What is the Evidence of the Experience of Having a Fall across the Life Course? A Qualitative Synthesis

Background: Alleviating the economic and human impacts of falls and fear of falling are critical health and social care issues. Despite some proven effectiveness of a number of falls prevention intervention programmes, uptake remains low and attrition high. There is a need for greater understanding of social, cultural and individual, life course positioning of falling, actual or perceived. Objective: To address the question: what is the evidence of the experience of having a fall across the life course? Method: A qualitative evidence synthesis with key electronic databases searched from 1990-2011 using terms related to the experience of falls and falling. Selected papers presented data from the perspective of the person who had fallen. Synthesis included collaborative coding of ‘incidents’ related to falling, theoretical sampling of studies to challenge emerging theories, and constant comparison of categories to generate explanations. Results: The initial focus was to access and assess the evidence for the experiences of a fall across the life course but the authors’ systematic search revealed that the vast majority of the published literature focuses on the experience of a fall in later life. Only 2 of the 16 studies included, provided perspectives of falling from a life stage other than that of older adults. However older adults’ perceptions of their falls experiences are likely to be influenced by lifelong attitudes and beliefs about falling and older age. Synthesis identified that a falls incident or fear of falling induces explicit or implicit ‘Fear’. Consequences are related to notions of ‘Control’ and ‘Social standing’. Recovery work involves ‘Adaptation’, ‘Implications’ ‘Social standing’ and ‘Control’. ‘Explanation’ is sought. Conclusions: How and why people make sense of falling across the life course should have positive impacts on developing falls intervention programmes that people will want to engage with and adhere to

An online narrative archive of service user experiences to support the education of undergraduate physiotherapy and social work students in North East England: An evaluation study.

Background: Patient narratives are a viable process for patients to contribute to the education of future health professionals and social workers. Narratives can facilitate a deeper understanding of the self and others through self-reflection and encourage transformative learning among students. Increasingly, accounts of health and care are available online but their use in health and social work education requires evaluation. This study explored the experiences of stakeholders who contributed to, developed and used an online narrative archive, which was developed in collaboration with five universities and healthcare providers in the North East of England (CETL4HealthNE). Methods: Realistic evaluation principles were used to underpin data collection, which consisted of semi-structured interviews, a focus group and observations of educators using narrative resources in teaching sessions with different professional groups in two universities. Participants included educators, storytellers, narrative interviewers, students and a transcriber. Data were analysed thematically by two researchers and verified by a third researcher. Findings: Stakeholders reported that listening to patient narratives was challenging. The process of contributing the story was a positive cathartic experience for patients, and the powerful storyteller voice often evoked empathy. Students commented on the ability of the online audio-visual narratives to enable them to see the patient holistically, and educators reported that narratives provided a means to introduce sensitive topics. Conclusions: The use of a locally generated online narrative archive is beneficial for storytellers, students and educators, providing an opportunity to influence healthcare professional training. Care needs to be taken when exposing individuals to potentially sensitive narratives

Investigating cross-language speech retrieval for a spontaneous conversational speech collection

Cross-language retrieval of spontaneous speech combines the challenges of working with noisy automated transcription and language translation. The CLEF 2005 Cross-Language Speech Retrieval (CL-SR) task provides a standard test collection to investigate these challenges. We show that we can improve retrieval performance: by careful selection of the term weighting scheme; by decomposing automated transcripts into phonetic substrings to help ameliorate transcription errors; and by combining automatic transcriptions with manually-assigned metadata. We further show that topic translation with online machine translation resources yields effective CL-SR

How Does the Financial Crisis Affect Developing Countries?

The global economy is in crisis as a result of inadequate regulation and supervision of banks and financial markets. The prudential regulation and supervision recommended to developing countries was largely ignored in the developed nations. No country, however, is spared from the consequences of the downturn. The impact on developing countries is even greater. (...)How Does the Financial Crisis Affect Developing Countries?

Mapping self-management strategies in Parkinson's disease : implications for physiotherapy practice and research

The overarching purpose of this research was to find out about life with Parkinson's disease and to use that knowledge to inform physiotherapy management. The project aimed to explore current and alternative ways in which professionals could seek to understand the experience of life with Parkinson's disease; to explore the implications of resultant new knowledge; and to investigate how physiotherapy relationships should take account of new ways of understanding and new knowledge. A spiral of research activity was undertaken comprising three successive cycles. The first two cycles were undertaken using case study methodology, focusing on the experience of life with Parkinson's disease from a group and an individual perspective. A wide range of qualitative and quantitative methods for both data collection (including interviews, disability and quality of life scales and activity monitoring) and data analysis were employed. The level and complexity of personal work undertaken by individuals to manage their condition was the principal theme to emerge from initial cycles. This insight led to the development of a tool — strategy mapping — to enable professionals to capture and use information about self- management in their interactions with individuals. The third cycle employed action research methodology to develop and evaluate the strategy mapping framework - centred on identifying strategies related to Self, Routines, Support and Involvement - in physiotherapy practice. A number of perspectives were developed in relation to the project's aims. The methodological perspective highlighted the need for commitment to listening to the experiential narrative and hearing the story of self-management. The ontological perspective offered the potential for practice and research to build on existing self- management solutions. The epistemological perspective pointed to addressing power differentials between knowledge bases to promote collaborative therapy relationships. The full potential of a paradigm shift which attempts to increase the degree of alignment between the everyday lives of individuals with Parkinson's disease and physiotherapy practice, education and research remains to be uncovered

Using Visual Imagery to Enhance Student Writing

Research Question: What is the effect of the Photoresponse assignment on student writing? Method & Data Studied: We collected data from students enrolled in the HSP 302 Introduction to Human Services course during winter and spring quarters 2011. On the first day of class students were asked to respond, in writing, to the question “what inspired you to be a human service professional?” Over the course of the next four weeks, students were further asked to respond to a series of questions by taking a photograph meant to capture their answer to a question. Students then prepared a brief narrative explaining their rational. The final question students were asked to photograph was the same question asked on the first day of class, “What inspired you to be a human service professional? Photos were uploaded onto a PowerPoint presentation and students presented their photo and narrative to the class each week. At the end of the course students were given a brief survey meant to capture their feelings about this assignment and its effect on their writing. The initial in-class and final photoresponse writes were analyzed using the rubric to determine if GUR competency 1 had been met. Together we analyzed 20% of the narratives to ensure that we were rating each assignment the same. Data was then entered into SPSS to determine if any statistical correlation existed between the in-class write and photoresponse write

Simulation Study to Predict How Resilience-Building Programs Will Impact Parenting Stress in Mothers with Adverse Childhood Experiences

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are stressful or traumatic events that occur during childhood that impact health and wellbeing, thus having long-lasting effects. In the context of parenting, a history of ACEs can impact a caregiver’s ability to manage stress and interfere with their ability to provide sensitive and regulated caregiving. Thankfully, there are many ways that one can foster resilience in the face of past ACEs. This study aims to help mothers combat ACEs and parenting stress by experimentally investigating the benefits of two resilience-building programs. The first is an emotion-based program that focuses on emotion regulation, self-care, and attachment theory. The second is a behavior-based program that focuses on developmental milestones and general behaviorally based parenting practices (e.g. positive reinforcement, punishment). The present project uses a pre/post/follow-up design to assess parenting stress before and after engagement in the resilience-building programs. Mothers of 3-year-old children will complete the ACEs Questionnaire, which assesses how many and what specific ACEs participants have (pre-assessment), and the Parental Stress Scale (PSS), which assesses their parenting stress (pre, post, follow up). Although statistical analyses will be conducted to examine differences in PSS scores, the ACEs Questionnaire will only be used to ensure that the sample examined is mothers with ACEs, as participants who report no ACEs will be excluded from data analysis. In addition to self-report questionnaires, participants visit the Affect, Regulation, Coping, and Health (ARCH) lab to complete moderately stressful tasks while physiological data is obtained; data from lab visits will not be analyzed in this project but will be collected since this research is a part of a larger study called the 2Gen: Feeling Better Project (2Gen) that aims to examine emotion coregulation and physiological synchrony between mothers and their three-year-old children. After the pre-assessment, participants will be randomly assigned to one of the two 8-week programs (Emotion Curriculum, Behavior Curriculum) which will be provided through electronic links to brief videos. Participants also receive binders with the video scripts, handouts, resources, and reflection questions for each week’s content. Due to being at early stages in data collection, the present project will summarize the 2Gen protocol and will simulate data using mean parenting stress values from comparable studies. That simulated data will then be analyzed using JASP, an open-source statistics software. A 2x2 factorial ANOVA will be run to compare pre and post PSS scores for the emotion and behavior-based resilience-building programs. We hypothesize that parenting stress scores will decrease for all participants; however, we anticipate this change to be greater for those who receive the emotion-based program

Airborne coherent continuous wave CO2 Doppler lidars for aerosol backscatter measurement

Two focused coherent, continuous wave (CW) lidars have been developed by the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) for airborne and ground-based measurement of aerosol backscatter coefficients. The first of these instruments uses a mixture of CO2 and other gases, and measures backscatter at 10.6 m. The second lidar uses an isotope of carbon dioxide, which enables lasing at 9.1 m. The 10.6 m backscatter measurement serves as a reference to allow variations in backscatter due to aerosol concentration to be distinguished from variations due to spectral variability. The 10.6 m lidar has been used in airborne field programs since 1981. Development of the 9.1 m lidar was completed in early 1989. Recently, both lidars were flown on the NASA/Ames Research Center DC-8 research aircraft in the remote Pacific Basin as part of the NASA GLObal Backscatter Experiment (GLOBE) survey missions. The GLOBE program, of which the survey missions are the centerpieces, supports design and simulation studies for NASA's prospective Laser Atmospheric Wind Sounder (LAWS)

Negative emotional reactivity as a marker of vulnerability in the development of borderline personality disorder symptoms

Negative emotionality is a distinguishing feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD). However, this person-level characteristic has not been examined as a marker of vulnerability in the development of this disorder. The current study utilized a multi-method approach to examine the interplay between negative emotional reactivity and cumulative exposure to family adversity on the development of BPD symptoms across three years (ages 16–18) in a diverse, at-risk sample of adolescent girls (N=113). A latent variable of negative emotional reactivity was created from multiple assessments at age 16: (1) self-report, (2) emotion ratings to stressors from ecological assessments across one week, and (3) observer-rated negative affectivity during a mother-daughter conflict discussion task. Exposure to family adversity was measured cumulatively between ages 5 and 16 from annual assessments of family poverty, single parent household, and difficult life circumstances. Results from latent growth curve models demonstrated a significant interaction between negative emotional reactivity and family adversity, such that exposure to adversity strengthened the association between negative emotional reactivity and BPD symptoms. Additionally, family adversity predicted increasing BPD symptoms during late adolescence. These findings highlight negative emotional reactivity as a marker of vulnerability that ultimately increases risk for the development of BPD symptoms