Linguistic Markers of Influence in Informal Interactions

There has been a long standing interest in understanding `Social Influence' both in Social Sciences and in Computational Linguistics. In this paper, we present a novel approach to study and measure interpersonal influence in daily interactions. Motivated by the basic principles of influence, we attempt to identify indicative linguistic features of the posts in an online knitting community. We present the scheme used to operationalize and label the posts with indicator features. Experiments with the identified features show an improvement in the classification accuracy of influence by 3.15%. Our results illustrate the important correlation between the characteristics of the language and its potential to influence others.Comment: 10 pages, Accepted in NLP+CSS workshop for ACL (Association for Computational Linguistics) 201

Promoting Public Health Through Community Engagement: Embracing the Journey

This case study recounts and analyzes the journey that graduate students, enrolled in an experiential, interdisciplinary health promotions course, took with a diverse, urban, Black, Midwest community. Community members, faculty, and graduate students in social work and public health were fellow travelers on this voyage into uncharted territory. A major goal of the journey was to teach students how to recognize community strengths and to facilitate the community in using those strengths. The learner’s stance is used as the guiding principle for this reflective journey that generated serendipitous benefits and challenges. The article concludes with recommendations for interdisciplinary education and curriculum development

Physical Activity Belief Scales for Diabetes Risk: Development and Psychometric Testing

This article describes the development and psychometric evaluation of behavioral belief, normative belief, and control belief scales, derived from the theory of planned behavior to predict physical activity intentions of persons at risk for diabetes. In Study 1, belief statements from interviews were categorized, ranked, and evaluated for item construction. Content validity was established by 96. 1 % agreement among a five-member expert panel. In Study 2, items developed from the belief statements were administered to 106 adults at risk for diabetes. Psychometric analyses provided evidence of construct validity and reliability of the three scales. Internal consistency was sufficient (α = .76-.95), and test-retest evaluations indicated scale stability (r = .79- .91). Factor analyses and confirmatory factor analysis using structural equation modeling provided evidence that the items were appropriately grouped under each construct. Researchers and practitioners can use these measures to assess behavioral, normative, and control beliefs about physical activity among persons at risk for diabetes

Evaluation of the 'You First' programme for young parents

You First was developed by Barnardo’s and funded by the Scottish Government. It targets vulnerable parents aged 21 and under, with a child under the age of one, who live in the 15% most deprived areas in Scotland. It aims to provide a boost for young, first time parents by increasing the support that they receive from their peers, the community and existing local services. The evaluation explored the benefits of the You First programme and the ways in which these could be maximised through effective delivery