hb emission line with 98.1 confidence. We additionally
stack the X-ray data (all sources are individually undetected), and find that
the average L(OIII)/L(0.5-10 keV) ratio is intermediate between typical z~0
obscured active galaxies and star-forming galaxies. Together the compactness of
the stacked OIII spatial profile and the stacked X-ray data suggest that at
least some of these low-mass, low-metallicity galaxies harbor weak active
galactic nuclei.Comment: ApJ accepted. 8 pages, 6 figure
- …