Urban food strategies in Central and Eastern Europe: what's specific and what's at stake?

Integrating a larger set of instruments into Rural Development Programmes implied an increasing focus on monitoring and evaluation. Against the highly diversified experience with regard to implementation of policy instruments the Common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework has been set up by the EU Commission as a strategic and streamlined method of evaluating programmes’ impacts. Its indicator-based approach mainly reflects the concept of a linear, measure-based intervention logic that falls short of the true nature of RDP operation and impact capacity on rural changes. Besides the different phases of the policy process, i.e. policy design, delivery and evaluation, the regional context with its specific set of challenges and opportunities seems critical to the understanding and improvement of programme performance. In particular the role of local actors can hardly be grasped by quantitative indicators alone, but has to be addressed by assessing processes of social innovation. This shift in the evaluation focus underpins the need to take account of regional implementation specificities and processes of social innovation as decisive elements for programme performance.

Attention as a Process of Selection, Perception as a Process of Representation, and Phenomenal Experience as the Resulting Process of Perception Being Modulated by a Dedicated Consciousness Mechanism

Equivalence of attention and consciousness is disputed and necessity of attentional effects for conscious experience has become questioned. However, the conceptual landscape and interpretations of empirical evidence as related to this issue have remained controversial. Here I present some conceptual distinctions and research strategies potentially useful for moving forward when tackling this issue. Specifically, it is argued that we should carefully differentiate between pre-conscious processes and the processes resulting in phenomenal experience, move the emphasis from studying the effects of attention on the modality-specific and feature-specific perception to studying attentional effects on panmodal universal attributes of whatever conscious experience may be the case, and acknowledge that there is a specialized mechanism for leading to conscious experience of the pre-consciously represented contents autonomous from the mechanisms of perception, attention, memory, and cognitive control

Psühholoogia- ja ajuteaduse abielu

Eesti Arst 2012; 91(1):5

Using Environmental Scans to Guide Campus Sexual Misconduct Prevention

"In the recent University AAU Climate Survey, women, TGQN (transgender, genderqueer, nonbinary, or otherwise gender nonconforming), Black students, students with disability, and sexual minority student respondents all reported sexual violence (SV) victimization at significantly higher rates compared to men on campus (6.6%). The prevalence of SV victimization for women on campus was 26.9% (for black undergraduate women, 26.8%), and 29% of TGQN students. Over a quarter (26%) of students with disability experienced sexual violence (undergraduate women with disability, 37.9%). Among women-identified victim respondents, alcoholuse by the perpetrator was reported by 57.3%, and 70.4% by victims. One of our NIH-funded trials (R01AA023260) on 28 college campuses in Pennsylvania and West Virginia involving nearly 2300 college students provides supporting evidence of the particular vulnerability of certain campus populations for experiencing SV, specifically women, students of color, TGQN students, students with a history of violence, and students with disabilities. About half of the students within this study (recruited through campus health centers) reported exposure to SV/IPV. Among students with disability (24% of overall study sample), two thirds had a lifetime SV experience. Further, the AAU report highlights that despite overall awareness of campus services and resources, students are not seeking services for a variety of reasons (66.5% of total women, 66.3% of men who experienced unwanted penetration). These reasons include feeling embarrassed or ashamed, thinking they could handle the situation themselves, fearing it would not remain confidential, and thinking the situation was not serious enough. Increasing uptake of services and supports is critical as students who experience SV are likely to have lower academic engagement and increased dropout, and to experience higher rates of mental and physical health challenges. In our 28 campus study (which included Pitt), we conducted detailed campus environmental scans to assess existing programs and policies related to SV, alcohol use, supports for students with disability, and supports for students who identify as sexual and gender minority. Additionally, from an evaluation of a learning collaborative to improve SV response among college campuses funded by the Office of Women’s Health (OWH), our team conducted policy scans from eight college campuses nationally. The scans cover a range of domains from prevention to response to survivors with detailed questions. An analysis of these environmental scans may help to identify promising practices and areas for improvement that may allow campus administrators, faculty, and staff at the University of Pittsburgh to assess the needs of its most vulnerable students, including developing appropriate, trauma-sensitive, and culturally responsive resources and services. The current proposal seeks to leverage our team’s local and national data and conduct the following activities: (1) synthesize campus environmental scans from the College Health RCT and OWH collaborative to prepare for presentation; (2) conduct listening sessions with student organizations to triangulate the findings from the scans; 3) facilitate discussion sessions with University administration about findings from the College Health study and the OWH collaborative to inform changes to campus policy with special attention to student populations at elevated risk for sexual violence victimization.

Not-So-Neutral: An Exploration of the Relationship Between Smartphones and Student Quality of Life

As smartphones grow in purpose and function, they become more pervasive in the average college student’s life. Consequently, the more students integrate smartphones into their lives, the more consideration must be taken to understand the impact smartphones have on human life. This correlation study explored the relationship between smartphones and student quality of life. For the purpose of the study, “smartphone consumption” best communicated the variable “smartphones” and was measured by the average number of minutes participants spent on their smartphones per day. Moreover, the variable “quality of life” was measured by students’ self-perception and satisfaction of their own health encompassing the following four categories: mental, physical, social, and spiritual. The study was conducted at a small, faith-based liberal arts school in the Midwest with 97 total participants. Smartphone consumption and quality of life responses were compared among participants to discover whether correlations exist. Gender differences were also explored. Overall, the results indicated no correlation to moderate negative correlation (i.e., greater smartphone consumption correlated with lesser quality of life satisfaction). Educators and students are strongly encouraged to consider smartphone consumption and its potential effects on individual quality of life