Serving High-Risk Youth in Context: Perspectives from Hong Kong

Background: High-risk youth are often defined in occupational therapy terminology as adolescents and young adults who experience personal, contextual, or environmental barriers to effective participation in healthy, age-appropriate occupations. Without assistance for participation, these youth may acquiesce to daily routines of unhealthy risk-taking or isolation, failing to achieve developmental milestones needed for successful transition to adulthood. There are known therapeutic services targeting this population, but occupational therapy involvements have been sparsely documented. Method: Having been affiliated with a community-based occupational therapy program serving high-risk youth for many years in the US, the principal investigator of the study used a sabbatical opportunity to explore services provided to high-risk youth in Hong Kong (HK). This paper reports preliminary findings obtained from an exploratory study of analyzing transcripts of 13 one-on-one interviews with service providers in HK. Results: Two major themes are discussed in this paper: the prevalent behavioral risks among high-risk youth as perceived by the service providers and the intervention approaches used by the service providers with the high-risk youth population in HK. Conclusion: Reflecting on the preliminary outcome of the study, the authors suggest that occupational therapy may contribute to mitigating youths’ risk factors through ecological occupational engagement

A Test Of The Effects Of Leadership Style And Task Feedback On Self-efficacy, Performance Quality And Attitudes

The present study examined the effect of three leadership styles (i.e., charismatic, structuring and considerate) and three feedback conditions (i.e., internal inspection, external inspection and no feedback) on individual performance on a manufacturing task and on attitudes towards the task and the leader.;One hundred and forty eight graduate business students were randomly assigned to one of three leadership conditions and one of three feedback conditions. They then participated in an exercise which required them to build four electrical wiring harnesses and complete a series of questionnaires. The questionnaires measured their self-efficacy before each trial and their attitude towards the task and the leader after the last trial.;Repeated measures multivariate analysis of covariance indicated that both internally- and externally-generated feedback produced significantly greater product quality over time than did no feedback. A significant interaction effect between leadership style and task feedback revealed that the quality of the products made by participants in the charismatic leadership condition was sustained even in the absence of task feedback. When self-efficacy was added to the multivariate analysis of covariance as a second covariate, the significant interaction effect between leadership style and task feedback became nonsignificant. This indicates that self-efficacy mediates this relationship.;Multivariate analysis of covariance also indicated that leadership style affected participants\u27 attitude towards the task such that those in the charismatic leadership groups found the task to be more significant than those in either the structuring or considerate leadership groups. Leadership style also affected participants\u27 attitude towards the leader such that those in the structuring leadership condition reported less liking for the leader than participants in either the charismatic or considerate condition

Initial Validity and User Experience of a Dynamic Assessment of Occupational Performance for Transitional Age Youth

Background: The Double OT (DOT) assessment is occupation-based and dynamic, designed with a client-centered format requiring skill demonstration. It was developed to support youth transitioning into the workplace. This research intended to analyze initial validity and users’ experience. Method: This study includes qualitative and quantitative analyses of data collected from surveys from 169 client participants (APs) and 30 recipient participants (ARRs) from eight sites in the USA and Europe. AP were 14­ to 25 years of age and engaged in residential, educational, and vocational settings. The ARRs comprised partners who had received DOT assessment summaries about APs with whom they worked. Results: The APs showed high engagement and learning; average ratings for each item fell between 4.24–4.54 on a 5-point Likert scale. The ARRs agreed on the validity and usability of the DOT; average ratings for each item fell between 3.75 and 4.53 on a 5-point Likert scale. Qualitative themes indicated that the DOT is: “fun and engaging,” “vocationally informative and applicable,” and that there is an absence of commonly used assessments informing vocational transitions. Conclusion: The results support initial validity of the DOT. Users find it to be highly engaging, with good usability, and indicate that it facilitates participant learning

The Role of Trust and Interaction in Global Positioning System Related Accidents

The Global Positioning System (GPS) uses a network of satellites to calculate the position of a receiver over time. This technology has revolutionized a wide range of safety-critical industries and leisure applications. These systems provide diverse benefits; supplementing the users existing navigation skills and reducing the uncertainty that often characterizes many route planning tasks. GPS applications can also help to reduce workload by automating tasks that would otherwise require finite cognitive and perceptual resources. However, the operation of these systems has been identified as a contributory factor in a range of recent accidents. Users often come to rely on GPS applications and, therefore, fail to notice when they develop faults or when errors occur in the other systems that use the data from these systems. Further accidents can stem from the over confidence that arises when users assume automated warnings will be issued when they stray from an intended route. Unless greater attention is paid to the role of trust and interaction in GPS applications then there is a danger that we will see an increasing number of these failures as positioning technologies become integral in the functioning of increasing numbers of applications

The Power of Community Partnerships for Innovative Regional Solutions for Food Justice: A Food Alert Phone Application for Southcoast Massachusetts

There is evidence for a growing need for innovative solutions that a collaborative nonprofit network can facilitate. There is now interest by funders in the potential of collaborative networks. However, such networks can be difficult to create and nourish. The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth founded and facilitated a successful nonprofit network which has led to a significant, regional projects. Founded in 2009, Southcoast Serves - based in the Leduc Center for Civic Engagement -- began as a collaborative of over 40 community organizations. Starting as a leap of faith, then slowly developing connections through monthly meetings over five years, by 2014 Southcoast Serves became a set of trusted, collaborative partners, actively looking for effective regional projects. In 2015 Southcoast Serves settled on a regional, food justice campaign that has resulted in a number of projects - most recently the development of a \u27Food Finder\u27 web/phone app for the region. The \u27Food Finder\u27 project team has successfully utilized people from Southcoast Serves non-profits, the university\u27s LeDuc Center as well as students and faculty from the Charlton College of Business\u27 Management Information Systems group. This poster will present the successful development of the Southcoast Serves network of nonprofits as well as the details of the Food Alert Phone/Web application. Best practices will be highlighted to encourage others to develop their networks

Spiritual Formation Training in the George Fox University Graduate Department of Clinical Psychology

Spiritual formation training in the George Fox University Graduate Department of Clinical Psychology is described. An evangelical Quaker institution, the ethos of George Fox University is intended to foster experiential spiritual development and reflective self-awareness. In a 2008 curriculum revision the faculty attempted to strengthen the experiential dimensions of spiritual formation training even at the risk of reducing training in more academic dimensions of theology and integration. A 2013 program evaluation solicited student and alumni perspectives on the effectiveness of the spiritual formation training they received. Results of the program evaluation suggest areas for future development

L2 perception of Spanish palatal variants across different tasks

While considerable dialectal variation exists, almost all varieties of Spanish exhibit some sort of alternation in terms of the palatal obstruent segments. Typically, the palatal affricate [ɟʝ] tends to occur in word onset following a pause and in specific linear phonotactic environments. The palatal fricative [ʝ] tends to occur in syllable onset in other contexts. We show that listeners’ perceptual sensitivity to the palatal alternation depends upon the task and exposure to Spanish input. For native Spanish listeners, the palatal alternation boosts segmentation accuracy on an artificial speech segmentation task and also reduces latencies on a phonotactically-conditioned elision task. L2 Spanish listeners, on the other hand, only benefit from the palatal alternation in the second task. These results suggest that while Spanish L2 learners benefit from the presence of the alternation in linear phonotactic terms, this benefit does not carry over to a more abstract segmentation task

Acoustic and Microstructural Properties of Partially Molten Samples in the Ice-Ammonia System

We measured the ultrasonic properties and the microstructure of two-phase binary mixtures of the ice-ammonia partial melt system, which was selected based on its importance for numerous planetary bodies. The equilibrium microstructure of ice-ammonia melt was examined using a light microscope within a cold room. The measured median dihedral angle between the solid and melt at 256 K is approximately 63deg, with a broad distribution of observed angles. P-wave velocities in the partially molten samples were measured as a function of temperature and composition. We compare the results of this study to those of other potential binary systems by normalizing the datasets using a vertical lever and articulating the potential effects on the mechanical behavior and transport capabilities of partially molten ice in icy satellites