Interview with Sierra Lyman, Warped Tour\u27s Director of Nonprofits

An interview with Sierra Lyman, Director of Nonprofits for Warped Tour and music industry professional

It takes patience and persistence to get negative feedback from patients

Background: Patient experience surveys are increasingly used to gain information about the quality of healthcare. This paper investigates whether patients who respond early or late, and before and after reminders, to a large national survey of in-patient experience differ in systematic ways in how they evaluate the care they received. Methods: The English national in-patient survey of 2009 obtained data from just under 70,000 patients. We analyse their responses to the question “Overall, how did you rate the care you received” in relation to the time they took to respond and whether or not they had had a reminder, using statistical models designed to examine the length of time taken for an event to occur, known as “failure time regression models”. Results: 41 per cent of patients responded after the first questionnaire and 11 per cent after reminders. Those who were least positive in their evaluation of care replied on average 3.1 days later than the most positive. However, the main dividing line was between patients who responded to the initial mailing or to the reminders. Even controlling for other factors that influence the likelihood of an early response, those who respond after the initial mailing were more likely to be positive about the care they received. Conclusion: This study, using a large national dataset, shows that bias towards a positive evaluation of care could be introduced if the length of time that patients are allowed to respond is truncated or if reminders are omitted. Both patience (time) and persistence (reminders) are required to achieve unbiased results. Quality improvement efforts depend on having accurate data and negative evaluations are particularly valuable. The relevance of these findings for recent developments in patient evaluation and quality improvement are drawn out, as well as the implications for practitioners, managers and policy makers

Situating practice in a limited-exposure, foreign languages school curriculum.

This chapter describes the design of a language-driven curriculum and how it was informed by some of the theoretical and empirical research on practice. This large-scale, state-funded project aimed to situate effective practice within an engaging curriculum for 11-16-year-olds in England with approximately 400-450 hours of instruction over five years in French, German, and Spanish. In Part 1, we describe the foreign language context and outline the curriculum and pedagogy design tasks we undertook. In Part 2, we describe the extent to which we embedded principles of practice into class materials and professional development. We highlight the affordances that research offered our decision-making and acknowledge some challenges faced in working at the interface between research, policy, and practice. In our Concluding Remarks, we expose and discuss in detail some areas in which we found our research knowledge-base to be severely lacking for informing real-world problems of this nature

Satellite Tracking of Manta Rays Highlights Challenges to Their Conservation

We describe the real-time movements of the last of the marine mega-vertebrate taxa to be satellite tracked – the giant manta ray (or devil fish, Manta birostris), the world's largest ray at over 6 m disc width. Almost nothing is known about manta ray movements and their environmental preferences, making them one of the least understood of the marine mega-vertebrates. Red listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature as ‘Vulnerable’ to extinction, manta rays are known to be subject to direct and incidental capture and some populations are declining. Satellite-tracked manta rays associated with seasonal upwelling events and thermal fronts off the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico, and made short-range shuttling movements, foraging along and between them. The majority of locations were received from waters shallower than 50 m deep, representing thermally dynamic and productive waters. Manta rays remained in the Mexican Exclusive Economic Zone for the duration of tracking but only 12% of tracking locations were received from within Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). Our results on the spatio-temporal distribution of these enigmatic rays highlight opportunities and challenges to management efforts

Preventing type 2 diabetes:A research agenda for behavioural science

Aims The aim of this narrative review was to identify important knowledge gaps in behavioural science relating to type 2 diabetes prevention, to inform future research in the field. Methods Seven researchers who have published behaviour science research applied to type 2 diabetes prevention independently identified several important gaps in knowledge. They met to discuss these and to generate recommendations to advance research in behavioural science of type 2 diabetes prevention. Results A total of 21 overlapping recommendations for a research agenda were identified. These covered issues within the following broad categories: (a) evidencing the impact of whole population approaches to type 2 diabetes prevention, (b) understanding the utility of disease-specific approaches to type 2 diabetes prevention such as Diabetes Prevention Programmes (DPPs) compared to generic weight loss programmes, (c) identifying how best to increase reach and engagement of DPPs, whilst avoiding exacerbating inequalities, (d) the need to understand mechanism of DPPs, (e) the need to understand how to increase maintenance of changes as part of or following DPPs, (f) the need to assess the feasibility and effectiveness of alternative approaches to the typical self-regulation approaches that are most commonly used, and (g) the need to address emotional aspects of DPPs, to promote effectiveness and avoid harms. Conclusions There is a clear role for behavioural science in informing interventions to prevent people from developing type 2 diabetes, based on strong evidence of reach, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. This review identifies key priorities for research needed to improve existing interventions