Qualitative analysis of parents' information needs and psychosocial experiences when supporting children with health care needs

OBJECTIVE: To identify the information needs of parents of children with health care needs. METHODS: A series of three focus groups and one in-depth interview were held with parents (n = 10, 90% female) in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, UK. RESULTS: Findings were grouped into four themes: delivery of information; levels of support; relationship between the family and professional; and management of events. Parents expressed a preference for information to be delivered on a verbal, 'one-to-one' basis by a professional, supplemented by accessible, written reference materials. The provision of a contact telephone number for a named professional, so further information could be obtained when required, was identified as a key source of support. Participants emphasized the importance of being consulted about the care of their child, the interaction between professional and child, and also of being treated as an individual by the professional. CONCLUSIONS: Delivery of information to parents may be most effective on a verbal, 'one-to-one' basis with a professional, in conjunction with written accessible general and child-specific reference materials. The importance to parents of the provision of contact details for a named professional and specialist nurse support is also emphasized. The psychosocial experiences of parents, along with the impact of the relationship between family and professional, and requirement for good channels of communication, must be taken into account by professionals during the care of children with health care needs. These findings have important implications for professionals and service providers for the future delivery of information to parents of children with health care needs.     

Administrative perceptions of existing evaluation systems

Summary This research study focused on a number of issues related to the status and effectiveness of post-tenure evaluation practices within the two-year college sector.The results indicate that post-tenure evaluation exists in about 70 percent of the responding institutions who belong to the North Central Association. The stated purpose for the evaluation is formative and specifies that the evaluation is used as a basis for individual faculty development and for improvement purposes. There was, however, a sense that more emphasis should be given to reward systems in terms of merit compensation and/or merit recognition.Administrators generally indicate that a plan for improvement and professional growth is established and supported by institutional resources in their evaluation systems. Yet, there was ambivalence relative to the overall effectiveness of the post-evaluation process. The reasons for such a response centered on the perception that evaluation paid only lip service to faculty development and was not effective in measuring either competence or incompetence. It appears that much work needs to be accomplished in this area in order to improve the outcomes of evaluation systems. There was also significant concern expressed by administrators regarding the inadequacy of the system to identify and weed out poor or incompetent faculty members. Such action appeared to be lacking in those institutions participating in this study.Some well-defined recommendations were put forth by these administrators to improve the evaluation systems. The most prevalent recommendations centered on tying the system to faculty development and to a formative purpose, providing incentives (merit) for excellent performers, and lessening the importance of student evaluations.This study points out some of the gaps as perceived by administrators that exist in post-tenure evaluation systems today. It also provides some recommendations for improvement of evaluation systems for those individuals who are in positions to impact such change positively within institutions.In general, these data underscore the importance for individual institutions to assess the effectiveness of their evaluation systems from both a faculty and administrative perspective. The time and effort expended on an ineffective evaluation system might better be channeled into improving the system or into developing other quality college initiatives. Evaluation of tenured faculty should only be undertaken if it can improve the quality of life within the institution.     

Foop is still floop: A six year follow-up of phonological dyslexia and dysgraphia

A six year follow-up of a previously documented case of developmental phonological dyslexia, is reported. Overal reading and spelling levels have risen significantly, but the qualitative nature of the performance has remained unchanged: impaired non-word reading; morphological and visuo-semantic paralexias; and function word substitutions in text. Rhyming skills also remain impaired. A higher proportion of errors are paralexias and within these a higher proportion are visuo-semantic or morphological. The error pattern of phonological dylexia is thus more pronounced than before. In spelling, only a minority of errors are phonologically plausible. There is no evidence of the mastery of the alphabetic stage of reading or the alphabetic stage of spelling. It is argued that A.H. is reading orthographically not logographically and that current reading models, which require passage through an alphabetic stage before attaining an orthographic stage, do not adequately account for individual variation in the acquisition of literacy skills.This work was supported by a research award from the Wolfson Foundation. Requests for reprints should be addressed to Dr. Christine Temple, The Neuropsychology Unit, Radcliffe Infirmary, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HE, United Kingdom.     

Maternal use of physical punishment in response to child misbehavior: implications for child abuse prevention

OBJECTIVE: The objective was to examine the roles of cognition and affect in maternal use of physical punishment. METHOD: Through a review of the literature, distal and proximal predictors (cognitive and affective) of physical punishment use were identified. One hundred and ten mothers of 3-year-old children were interviewed regarding two disciplinary situations that occurred during the previous 2-week period that elicited their strongest reactions: one which resulted in the use of physical punishment (if this occurred) and one which did not. The individual and combined contributions of the predictors of physical punishment use were analyzed through logistic regression. RESULTS: The predictors of physical punishment following individual analyses were: maternal attitude toward physical punishment, maternal perception of the seriousness and intent of the child misbehavior, and maternal anger in response to the child misbehavior. Through multivariate analysis 54% of the variance in physical punishment use was explained. CONCLUSIONS: Both cognitive and affective factors affect the decision to use physical punishment with children. These findings can be useful in establishing parenting educational programming that is directed at decreasing the rates of physical punishment and subsequently child physical abuse.     

Bullying as a Display of Social Dominance Orientation

The study employed Social Dominance Theory in a communicative assessment of bullying in secondary education. Participants were 189 college students who completed a survey about their bullying perpetration in secondary school (physical victimization, verbal victimization, social manipulation, and attacks on property) and their current propensity to accept social hierarchy myths (social dominance orientation). Social dominance orientation was correlated positively with all four types of bullying behavior. Moreover, bullies’ sex moderated the relationships between social dominance orientation and physical forms of bullying (physical victimization, attacks on property). For communication scholars assessing bullying, these findings propose that this single variable (social dominance orientation) be included when addressing the psychological underpinnings of bullying behaviors.     

Technical Communication Research: From Traditional to Virtual

Researchers in technical communication have recently begun to take advantage of the interactions taking place via computer-mediated communication as a rich source for research. Yet, although research in cyberspace is growing, there are few guidelines for researchers to follow. This article reviews three forms of technical communication research methods (ethnography, rhetorical analysis, and surveys) and raises preliminary issues to consider when using such research methods in cyberspace. These issues include privacy and author permissions.