420 research outputs found
HIV testing intervention development among men who have sex with men in the developed world
HIV testing is a âgatewayâ technology, enabling access to treatment and HIV prevention. Biomedical approaches to prevention, such as pre-exposure prophylaxis and treatment as prevention, require accurate and regular HIV test results. HIV testing also represents a powerful âteachable momentâ for behavioural prevention. An increasing range of HIV tests and the emergence of self-managed diagnostic technologies (e.g. self-testing) means there is now considerable diversification of when, where and how results are available to those who test. These changes have profound implications for intervention development and, indeed, health service redesign. This paper highlights the need for better ways of conceptualising testing in order to capitalise on the health benefits that diverse HIV testing interventions will bring. A multidimensional framework is proposed to capture ongoing developments in HIV testing among men who have sex with men and focus on the intersection of: (1) the growing variety of HIV testing technologies and the associated diversification of their pathways into care; (2) psychosocial insights into the behavioural domain of HIV testing; and (3) better appreciation of population factors associated with heterogeneity and concomitant inequities. By considering these three aspects of HIV testing in parallel, it is possible to identify gaps, limitations and opportunities in future HIV testing-related interventions. Moreover, it is possible to explore and map how diverse interventions may work together having additive effects. Only a holistic and dynamic framework that captures the increasing complexity of HIV testing is fit for purpose to deliver the maximum public health benefit of HIV testing
Family Maths and Complexity Theory
The importance of family involvement is highlighted by findings that parentsâ behaviours, beliefs and attitudes affect childrenâs behaviour in a major way. The Family Maths programme, which is the focus of this study, provides support for the transformative education practices targeted by the South African Department of Education by offering an intervention which includes teachers, learners and their families in an affirming learning community. In this study participating parents were interviewed to investigate their perceptions of the Family Maths programme mainly in terms of their engagement, enjoyment and confidence levels. The major themes and ideas that were generated in this study include the development of positive attitudes, parents and children working and talking together, and the skills exhibited by Family Maths facilitators. These findings are analysed within the parameters of complexity science and the pre-requisite conditions for developing a complex learning community, viz. internal diversity, redundancy, decentralized control, organised randomness and neighbour interactions
Paul Bushnell: Nashville Memories
Paul Bushnell recalls his experiences as part of the Nashville, TN civil rights protests of the 1960s. He also shares his thoughts on race in the context of American society at the time and how he began courses on African American History at IWU in 1966/67
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Detecting Important Life Events on Twitter Using Frequent Semantic and Syntactic Subgraphs
Identifying global events from social media has been the focus of much research in recent years. However, the identification of personal life events poses new requirements and challenges that have received relatively little research attention. In this paper we explore a new approach for life event identification, where we expand social media posts into both semantic, and syntactic networks of content. Frequent graph patterns are mined from these networks and used as features to enrich life-event classifiers. Results show that our approach significantly outperforms the best performing baseline in accuracy (by 4.48% points) and F-measure (by 4.54% points) when used to identify five major life events identified from the psychology literature: Getting Married, Having Children, Death of a Parent, Starting School, and Falling in Love. In addition, our results show that, while semantic graphs are effective at discriminating the theme of the post (e.g. the topic of marriage), syntactic graphs help identify whether the post describes a personal event (e.g. someone getting married)
Te Aka Roa o Te Oranga, the far reaching vines of wellness: The development of a framework to evaluate alcohol and drug treatment for MÄori
The impact of alcohol and other drug
problems for MÄori is well documented.
Substance use has been implicated in a
range of physical and mental health
problems, and a variety of negative social
statistics such as high rates of imprisonment. To date there has been
little systematic documentation of treatment
practices, and limited operationalisation of
MÄori health frameworks. The evaluation
of the outcomes of alcohol and other drug
treatments is an area in which there is a
paucity of documentation, in terms of
methods and frameworks for evaluation,
and actual data. Te Aka Roa O Te Oranga (TAROTO)
was developed from a range of projects
undertaken by the National Addiction
Centre. The TARATO evaluation framework
embraces a holistic perspective: developed
to examine the interaction between the
client, whÄnau, practitioner, and
service/organisation. The aim of the
framework is to clarify the complex
relationships and interactions between
stakeholders within the context of
treatment. It will also help to elucidate the
strengths and weaknesses of individual
services. Within this framework, a range of
indicators and outcomes of âsuccessful
treatmentâ will be explored. The current project is the first phase of
a broader project that will make a
significant contribution to improvements in
MÄori health via further developing
effective treatments of alcohol and other
drug related problems
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The Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Scale for Children and Young People (CBTS-CYP): development and psychometric properties
Background: There is increased interest in developing training in cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) with children and young people. However, the assessment of clinical competence has relied upon the use of measures such as the Cognitive Therapy Scale-Revised (CTSR: Blackburn et al., 2001) which has been validated to assess competence with adults. The appropriateness of this measure to assess competence when working with children and young people has been questioned.
Aim: This paper describes the development and initial
evaluation of the Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Scale for Children and Young People (CBTSCYP) developed specifically to assess competence in CBT with children and young people.
Method: A cross section of child CBT practitioners (n = 61) were consulted to establish face
validity. Internal reliability, convergent validity and discriminative ability were assessed in two studies. In the first, 12 assessors independently rated a single video using both the Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Scale for Children and Young People (CBTS-CYP) and Cognitive Therapy Scale-Revised (CTS-Revised: Blackburn et al., 2001). In the second, 48 different recordings of CBT undertaken with children and young people were rated on both the CBTS-CYP and CTS-R.
Results: Face validity and internal reliability of the CBTS-CYP were high, and
convergent validity with the CTS-R was good. The CBTS-CYP compared well with the CTSR in discriminative ability. Conclusion: The CBTS-CYP provides an appropriate way of
assessing competence in using CBT with children and young people. Further work is required to assess robustness with younger children and the impact of group training in reducing interrater variations
New Audiences for the Arts: The New Audiences Programme Report
This 269 page report gives a detailed overview of a ÂŁ20 million funding programme âNew Audiencesâ, designed to foster new practice in audience development by arts organisations in England. It was the culmination of a five-year scheme which supported 1200 audience development initiatives across the country.
Glinkowski was one of a team of seven researchers who compiled the report: ACE Research Officers, Clare Fenn, Adrienne Skelton and Alan Joy compiled the statistical information for the report appendices; the main body of the report, from Executive Summary to Conclusions, was written by a team of three consultant researchers, Glinkowski, Pam Pfrommer and Sue Stewart, working under the supervision of the ACE Head of New Audiences, Gill Johnson.
The report was a summary, compilation and interpretation of key themes emerging from the material contained within around 1150 evaluations of projects funded by the ÂŁ20 million âNew Audiencesâ programme during the 5-year period from 1998-2003. The interpretative work and writing up was undertaken collaboratively by the consultant researchers and Glinkowskiâs particular input was to the Executive Summary; Introduction; General Audiences; Disability; Social Inclusion; Rural; Older People; General Findings; and Conclusion sections of the report. He was also the principal author (although in keeping with ACE practice on advocacy material, not formally credited) of the âNew Audiences Advocacy Documentâ (ISBN 0728710331), produced in conjunction with the main report with introduction by Tessa Jowell, Secretary of State, Department of Culture, Media and Sport and Peter Hewitt, Chief Executive of Arts Council England. The full report is published online, with a companion volume summarising all projects undertaken within the âNew Audiencesâ programme. Additionally, Glinkowski was commissioned to contribute case studies to the âNew Audiencesâ website (http://www.newaudiences.org.uk/index.php), including 'Open Studios/Artists Presentation Research' (http://www.newaudiences.org.uk/project.php?id=680)
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