Mental Health Stigma and Psychological Help-Seeking in Adolescence

Although an overwhelming number of adolescents in the U.S. experience significant psychological distress, the majority of these youth do not receive formal mental health services. Mental health stigma has been identified as a significant barrier to psychological help-seeking during adolescence, with treatment stigma (or the stigma associated with seeking formal psychological services) as the strongest predictor of help-seeking when compared to other types of mental health stigma. Given the long-term impacts of untreated psychological distress in adolescence, more research is needed to understand the influence of mental health stigma on help-seeking during this developmental stage. Furthermore, more research is needed to provide a fuller picture of how these constructs vary by race, gender, and age. The current study aims to: (1) investigate how personal treatment stigma, perceived parental treatment stigma, and perceived peer treatment stigma influence adolescent psychological help-seeking from both informal and formal sources of support; and (2) examine how personal treatment stigma, perceived parental treatment stigma, perceived peer treatment stigma, and help-seeking behavior vary based on race, gender, and age. Findings revealed that perceptions of treatment stigma, especially from parents, impact both personal treatment stigma and psychological help-seeking, and that personal treatment stigma mediates the relationship between perceived and personal treatment stigma. Results also revealed significant variations in psychological help-seeking behaviors and personal and perceived treatment stigma by race, gender, and age, adding nuance to our understanding of mental health stigma during this developmental period. More generally, results point to the ongoing importance of addressing not only personal treatment stigma, but also parental treatment stigma, in order to increase youth’s psychological help-seeking and allow for improved adolescent mental health

Race and Residence: Prospects for Stable Neighborhood Integration

Analyzes changes in the racial composition of large metropolitan neighborhoods from 1990 to 2000, using data from the Neighborhood Change Database

An Exploratory Factor Analysis of Teachers’ Beliefs, Attitudes, and Perceptions Utilizing the 1998-99 ECLS-K Spring 2004 Fifth Grade Teacher Questionnaire as a Secondary Data Source

Abstract As public school teachers in the United States today confront unparalleled standards of accountability for student achievement and increasingly challenging working conditions, there is a need for a clear understanding of those factors that have the potential to impact teachers’ effectiveness and influence teachers’ decisions to remain in the workforce. Large national surveys such as the MetLife Survey of the American teacher (Met Life Foundation, 2013) have traditionally provided to professional educators highly accessible demographic, descriptive, and trend information about teaching from the teacher’s perspective. Results from these are accessible to the public by means of print and online media. This study posited that national datasets hold additional value as a secondary data source for educational researchers. The advantages of utilization of secondary data sources have been explicated in the literature (Crossman, 2014; Elder, Jr., Pavalko, & Clipp, 1993). With the application of exploratory analysis techniques, this study explored the potential to impute additional significance to an existing national education dataset. The purpose of this quantitative study was to seek empirically-determined factors associated with upper elementary teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions about their work. Exploratory factor analysis procedures were conducted with selected elements of the existing dataset provided in the public-use file of the 1998-99 ECLS-K Spring 2004 Fifth Grade Teacher Questionnaire (ECLS-K 5th Grade ). Data pre-screening established a sample size of 1,314 teachers who met the study delimiters. Implementation of principal components analysis and exploratory factor analysis procedures resulted in 26 questionnaire items constituting a five-factor solution. Chronbach’s Alpha (α > .70) was conducted and established internal consistency among all items and among items related to the factors. The five factors were labeled Leadership and Professional Learning Community (PLC), Student and Parent Effects, Student Evaluation, Teacher Efficacy, and Teacher Collaboration Time. A follow-up MANOVA procedure was conducted to analyze responses based on the established demographic groups of Race, Age, Years of Teaching Experience, and Highest Education Level. Significant mean differences among the demographic groups were identified based on computed factor scores. Where applicable, post hoc analysis was conducted. Results indicated the existence of significant mean differences for all five factors with regard to the various demographic groups; however all significant effect sizes and pairwise differences for means were small. This study resulted in two key findings. The first key finding was the appropriateness of the use of the ECLS-K 5th Grade teacher survey instrument as a secondary data source with which to apply exploratory procedures to empirically identify underlying constructs (factors) of the teacher experience. Capitalizing on the large sample size afforded by the data set (N = 1,314), five factors were identified. The second key finding was the empirical identification of differences among selected demographic groups in relation to the identified factors. The data provided by this study, taken as a whole, provides educational policymakers and school leaders a multi-dimensional look at the interplay between research-based teacher factors and the implementation of activities associated with these factors by the diverse individuals that comprise a teacher workforce

Humanizing Feedback: Responsive Feedback Practices that Value Student Identity and Build Feedback Literacy

Providing effective feedback is an iterative process. It requires teachers to intentionally build caring classroom relationships that center students and their individual needs. Similarly, students need to have a safe and supportive environment so that they can use feedback to improve their work. This article aims to provide practitioners with strategies for humanizing the feedback process and improving students’ feedback literacy in ways that honor their identities and funds of knowledge

Genomic Analysis of Advanced Breast Cancer Using Two Types of Next Generation Sequencing

The aim of this study is to characterize the genomic alterations of advance stage breast cancer using next generation sequencing (NGS) to identify pathways that may be commonly altered in advance stage breast cancer

Social Media Seen as Mostly Good for Democracy Across Many Nations, But U.S. is a Major Outlier

As people across the globe have increasingly turned to Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and other platforms to get their news and express their opinions, the sphere of social media has become a new public space for discussing – and often arguing bitterly – about political and social issues. And in the mind of many analysts, social media is one of the major reasons for the declining health of democracy in nations around the world.However, as a new Pew Research Center survey of 19 advanced economies shows, ordinary citizens see social media as both a constructive and destructive component of political life, and overall most believe it has actually had a positive impact on democracy. Across the countries polled, a median of 57% say social media has been more of a good thing for their democracy, with 35% saying it has been a bad thing.There are substantial cross-national differences on this question, however, and the United States is a clear outlier: Just 34% of U.S. adults think social media has been good for democracy, while 64% say it has had a bad impact. In fact, the U.S. is an outlier on a number of measures, with larger shares of Americans seeing social media as divisive