439 research outputs found
A Pilot Intervention to Increase Parent-Child Communication About Alcohol Avoidance
Enhancing parent-child communication regarding alcohol use through educational print correspondence is a potentially cost-effective tool in health promotion. The purpose of this pilot study was to examine whether a series of postcards addressing specific alcohol risk and protective factors, sent to the parents/guardians of preadolescents in two different school settings, influenced parent-child communication regarding alcohol use. Subjects for this study included parents of participating 6th grade students attending one neighborhood (N=262) and one magnet (bused) (N=388) inner-city school. Participating students were randomly assigned to the intervention or control group. Baseline data were collected from students, enabling the intervention to be tailored to students\u27 individual needs. Parents of students assigned to the intervention were mailed up to 10 prevention postcards over five weeks. Parents completed a 10-item telephone survey eight weeks after implementation of the prevention postcards. The overall parent response rate was 74% (N=478). Results of this pilot intervention found that postcards increased parent-child communication regarding alcohol use, but that these efects difered by school setting and race. Although significant efects were found for the intervention group, further analysis revealed that efects were found only for White parents at the magnet school. Discussion of these differences and implications for research and educational programming are provided
‘We don't have recipes; we just have loads of ingredients’: explanations of evidence and clinical decision making by speech and language therapists
Rationale, aims and objectives: Research findings consistently suggest that speech and language therapists (SLTs) are failing to draw effectively on research-based evidence to guide clinical practice. This study aimed to examine what constitutes the reasoning provided by SLTs for treatment choices and whether science plays a part in those decisions.
Method: This study, based in Ireland, reports on the qualitative phase of a mixed-methods study, which examined attitudes underpinning treatment choices and the therapy process. SLTs were recruited from community, hospital and disability work settings via SLT managers who acted as gatekeepers. A total of three focus groups were run. Data were transcribed, anonymized and analysed using thematic analysis.
Results: In total, 48 participants took part in the focus groups. The majority of participants were female, represented senior grades and had basic professional qualifications. Three key themes were identified: practice imperfect; practice as grounded and growing; and critical practice. Findings show that treatment decisions are scaffolded primarily on practice evidence. The uniqueness of each patient results in dynamic and pragmatic practice, constraining the application of unmodified therapies. Conclusion: The findings emerging from the data reflect the complexities and paradoxes of clinical practice as described by SLTs. Practice is pivoted on both the patient and clinician, through their membership of groups and as individuals. Scientific thinking is a component of decision making; a tool with which to approach the various ingredients and the dynamic nature of clinical practice. However, these scientific elements do not necessarily reflect evidence-based practice as typically constructed
SLTs’ conceptions about their own and parents’ roles during intervention with preschool children
© 2019 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists Background: Current research investigating collaboration between parents and speech and language therapists (SLTs) indicates that the SLT role is characterized by therapist-led practice. Co-working with parents of children with speech and language difficulties is less frequently described. In order to embrace co-working during intervention, the SLT role may need to be reframed, focusing on acquiring skills in the role of coach as well as the role of planning intervention and treating children. Aims: To report (1) SLTs’ conceptions about their own roles during intervention for pre-school children with speech and language difficulties; and (2) SLTs’ conceptions of parents’ roles during intervention. Methods & Procedures: A qualitative study used individual, semi-structured interviews with 12 SLTs working with pre-school children. Open-ended questions investigated SLTs’ expectation of parents, experience of working with families, and the SLTs’ conception of their roles during assessment, intervention and decision-making. Thematic network analysis was used to identify basic, organizational and global themes. Results & Outcomes: SLTs had three conceptions about their own role during intervention: treating, planning and coaching. The roles of treating and planning were clearly formulated, but the conception of their role as coach was more implicit in their discourse. SLTs’ conception of parents’ roles focused on parents as implementers of activities and only occasionally as change agents. Conclusions & Implications: Collaboration that reflects co-working may necessitate changes in the conception about the role for both SLTs and parents. SLTs and parents may need to negotiate roles, with parents assuming learner and adaptor roles and SLTs adopting a coaching role to activate greater involvement of parents. Applying conceptual change theory offers new possibilities for understanding and enabling changes in SLTs’ conception of roles, potentially initiating a deeper understanding of how to achieve co-working during speech and language intervention
Meeting the educational and social needs of children with language impairment or autism spectrum disorder:the parents’ perspectives
Background
There is increasing interest in examining the perspectives of parents of children with special educational needs (SEN). Exploring the view of parents of a child with language impairment (LI) or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is particularly important because of their high prevalence, at over 30% of children with SEN in England, and the increasing evidence of overlapping profiles of their needs.
Aims
To examine the similarities and differences between the perspectives of parents of children with LI or ASD on three issues: i) their child’s educational progress, and their behavioural, emotional and social development, ii) the provision made to support their child’s education and meet their SEN; and iii) their own involvement in decision making about provision for their child.
Method and procedure
The parents of 129 children with LI (n = 76) or ASD (n = 53) were interviewed using a semi-structured protocol that gathered both quantitative data (parent ratings) and qualitative, in depth explorations of their perspectives.
Outcomes and results
There were no significant differences between the perspectives of parents of children with LI and parents of children with ASD with respect to their child’s educational progress; the provision made to meet their child’s educational needs; or their involvement in decision making during the statutory assessment procedure, including the determination of a statement of SEN, and the current provision made by their child’s school. Both parent groups were generally positive about these but parents of children with ASD were more concerned about their child’s peer relationships. Parents whose child attended a mainstream school with a specialist resource tended to be more positive about the provision made than parents whose child was included individually into a mainstream school.
Conclusions and implications
Although previous research indicates that parents of children with ASD are overrepresented among those that express dissatisfaction with provision made to meet their child’s needs, our study indicates high levels of satisfaction and overlap between the perspectives of parents of children with LI or ASD regarding their child’s educational progress and their own involvement in decision making about the child’s provision. Our findings indicate the importance for policy and practice of focusing on identified needs rather than diagnostic category; and the importance of practitioners and administrators engaging meaningfully with parents in collaborative decision making.
Search for charged Higgs decays of the top quark using hadronic tau decays
We present the result of a search for charged Higgs decays of the top quark,
produced in collisions at 1.8 TeV. When the charged
Higgs is heavy and decays to a tau lepton, which subsequently decays
hadronically, the resulting events have a unique signature: large missing
transverse energy and the low-charged-multiplicity tau. Data collected in the
period 1992-1993 at the Collider Detector at Fermilab, corresponding to
18.70.7~pb, exclude new regions of combined top quark and charged
Higgs mass, in extensions to the standard model with two Higgs doublets.Comment: uuencoded, gzipped tar file of LaTeX and 6 Postscript figures; 11 pp;
submitted to Phys. Rev.
Inclusive jet cross section in collisions at TeV
The inclusive jet differential cross section has been measured for jet
transverse energies, , from 15 to 440 GeV, in the pseudorapidity region
0.10.7. The results are based on 19.5 pb of data
collected by the CDF collaboration at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. The data
are compared with QCD predictions for various sets of parton distribution
functions. The cross section for jets with GeV is significantly
higher than current predictions based on O() perturbative QCD
calculations. Various possible explanations for the high- excess are
discussed.Comment: 8 pages with 2 eps uu-encoded figures Submitted to Physical Review
Letter
Incidence and trends of blastomycosis-associated hospitalizations in the United States
We used the State Inpatient Databases from the United States Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to provide state-specific age-adjusted blastomycosis-associated hospitalization incidence throughout the entire United States. Among the 46 states studied, states within the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys had the highest age-adjusted hospitalization incidence. Specifically, Wisconsin had the highest age-adjusted hospitalization incidence (2.9 hospitalizations per 100,000 person-years). Trends were studied in the five highest hospitalization incidence states. From 2000 to 2011, blastomycosis-associated hospitalizations increased significantly in Illinois and Kentucky with an average annual increase of 4.4% and 8.4%, respectively. Trends varied significantly by state. Overall, 64% of blastomycosis-associated hospitalizations were among men and the median age at hospitalization was 53 years. This analysis provides a complete epidemiologic description of blastomycosis-associated hospitalizations throughout the endemic area in the United States
Search for a Technicolor omega_T Particle in Events with a Photon and a b-quark Jet at CDF
If the Technicolor omega_T particle exists, a likely decay mode is omega_T ->
gamma pi_T, followed by pi_T -> bb-bar, yielding the signature gamma bb-bar. We
have searched 85 pb^-1 of data collected by the CDF experiment at the Fermilab
Tevatron for events with a photon and two jets, where one of the jets must
contain a secondary vertex implying the presence of a b quark. We find no
excess of events above standard model expectations. We express the result of an
exclusion region in the M_omega_T - M_pi_T mass plane.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures. Available from the CDF server (PS with figs):
http://www-cdf.fnal.gov/physics/pub98/cdf4674_omega_t_prl_4.ps
FERMILAB-PUB-98/321-
Search for Kaluza-Klein Graviton Emission in Collisions at TeV using the Missing Energy Signature
We report on a search for direct Kaluza-Klein graviton production in a data
sample of 84 of \ppb collisions at = 1.8 TeV, recorded
by the Collider Detector at Fermilab. We investigate the final state of large
missing transverse energy and one or two high energy jets. We compare the data
with the predictions from a -dimensional Kaluza-Klein scenario in which
gravity becomes strong at the TeV scale. At 95% confidence level (C.L.) for
=2, 4, and 6 we exclude an effective Planck scale below 1.0, 0.77, and 0.71
TeV, respectively.Comment: Submitted to PRL, 7 pages 4 figures/Revision includes 5 figure
Observation of Hadronic W Decays in t-tbar Events with the Collider Detector at Fermilab
We observe hadronic W decays in t-tbar -> W (-> l nu) + >= 4 jet events using
a 109 pb-1 data sample of p-pbar collisions at sqrt{s} = 1.8 TeV collected with
the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF). A peak in the dijet invariant mass
distribution is obtained that is consistent with W decay and inconsistent with
the background prediction by 3.3 standard deviations. From this peak we measure
the W mass to be 77.2 +- 4.6 (stat+syst) GeV/c^2. This result demonstrates the
presence of two W bosons in t-tbar candidates in the W (-> l nu) + >= 4 jet
channel.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PR
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