Framing Anticolonialism in Evaluation: Bridging Decolonizing Methodologies and Culturally Responsive Evaluation

Background: Evaluation is grounded in academically imperialistic research methodologies, paradigms, and epistemologies, which have lasting effects on communities of study. Confronting Westernized evaluation's monoculturalism, scholars call for decolonization, to produce locally-determined, strengths-based, culturally-situated, and valid understandings. This endeavor is complicated, requiring a paradigm shift for Westernized evaluators.  Purpose: In this paper, we describe the anticolonial culturally responsive framework occurring in the intersections between culturally responsive (CRE) and decolonizing (DF) approaches. Anticolonialism honors decolonizing without displacing the authority of Indigeneity, simultaneously foregrounding the interweaving of evaluator, evaluand, and disciplinary culture. Interrogating academic imperialism through anticolonialism, confronts the social processes and cultural ideologies that produce and reproduce social inequality in evaluations. Setting: Not applicable. Data Collection and Analysis: We draw on scholars and scholarship who have advanced culturally responsive, decolonizing, and anticolonial evaluation and methodological fields.   Findings: The anticolonial culturally responsive framework is an invitation for evaluators trained in imperialistic Westernized approaches or who embody the colonial world through our race, language, knowledge, and culture. Our goal is not to displace the primacy and urgency of vitalizing Indigenous and decolonizing frameworks. Instead, we offer a tentative approach committed to pluriversality, justice, self-determination, and the possibility of collaboration between knowledge systems and knowers

Sheeprock Mountains Visitor Use Report

The Sheeprock Mountains, located in southern Tooele and northern Juab counties, support a variety of uses. The mountains are a popular destination for camping, hunting, and off-highway vehicle use; they also support domestic livestock grazing operations through public land grazing allotments, and provide important habitat for numerous wildlife species. These uses have co-existed for many years, with many of them well documented through either public records (e.g., grazing leases) or scientific data collection efforts (e.g., vegetation mapping). However, there is very little empirical data detailing outdoor recreation use in the region. The only known data come from two-way traffic counters; data from these counters suggest an increase in vehicle traffic throughout the region over the past several years. Aside from this, very little is known about visitors to the region. This report details the first visitor use study to be conducted in the Sheeprock Mountains. We specifically set out to: 1) characterize the types and amount of outdoor recreation use occurring within the region; to 2) better understand recreationists’ motivations for visiting the area; and to 3) identify the spatial patterns of off-highway vehicle use in the area

“Will You be Our Qualitative Methodologist?” Reflections on Grant Work Responsibilities

Government funders increasingly encourage interdisciplinary mixed methods research projects that include qualitative methods. For qualitative methodologists, the opportunity to collaborate on interdisciplinary research teams may come at a cost when their expertise is marginalized relative to quantitative designs. Drawing on concepts from critical pragmatism and an ethics of care, we reflect on ethical tensions in our experiences as qualitative methodologists on government funded interdisciplinary research teams. Driven by an intersubjective and justice-oriented view of knowledge development and care as interdependence, we offer our thoughts, experiences, and guidance under four orienting concepts: collaboration, education, critique, and critical reflexivity. We culminate our reflection by offering a practical and responsible way forward for qualitative methodologists who accept grant work invitations, a way that holds promise for advancing interdisciplinary, critical, and care-based action in funded research

Sowing the Seeds: Sociocultural Resistance In the Psychological Sciences

Objective: This article problematizes the use of resilience as a psychological and developmental indication of well-being. We base our argument on the possibility that resilience theories internalize responsibility for survival within the individual, and that survival is dependent on the ability to assimilate to injustice. Resistance, on the other hand, represents acts of intentional, active, and often collective survival which can expose and oppose social injustice. Method: Bringing together transdisciplinary scholarship on resistance, we propose a conceptual framework of sociocultural resistance. This framework seeks to forward studies of health that acknowledge the complexity of relationships, culture, and power constitutive of the human condition. Results: We provide examples of sociocultural resistance in the psychological and developmental sciences and suggest the use of diverse theory and methods in the study of resistance. Conclusions: Resistance research is a timely, necessary, and critical turning point in the social sciences with the potential to change unjust systems and promote a nuanced view of health

Initial Outcomes From a 4-Week Follow-Up Study of the Text4baby Program in the Military Women’s Population: Randomized Controlled Trial

BACKGROUND: The use of mobile phone technologies for health promotion and disease prevention has advanced rapidly in recent years. Text4baby is a theory-based mobile health (mHealth) program in which text messages are delivered to pregnant women and new mothers to improve their health care beliefs and behaviors and improve health status and clinical outcomes. Recent evaluations of Text4baby have found that it improves targeted health attitudes and beliefs, but effects on behavior have not yet been determined. OBJECTIVE: In this study, investigators aimed to evaluate Text4baby in the military women’s population. METHODS: Investigators conducted a randomized controlled trial at Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Washington, from December 2011 through September 2013. All participants were pregnant women first presenting for care at Madigan. Investigators conducted a baseline assessment using a 24-item, self-administered online survey of attitudes and behaviors related to Text4baby message content. Participants were randomized to Text4baby plus usual care (intervention) or usual care alone (control). Investigators analyzed treatment effects of Text4baby on short-term targeted outcomes 4 weeks post enrollment. RESULTS: For this study, 943 patients were randomized and completed a baseline assessment. The average patient age was 28 years and nearly 70% self-identified as Caucasian. 48.7% of enrollees (459/943) completed the first follow-up assessment. Higher rates of single and working/in-school patients dropped out of the intervention arm of the study, and we adjusted for this finding in subsequent models. However, while investigators were unable to re-survey these participants, only 1.9% of Text4baby enrollees (18/943) dropped the service during the study period. Adjusted and unadjusted logistic generalized estimating equation models were developed to assess intervention effects on measured outcomes. In the model adjusting for age, marital status, having had a previous baby, and race/ethnicity, there was a significant effect of Text4baby intervention exposure on increased agreement with belief in the importance of taking prenatal vitamins (OR 1.91, 95% CI 1.08-3.34, P=.024). All of these attitudes had been targeted by at least one text message during the 4-week evaluation period examined in this study. In unadjusted models, there was a significant effect of intervention exposure on belief in the importance of visiting a health care provider to be a healthy new mother (OR 1.52, 95% CI 1.01-2.31, P=.046) and in the health risks of alcohol during pregnancy (OR 2.06, 95% CI 1.00-4.31, P=.05). No behavioral effects of the intervention were observed in this analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Text4baby is a promising program that offers lessons for future mHealth activities. This large-scale study demonstrated initial effects of the program on attitudes and beliefs targeted by the messages received by women during the study period. Results confirm previous findings from Text4baby studies and other mHealth research. Future analyses will examine dosage effects of the intervention on behaviors and clinical outcomes