What are the determinants of quality of life in people with cervical dystonia?

Background: Little is known about the quality of life in patients with cervical dystonia, although pain and depression are relatively common. Objective: To test the hypothesis that an individual’s ability to cope with the disease will modify the association of intrinsic, extrinsic, and disease related factors with quality of life. Methods: Patients with cervical dystonia diagnosed by a movement disorder specialist were recruited from seven European countries. Data on quality of life (SF-36), measures of coping, and intrinsic, extrinsic, and disease related factors were collected by a self completed postal questionnaire. Results: 289 patients (101 men and 188 women), mean age 55 years, completed the questionnaire. Both physical and mental quality of life scores were predicted by self esteem and self deprecation, educational level, employment status, social support, response to botulinum toxin, disease severity, social participation, stigma, acceptance of illness, anxiety, and depression. In multivariable analyses, the strongest predictors were anxiety and depression. Severe depression was associated with a 19.1 point decrement in the physical summary score (95% confidence interval, -31.7 to -6.6; p = 0.003); however, disease duration and severity remained predictors. Conclusions: Care for patients with cervical dystonia must not only focus on reducing the severity of the dystonia but also on the psychological wellbeing of the patient. Interventions aimed at treating depression or anxiety, especially of a cognitive nature, may have a large impact on improving quality of life

Evaluating Horticultural Site Visits and Individual Teaching Activities in Extension

Horticultural Extension professionals spend much time and effort on one-on-one email, telephone, office, and on-site consultations. This group has expressed challenges in evaluating the many landscape site visits and other individual consultations they conduct and may report these activities as only participatory contacts even when they result in greater levels of outcome. Time constraints and diversity of individual contact teaching are major barriers to evaluating this activity, while building cooperative relationships and demonstrating environmental and financial outcomes are major benefits. This commentary emphasizes the importance of focusing on evaluating this area and provides recommendations for practice and further resource development

Virtual Focus Groups in Extension: A Useful Approach to Audience Analysis

As change agents, Extension educators may begin their program planning by identifying the audience\u27s perceived barriers and benefits to adopting some behavior that will benefit the community. Extension professionals and researchers have used in-person focus groups to understand an audience, and they can also administer them as technology-based virtual focus groups. This article discusses the benefits and disadvantages of using this methodology and presents recommended best management practices

Assessing Connectedness to Water as a Catalyst for Change: A Multidimensional Approach to Extension Education on Water Conservation

As issues of water security remain pervasive, extension educators continue to search for strategies to promote water conservation. Social marketing represents such a strategy that can be leveraged as a tool to better understand target audiences and develop strategic communication campaigns to promote practice adoption and behavior change. Research demonstrates that social marketing efforts that focus on understanding and developing personal norms and values hold promise for increasing the implementation of residential conservation behaviors. The construct of Connectedness to Nature is one strategy for developing environmentally aligned personal norms. This study leverages a similar concept, connectedness to water, to understand how an emotional connection to water creates values that promote water conservation. We take an audience segmentation approach to understand how water conservation relates to connection to water, sociodemographic characteristics, and future conservation intentions. We conducted cluster analysis to identify audience segments followed by ANOVAs and Chi-Square tests to determine significant variations among the segments. We found that the strongest effect size was associated with connectedness to water. Interestingly, the higher an individual’s connection to water, the higher the degree to which they were engaged with water conservation practices. This relationship represents an opportunity to tailor relevant extension education strategies to focus on the advancement of an individual’s personal connections to water and perpetuate an enhanced sense of personal obligation to conserve

Using Commitment as a Tool to Promote Behavior Change in Extension Programming

Social marketing is an approach used to encourage behavior change among a specific target audience. Social marketing offers a number of tools, and Extension programming that targets behavior change could improve outcomes by incorporating the commitment tool. Commitment has been effective in natural resources campaigns that encourage sustainable behavior change. This article discusses the concept of commitment and different ways that this social marketing strategy can be used to promote behavior change through Extension programming

BET_VH: a probabilistic tool for long-term volcanic hazard assessment

In this paper, we illustrate a Bayesian Event Tree to estimate Volcanic Hazard (BET_VH). The procedure enables us to calculate the probability of any kind of long-term hazardous event for which we are interested, accounting for the intrinsic stochastic nature of volcanic eruptions and our limited knowledge regarding related processes. For the input, the code incorporates results from numerical models simulating the impact of hazardous volcanic phenomena on an area and data from the eruptive history. For the output, the code provides a wide and exhaustive set of spatiotemporal probabilities of different events; these probabilities are estimated by means of a Bayesian approach that allows all uncertainties to be properly accounted for. The code is able to deal with many eruptive settings simultaneously, weighting each with its own probability of occurrence. In a companion paper, we give a detailed example of application of this tool to the Campi Flegrei caldera, in order to estimate the hazard from tephra fall. © The Author(s) 2010

Slow Strategies for Student (and staff) engagement.

The past two years have seen an explosion of interest in the Slow Movement as a response to stress and overwork in universities. Many staff are working less and giving themselves appropriate breaks from academic life. Yet the theoretical and practical tactics and ideas for slowing down have not been shared with students, even as students suffer from overwork and employability concerns. At the same time, many universities have sought to engage students through new research-led approaches to teaching. We suggest that student engagement can be defined as the extent to which a student feels they belong to a department and that a department cares about them. We offer two methods of increasing this type of engagement. First, introduce students to the slow movement and second, take seriously the issue of staff engagement. We evaluate our own efforts to foster slow student and staff engagement through a Shut Up and Write sessions adopted by the Geography Department at UCL

Using Social Marketing Principles to Understand an Extension Audience’s Landscape Water Conservation Practices

A substantial amount of water is applied to Florida landscapes, and encouraging water conservation through irrigation practices has been identified as a priority programming area where there is great opportunity to positively affect the state’s water resources. Florida Extension addresses this priority area through educational programming. Social marketing has been identified as a promising approach to changing behaviors that influence environmental issues, such as water-saving irrigation technologies and practices. This approach recognizes that there are barriers that prevent individuals from engaging in positive behavior changes. This study evaluated an irrigation seminar using a retrospective pretest-posttest design that incorporated elements of a social marketing intercept survey. Thirty-four attendees participated and primarily represented green industry professional and government sectors. Study objectives were to evaluate the workshop and describe the audience using social marketing principles for future program planning based on audience research. The audience rated their descriptive norms, a strong predictor of behavioral change, lower than their injunctive norms, a less robust predictor. The majority planned to adopt at least one water-conservation best management practice as a result of the workshop. We make recommendations for applying social marketing principles to Extension programming

An Examination of the Use of the Framework of Social Marketing to Achieve Environmental Sustainability in International Agricultural and Extension Education

An integrated literature review was conducted to describe a technique for promoting environmentally sustainable behavior change and encourage discussion and use of this approach among international extension educators across the globe. Campaigns from several countries which incorporated varying elements of social marketing were examined using a structured framework that included: audience segmentation; research-based analysis of an audience’s perceptions toward the behavior; the articulation of specific, measurable behavioral goals; and the use of social marketing tools and other principles (e.g., social norms, messaging, commitment, incentives/disincentives, prompts and reminders, and a participatory approach). Consideration for human behavior was lacking in the majority of campaigns, and many could have increased their impact by incorporating additional social marketing elements. A second stage of the literature review was conducted to illustrate the social marketing principles and tools that made up the framework. The first stage included the examination of nine environmental behavior change campaigns, while the second stage integrated an additional 30 resources. It was determined that there is a gap in the literature documenting social marketing practices being used to encourage environmentally sustainable behavior change around the globe. A call is made for increased education and documentation of the elements of social marketing to encourage environmental sustainabilit

Examining the Potential Role of Descriptive Norms in Landscape Water Conservation Programs

The study reported here was conducted to inform potential social norms approaches to water conservation programs. Using a theoretically informed survey instrument, we examined Floridians\u27 perceived descriptive norms of close-peer, neighborhood, state, and national groups pertaining to water conservation. Respondents perceived that people conserved less as groups became more distant and perceived that conservation among close peers was most strongly related to their own conservation practices. When we considered perceptions of the four groups together, we found that only perceptions of close peers\u27 conservation efforts significantly predicted respondents\u27 conservation behaviors. Our findings revealed opportunities to highlight descriptive norms as an Extension strategy, especially among clientele\u27s close peers