Can You Improve Phonological Awareness with Skill Boxes through a Five-Minute Daily Routine?

Phonological awareness is a necessary component in order to learn how to read. These skills have to be taught to children. Children who have deficits in phonological awareness are at risk for a learning disability such as dyslexia. This is why explicit instruction in phonological awareness is crucial for development. Due to this, it is important to start assessing children on these skills in preschool and start interventions if they are needed. The purpose of this action research was to shed light on how crucial phonological awareness skills are for development and how if a child is deficient in this area there is a concern for interventions

Lack of School Choice and the Mental Health of Rural Parents: A Phenomenological Study

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe the experiences of parents whose children have limited educational options in rural North Carolina. The theory chosen to guide this study was choice theory, founded by William Glasser, as it explains that all behavior including reactions to others’ choices, and the body’s reaction to stress are chosen by the individual (Glasser, 2001). Additionally, choice theory recognizes the basic needs of survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun, and their impact on behavior which Maslow identified in his hierarchy of needs model (Glasser Institute for Choice Theory, n.d.). Parents want to feel as if they are making the right decision for their child’s education, and choice theory supports a parent’s behavior and reactions to available educational options for their children (Tan, 2011). Data was collected through a series of interviews, journaling prompts, and cognitive representations. Upon completion of the data collection, the interviews were transcribed and analyzed for themes. Parents reported that lack of school choice ranged from having no negative impact on their mental health to feeling anxious, frustrated, in turmoil, angry, and saddened by the educational choices for their children. The experiences described were also influenced by their child’s needs, if they had lived in rural North Carolina their whole lives, and if they had ever had school choice options at a previous time in their life

Developing a Quality Control Protocol for Evaluation of Recorded Interviews

This presentation will describe the process used at the University of Michigan Survey Research Center for evaluating interviewer performance in survey administration. Within the Survey Research Operations unit, we use an online system for evaluating the interviewer-respondent interaction using recorded interviews. We will present our framework for measuring how well interviewers adhere to General Interviewing Techniques (GIT) - the guidelines in which they were trained. The presentation will describe the question-level and session-level measurement criteria employed, in addition to the selection protocols and the integration of paradata into the selection process. The presentation will include analysis of some evaluation data, with a discussion of how the data were used to inform further development of the evaluation protocol. Although some aggregate data will be shared, the presentation will largely focus on the operational considerations related to the development and implementation of the quality control protocol across projects

Developing a Quality Control Protocol for Evaluation of Recorded Interviews

This presentation will describe the process used at the University of Michigan Survey Research Center for evaluating interviewer performance in survey administration. Within the Survey Research Operations unit, we use an online system for evaluating the interviewer-respondent interaction using recorded interviews. We will present our framework for measuring how well interviewers adhere to General Interviewing Techniques (GIT) - the guidelines in which they were trained. The presentation will describe the question-level and session-level measurement criteria employed, in addition to the selection protocols and the integration of paradata into the selection process. The presentation will include analysis of some evaluation data, with a discussion of how the data were used to inform further development of the evaluation protocol. Although some aggregate data will be shared, the presentation will largely focus on the operational considerations related to the development and implementation of the quality control protocol across projects

Sex differences in DNA methylation assessed by 450 K BeadChip in newborns.

BackgroundDNA methylation is an important epigenetic mark that can potentially link early life exposures to adverse health outcomes later in life. Host factors like sex and age strongly influence biological variation of DNA methylation, but characterization of these relationships is still limited, particularly in young children.MethodsIn a sample of 111 Mexican-American subjects (58 girls , 53 boys), we interrogated DNA methylation differences by sex at birth using the 450 K BeadChip in umbilical cord blood specimens, adjusting for cell composition.ResultsWe observed that ~3% of CpG sites were differentially methylated between girls and boys at birth (FDR P < 0.05). Of those CpGs, 3031 were located on autosomes, and 82.8% of those were hypermethylated in girls compared to boys. Beyond individual CpGs, we found 3604 sex-associated differentially methylated regions (DMRs) where the majority (75.8%) had higher methylation in girls. Using pathway analysis, we found that sex-associated autosomal CpGs were significantly enriched for gene ontology terms related to nervous system development and behavior. Among hits in our study, 35.9% had been previously reported as sex-associated CpG sites in other published human studies. Further, for replicated hits, the direction of the association with methylation was highly concordant (98.5-100%) with previous studies.ConclusionsTo our knowledge, this is the first reported epigenome-wide analysis by sex at birth that examined DMRs and adjusted for confounding by cell composition. We confirmed previously reported trends that methylation profiles are sex-specific even in autosomal genes, and also identified novel sex-associated CpGs in our methylome-wide analysis immediately after birth, a critical yet relatively unstudied developmental window

Stormwater runoff - modeling impacts of urbanization and climate change

Development pressure throughout the coastal areas of the United States continues to build, particularly in the southeast (Allen and Lu 2003, Crossett et al. 2004). It is well known that development alters watershed hydrology: as land becomes covered with surfaces impervious to rain, water is redirected from groundwater recharge and evapotranspiration to stormwater runoff, and as the area of impervious cover increases, so does the volume and rate of runoff (Schueler 1994, Corbett et al. 1997). Pollutants accumulate on impervious surfaces, and the increased runoff with urbanization is a leading cause of nonpoint source pollution (USEPA 2002). Sediment, chemicals, bacteria, viruses, and other pollutants are carried into receiving water bodies, resulting in degraded water quality (Holland et al. 2004, Sanger et al. 2008). (PDF contains 5 pages

Victim Arrest in Intimate Partner Violence Incidents: A Multilevel Test of Black’s Theory of Law

Mandatory and preferred arrest policies were heralded as major advances in protecting victim rights in cases of intimate partner violence. Soon after these policies were implemented, researchers began to document a disturbing rise in the number of victims arrested in these incidents. This paper applies Black’s theory of the behavior of law to victim arrest in intimate partner violence incidents in order to identify the structural and individual statuses that increase the likelihood of victim arrest. Data from the 2004 National Incident Based Reporting System, 2000 decennial Census, and 2000 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics report are analyzed using multilevel modeling to offer a multi-level test of Black’s theory. Findings suggest moderate support for Black’s theory. Measures of stratification, morphology, culture, organization, and respectability significantly influence the likelihood a victim will be arrested. Implications for policy and directions for future research are addressed

In Pursuit of Indigenous Intellectual Justice: The Cultural and Health Institutional Review Boards of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

Since the inception of Cultural and Health Tribal institutional review boards (IRBs) for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) in 1998, formal proposals for academic research among the Tribe has averaged about 50 per year. The EBCI needed a formal process to accomplish three things: 1) review requests to protect the Tribe’s interests, 2) ensure the research was culturally appropriate and respectful, and 3) to ensure data control by the Tribe, exercising their right to intellectual sovereignty. Also, this formal review process was necessary due to receipt of federal grant funds to conduct research involving human subjects. It is expected by the IRB members that researchers whose research has been approved by the respective EBCI IRB would fully comply with tribal expectations that reflect the goals of sovereignty and self-determination