Correcting the Conversation: An Argument for a Public Health Perspective Approach to University Timely Warnings about Sexual Assault

Reports of sexual violence should be written from a public health perspective approach to appropriately frame the occurrence and encourage accurate understandings of sexual assault as a larger societal issue. This research consists of two studies to investigate the way universities do (and should) communicate about sexual violence with their students. For Study 1, interviews were conducted with a random sample of public state Universities regarding their emergency alert processes and template usage to determine current emergency communication practices. The majority of universities contacted do not have a template or best practice guidelines in place for creating timely warnings. For Study 2, an experimental test asked participants to read a hypothetical university timely warning message about a sexual assault on campus and take a post-test survey about their perceptions of sexual assault and personal estimation of threat. The experiment tested whether the inclusion of contextualizing statistics and information in the message changed their reported perceptions of rape overall. Results from the study show that a combination approach incorporating both statistics and personal safety strategies had the greatest influence on both threat perception and reported preventative behaviors. This research has significant public policy implications for best practices concerning institutional communication about sexual assault

Meta‐analysis of randomized controlled trials comparing 17α‐hydroxyprogesterone caproate and vaginal progesterone for the prevention of recurrent spontaneous preterm delivery

BackgroundVaginal progesterone and 17α‐hydroxyprogesterone (17α‐OHP) are both used to prevent preterm delivery in women who have experienced spontaneous preterm delivery (SPTD) previously. Randomized trial data of the comparative effectiveness of these interventions have been mixed.ObjectivesTo compare the efficacy of intramuscular 17α‐OHP and vaginal progesterone in the prevention of recurrent SPTD.Search strategyCochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, African Journals Online, Embase, Google Scholar, ISI Web of Science, LILACS, CINAHL, PubMed, and registers of ongoing trials were searched using keywords related to 17α‐OHP, vaginal progesterone, and preterm delivery.Selection criteriaRandomized controlled trials published between January 1, 1966, and November 30, 2016, comparing 17α‐OHP and vaginal progesterone for the prevention of recurrent SPTD during singleton pregnancies were included.Data collection and analysisStudy data were extracted and meta‐analyses were performed when outcomes were comparable.Main resultsThe meta‐analyses included data from three randomized trials. Lower rates of SPTD before 34 weeks (relative risk 0.71, 95% confidence interval 0.53–0.95) and before 32 weeks (relative risk 0.62, 95% confidence interval 0.40–0.94) of pregnancy were observed among patients treated with vaginal progesterone.ConclusionsVaginal progesterone and 17α‐OHP were comparable for the prevention of recurrent SPTD in singleton pregnancies; vaginal progesterone could be superior.Vaginal progesterone was comparable to 17α‐hydroxyprogesterone for the prevention of recurrent spontaneous preterm delivery in patients with singleton pregnancies.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137297/1/ijgo12166.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137297/2/ijgo12166_am.pd

Finding Needles in the Right Haystack: Double Modals in Medical Consultations

In this paper we present a case study of a syntactic sociolinguistic variable that has resisted previous attempts at quantitative analysis of usage, the double modal construction of Southern United States English (e.g., You know what might could help that is losing some weight). While naturally-occurring double modals have been exceedingly rare in sociolinguistic interviews, our study represents the very first corpus investigation of double modals through a search of the right ‘haystack’: the nationwide Verilogue, Inc database of recorded and transcribed physician-patient interactions (~85 million words). As a vast source of potentially face-threatening negotiations, the Verilogue corpus provides the ideal speech situation in which to search for low frequency, non-standard syntactic features like the double modal. A quantitative analysis of the 76 tokens extracted from doctor-patient consultations in the US South revealed that double modals are favored by doctors, especially women and those with many decades of professional experience. Among patients, those not currently in employment use double modals more frequently than the employed. We interpreted these findings with reference to the literature on the pragmatics of physician-patient talk, arguing that the double modal is used to negotiate the imbalanced power dynamic of a doctor-patient consultation. In general, the greater use of double modals by doctors shows that the construction is an active part of a doctor’s repertoire for mitigating directives. Collectively, we present a complex socio-pragmatic picture of double modal use that could not be seen without a corpus of naturally-occurring speech in a potentially face-threatening speech situation

Old‐age language variation and change: Confronting variationist ageism

The speech of older adults (65+ years old) is a rich resource for a wide range of researchers, including oral historians, developmental psychologists, health communication scholars, speech and hearing specialists, and discourse analysts. Yet in variationist sociolinguistics—the study of language variation, language change, and their social motivations—older adults have fallen afoul of a kind of scholarly ageism. Often consigned to the status of a historical benchmark against which the speech of younger people is compared, and with only rare acknowledgment of their biological, psychological and social diversity, old‐age speakers deserve greater attention. This article provides linguists with an overview of relevant conceptualizations of age and ageing in gerontology, explains why a focus on older speakers is critical to the advancement of the study of language variation and change, and offers practical suggestions for overcoming some of the challenges associated with old‐age research.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/144271/1/lnc312281_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/144271/2/lnc312281.pd