Examining evidence of reliability and validity of mental health indicators on a revised national survey measuring college student health

The American College Health Association-National College Health Assessment (ACHA-NCHA), which began surveying college students in 2001, is currently the only large scale survey available for colleges and universities to measure a variety of health constructs among their student populations. Beginning in December 2005, the survey underwent an extensive revisions process in an effort to improve its measurement quality and to better capture the current health status of college students. Revisions were guided by changing student health priorities, feedback from respondents, literature focused on characteristics of reliable and valid survey questions, and the Model of Survey Response. As mental health concerns continue to rise on campuses today, this content area of the ACHA-NCHA was dramatically expanded, as it now includes constructs such as diagnosis and treatment with multiple mental health conditions, difficult life experiences, stress, and help-seeking. This dissertation, which is a secondary data analysis of data collected from the original and revised ACHA-NCHA surveys during an experimental field pre-test of the modified survey, documents the survey revisions process, provides results from more than 40 mental health indicators by various demographic characteristics, and establishes the reliability and validity of the mental health indicators. The data analyzed in this study were collected from students from 7 U.S. college and universities who were randomized to complete either the original (final N = 6,216) or the revised (final N = 6,110) online ACHA-NCHA from February through May 2007. It was hypothesized that (1) changes to survey indicators designed to measure comparable constructs would result in significant differences in student response patterns across versions of the ACHA-NCHA; (2) mental health indicators on the revised survey would demonstrate evidence of internal consistency reliability, construct-related validity, and criterion-related validity; and (3) modified mental health indicators on the revised ACHA-NCHA would demonstrate greater evidence of reliability and validity than comparable indicators on the original ACHA-NCHA. Findings from this study at least partially support all hypotheses, and the revised ACHA-NCHA demonstrates preliminary evidence that is it a psychometrically sound survey tool to measure college student mental health constructs

Social Capital and Economic Mobility

In recent years, social scientists have identified many factors that facilitateupward income mobility, from early childhood health interventions toelementary school improvements to sectoral job training programs. Inaddition to these approaches, many have argued that social capital – thestrength of an individual's social network and community – may be animportant factor in upward mobility. But social capital has proven to bechallenging to measure, making it difficult to study whether it matters,and, if it does, how it can be increased.To address this challenge, we use privacy-protected data on 21 billionfriendships from Facebook to measure three types of social capital incommunities across America

Investigation of the Barriers and Facilitators to Making Healthy Choices at Work

This project aims to examine how workplace barriers and facilitators can affect an employee’s healthy choices. Barriers are factors that prevent the employee from making a healthy choice, whereas facilitators are factors that encourage the employee to make a healthy choice. It is imperative to understand how these barriers and facilitators affect the employee’s ability to make healthy choices in order to understand the importance of their presence within the workplace. The results of this study will further support previous research findings related to this topic, as well as support future attempts aimed to improve the overall well-being of employees in the workplace

Appraisal -Tendency Framework: Emotions and Perceptions of Social Injustice

This research project studies the Appraisal-Tendency Framework. Specifically, it observes whether emotional dispositions, such as sadness-proneness or trait anger, affect judgements made on whether a situation is just or unjust. In addition, this study also presents the question of whether gender impacts perceptions of fairness. All participants will be recruited from a Southeastern University. This study consists of two parts. For part one, all participants will complete an online survey to assess individual differences. Part two contains the experimental manipulations. This study uses a 2 (emotional induction) x 2 (gender of actor) design. For the emotional induction, participants will be randomly assigned to view a clip meant to induce feelings of sadness or feelings of anger. All participants will be asked to write a short response of a real-life emotional experience matching the emotion of the condition they are assigned to. They will then be randomly assigned to view a clip of an unjust situation carried out by either a female professor or a male professor. The outcome of this study could provide organizations with a better understanding of why certain emotions relate to certain judgements and decisions

Rubidium Fluoride Post-Deposition Treatment: Impact on the Chemical Structure of the Cu(In,Ga)Se2 Surface and CdS/Cu(In,Ga)Se2 Interface in Thin-Film Solar Cells.

We present a detailed characterization of the chemical structure of the Cu(In,Ga)Se2 thin-film surface and the CdS/Cu(In,Ga)Se2 interface, both with and without a RbF post-deposition treatment (RbF-PDT). For this purpose, X-ray photoelectron and Auger electron spectroscopy, as well as synchrotron-based soft X-ray emission spectroscopy have been employed. Although some similarities with the reported impacts of light-element alkali PDT (i.e., NaF- and KF-PDT) are found, we observe some distinct differences, which might be the reason for the further improved conversion efficiency with heavy-element alkali PDT. In particular, we find that the RbF-PDT reduces, but not fully removes, the copper content at the absorber surface and does not induce a significant change in the Ga/(Ga + In) ratio. Additionally, we observe an increased amount of indium and gallium oxides at the surface of the treated absorber. These oxides are partly (in the case of indium) and completely (in the case of gallium) removed from the CdS/Cu(In,Ga)Se2 interface by the chemical bath deposition of the CdS buffer

Comparison of English and Spanish Medical Information Sheets

Background: Low health literacy increases costs and negatively affects outcomes. According to recent surveys, Hispanics comprise the lowest scoring ethnic group. To increase understanding, information is provided in Spanish. Question: How do select English and Spanish medication information sheets compare? Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine whether medication information given to a patient in English had the exact same formation and readability level as that given in Spanish. Design: Case Study. Methods: Two drug information sheets, one on Warfarin and one on Amoxicillin from two different pharmacies, were chosen for comparison. We translated the Spanish drug information sheets into English to compare and contrast the information and readability. Results: Many of the English information sheets were easier to read due to page layout and word choice than the Spanish-to-English. Also, some of the information in the English version was different than the Spanish-to-English version. Conclusion: Medical personnel need to be knowledgeable about the information given to their patients in order to provide the best care. They cannot assume that the translated versions contain the same information as the English version. More research needs to be explored about this topic so that practice can be improved

Use of routine health information systems to monitor disruptions of coverage of maternal, newborn, and child health services during COVID-19: A scoping review.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic is a unique global health challenge which disrupted essential health services (EHS). Most early data related to EHS during the COVID-19 pandemic came from country and regional "pulse" surveys conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEEF), which relied on respondent perceptions and not necessarily routine health information system (RHIS) data. By conducting a scoping review, we aimed to describe the use of RHIS data for monitoring changes in EHS coverage for maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH) during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: We performed a scoping review using Sample, Phenomenon of Interest, Design, Evaluation, Research type (SPIDER) and Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses - Scoping Review (PRISMA-SCR) guidelines. We included descriptive or analytic reports on the availability and use of RHIS data published in peer-reviewed, pre-publication, or gray literature on MNCH essential health services coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic. The following databases were searched for studies published between January 2020 and May 2022: PubMed/MEDLINE, Google Scholar, Google, MedRXiv (pre-publication), Embase, CINAHL, Cochrane, Campbell, and OpenGrey. A single reviewer screened the titles, abstracts, and full texts of the retrieved publications, while a second reviewer screened 20% of the total sample. Publications were tabulated by WHO Region, World Bank income group, country, data sources, study topic, and period. We used content analysis to qualitatively describe the trends and use of data for policy or programming in the studies. RESULTS: We included 264 publications after the full-text review. The publications came from 81 countries, covering all WHO regions and World Bank income groups. The most common data sources were hospital information systems (27%) and primary health care management information systems (26%). Most studies examined data trends before COVID-19 compared to periods during COVID-19. Most publications reported a decrease in MNCH services (45%). Reports with follow-up beyond August 2020 (first six months of pandemic) were significantly more likely to report recovery of service coverage (8% vs 30%, P < 0.001). Low- and middle-income countries reported significantly higher morbidity and/or mortality in COVID-19 periods than high-income countries (54% vs 30%, P < 0.001). Less than 10% of reports described RHIS data quality specifically during the COVID-19 period and only 22% reported program mitigation strategies to address reductions noted from routine data. CONCLUSION: Results suggest awareness and usefulness of RHIS to monitor MNCH service disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, with only 22% of reports including descriptions of policy or program adaptations, use of RHIS data to monitor MNCH service disruptions was not necessarily followed by data-informed policies or program adaptations. RHIS data on MNCH services should be strengthened to enable its use by program managers and policymakers to respond to direct and indirect effects of future public health emergencies. REGISTRATION: Open Science Framework (available at: https://osf.io/usqp3/?view_only=94731785fcba4377adfa1bdf5754998d)