The Adolescent Experience Of Motivational Interviewing-Via-Co-Active Life Coaching As A Motivational Intervention: A Constructivist Grounded Theory

Adolescents are often suffused in social, emotional, and scholastic pressures. The bombardment of stressors provoked by social media, external demands, self-doubt, and consequences of dangerous and spontaneous acts can result in a perception of self-inadequacy. Consequently, an increase in unhealthy activities and a decline in self-actualization become possible. Negative outcomes that result from avoidance of goal setting and ill-conceived decisions lead to familial and social sanctions, and adolescents become further detached from personal growth and success. The persistence of some youth to negative behaviour suggests that further investigation of effective interventions is a worthwhile undertaking. From this perspective, MI-via-CALC was investigated as a possible behaviour intervention for adolescents. This constructivist grounded theory study was undertaken with the goal of providing a co-construction of meaning that was apprehended in the form of multiple realities to give expression to adolescent participants, deliver an approach that respected their familiarity and contribution to research, and resulted in a substantive theory that is generated for and about them. The methodological, epistemological, and philosophical principles of constructivist grounded theory were applied to this study. The strength of this study was its potential to explain what really happened from the adolescents’ point of view and from their experience. Both MI-via-CALC and constructivist grounded theory required the coach and researcher to focus on shared experiences of coachee/participant and the processes by which conclusions were made of the world. The core process “getting it done” was accessed through the words of the participants and interweaved the concepts that emerged from the study; that is, “empowering self,” “shoring up purpose,” “creating connections,” and “envisioning the future” formed an interplay of categories and subcategories that represented the process of “getting it done.” The data collected from the participants interconnected with data gathered from my memos of interpretations and crystallizations, the principles of MI-via-CALC, and extant literature. Significant to the findings is that the concerted coaching relationship is critical to the adolescent confidently and positively traversing the processes of “getting it done” and MI-via-CALC. The substantive knowledge that developed from this study delivers implications for health promotion, education, parenting, further research, and counselling

THE ANALYSIS OF THE CLOSEOUT PROCESS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR REDUCING BACKLOG

Each year, more contracts are added to the Department of Defense Virtual Contracting Enterprise (VCE) database as overaged contracts. The purpose of this research is to analyze the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) for the contract closeout process. This research assesses U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports and evaluates a survey from a contracting agency to offer recommendations that would reduce the current contract closeout backlog and allow organizations to improve overall closeout rates. The primary question we addressed is, How can contracting agencies prepare and prioritize the number of overage contracts for closeouts? The secondary question is, How can contracting agencies prevent a backlog of contracts requiring closeout requirements in the future? This report determined that the government does not provide the resources required to effectively manage the process of contract closeouts at an institutional level. The suggestions provided are intended to increase the prioritization of the contract closeout process while capitalizing on the limited tools and resources available.Major, United States ArmyMajor, United States ArmyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Development of abbreviated measures to assess patient trust in a physician, a health insurer, and the medical profession

BACKGROUND: Despite the recent proliferation in research on patient trust, it is seldom a primary outcome, and is often a peripheral area of interest. The length of our original scales to measure trust may limit their use because of the practical needs to minimize both respondent burden and research cost. The objective of this study was to develop three abbreviated scales to measure trust in: (1) a physician, (2) a health insurer, and (3) the medical profession. METHODS: Data from two samples were used. The first was a telephone survey of English-speaking adults in the United States (N = 1117) and the second was a telephone survey of English-speaking adults residing in North Carolina who were members of a health maintenance organization (N = 1024). Data were analyzed to examine data completeness, scaling assumptions, internal consistency properties, and factor structure. RESULTS: Abbreviated measures (5-items) were developed for each of the three scales. Cronbach's alpha was 0.87 for trust in a physician (test-retest reliability = 0.71), 0.84 for trust in a health insurer (test-retest reliability = 0.73), and 0.77 for trust in the medical profession. CONCLUSION: Assessment of data completeness, scale score dispersion characteristics, reliability and validity test results all provide evidence for the soundness of the abbreviated 5-item scales

Medial knee joint loading during stair ambulation and walking while carrying loads

Carrying loads while walking or using stairs is a common activity of daily living. Knee osteoarthritis is associated with increased external knee adduction moment (KAM) during walking, so understanding how the additional challenges of stairs and carrying loads impact these moments is of value. Sixteen healthy individuals performed three types of MOTION (walking, stair ascent, stair descent) under three LOAD conditions (no load, carrying a 13.6 kg front load, carrying 13.6 kg load in a backpack). Three-dimensional gait analysis was used to measure KAM. Results of ANOVA showed a significant main effect of both MOTION and LOAD on peak KAM (p \u3c 0.001), but no significant MOTION × LOAD interaction (p = 0.250). Peak KAM during stair ascent was about two-times those seen in stair descent (p \u3c 0.001) and was significantly higher than those seen in walking (p \u3c 0.001). Conditions with LOAD generated significantly greater KAM as compared to the no-LOAD conditions (p \u3c 0.001). These findings suggest that carrying a load of moderate magnitude while climbing stairs significantly increases the peak KAM – a risk factor associated with knee osteoarthritis

Distribution, Abundance, and Biomass Estimates for Primates within Kahuzi-Biega Lowlands and Adjacent Forest in Eastern DRC

Africa’s tropical forests have been subjected to alarming rates of forest clearing in the last two decades. Baseline data are critical to understanding the impacts of large-scale habitat loss and fragmentation. This report describes the distribution and relative abundance of anthropoid primates in 1994–95 within and adjacent to Kahuzi-Biega National Park lowland sector, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. This is a region for which few empirical data exists. Density and biomass estimates derived from transect sampling are discussed for both adjacent settlement and remote sampling zones where minimum biomass estimates are 436 kg/km2 and 663 kg/km2, respectively. With the exception of red colobus Procolobus badius in sampling zone KB 4, hunting pressures do not appear to have been excessive. The owl-faced guenon Cercopithecus hamlyni is widely distributed and relatively abundant throughout the survey areas

Salient practices of award-winning undergraduate research mentors: Balancing freedom and control to achieve excellence

This paper contributes to research on teaching excellence by extending the current body of literature pertaining to mentoring pedagogies in undergraduate research settings across diverse social, institutional and disciplinary contexts. Our data comes from in-depth interviews with 32 international faculty who have received excellence awards for undergraduate research mentoring. The data reveal a freedom - control dialectic, illuminating the ways in which expert mentors negotiate the desire to create opportunities for students to experience freedom and creativity in research, yet maintain control over the topic, quality and outcomes. The research findings reveal a defining characteristic of award-winning mentors as an ability to establish and sustain a sense of challenge, while maintaining meaningful engagement and a sense of achievement amongst students. The findings show the importance of tailoring practice to the needs of particular student groups, and there are implications for institutional resourcing, as well as mentor training and development

Intellectual Property and Public Health – A White Paper

On October 26, 2012, the University of Akron School of Law’s Center for Intellectual Property and Technology hosted its Sixth Annual IP Scholars Forum. In attendance were thirteen legal scholars with expertise and an interest in IP and public health who met to discuss problems and potential solutions at the intersection of these fields. This report summarizes this discussion by describing the problems raised, areas of agreement and disagreement between the participants, suggestions and solutions made by participants and the subsequent evaluations of these suggestions and solutions. Led by the moderator, participants at the Forum focused generally on three broad questions. First, are there alternatives to either the patent system or specific patent doctrines that can provide or help provide sufficient incentives for health-related innovation? Second, is health information being used proprietarily and if so, is this type of protection appropriate? Third, does IP conflict with other non-IP values that are important in health and how does or can IP law help resolve these conflicts? This report addresses each of these questions in turn