Format Overlap of the New York Times: A Collection Management Case Study

The issue in academic libraries of format duplication for the same title in print, microfilm, and electronic formats continues to strain library budgets, facilities, and staff. This article reviews the criteria used by a medium-sized academic library for deciding what formats of the New York Times to continue to collect and maintain. A research study was conducted to ascertain the completeness of coverage in both the online and microfilm formats of this title, with the results used as additional decision criteria.     

Using 21st century video prompting technology to facilitate the independence of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities

Barriers in acquiring, maintaining, and generalizing daily living skills are factors that contribute to discrepancies in independent living outcomes among transition age youth and young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Acquisition and generalization of daily living skills empowers transition age youth and young adults with disabilities to meet their own needs with minimal reliance on others. Infusing the use of technology as a self‐prompting device facilitates the acquisition of tasks that may not be otherwise attainable. In this study, self‐directed video prompting on an iPad with the My Pictures Talk application was used to help young adults with IDD in a postsecondary program acquire daily living skills in a single subject, multiple probe across subjects design. The effects of the intervention on generalization to tasks that were one, two, and three components different were also assessed. Results demonstrated a functional relationship between the introduction of the intervention and improvement in skill performance.     

Are Canadian adolescents happy？ A gender-based analysis of a nationally representative survey

In this study, the authors analyzed data from a nationally representative survey of youth to study happiness amongst Canadian adolescents aged 12-17. Testing for differences in the level of happiness between female and male adolescents was conducted. Following this, multivariate analysis was employed to determine which factors were associated with adolescent happiness. The authors determined that the level of happiness appeared to vary between the genders, as the males reported a higher level of happiness than the females. However, the difference between the genders in terms of reported happiness was modest. The authors detected some gender differences in regards to determinants of happiness. The study＇s theoretical and practical implications are also considered.     

Journalism

IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST-III: A REPORT BY THE NATIONAL NEWS COUNCIL, 1979-4983 (National News Council, 805 Third Ave., New York, NY 10022---$10.00, paper)

VIDEOTEX JOURNALISM: TELETEXT, VIEWDATA, AND THE NEWS by David H. Weaver (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1984---$18.00)

THE NEW BUSINESS JOURNALISM: AN INSIDER'S LOOK AT THE WORKINGS OF AMERICA'S BUSINESS PRESS by Don Gussow (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1984---$14.95)

STRAIGHT STUFF: THE REPORTERS, THE WHITE HOUSE AND THE TRUTH by James Deakin (New York: Morrow, 1984---$17.95)

COVERING CAMPAIGNS: JOURNALISM IN CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS by Peter Clarke and ' H. Evans (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University 1983---$17.50)

TERRORISM: THE MEDIA AND THE LAW, edited by Abraham H. Miller (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Transnational Publishers, 1982---$25.00, with paperback available)

THE DISSIDENT PRESS: ALTERNATIVE JOURNALISM IN AMERICAN HISTORY by Lauren Kessler (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1984---$8.95, paper)

AGENTS OF POWER: THE ROLE OF THE NEWS MEDIA IN HUMAN AFFAIRS by J. Herbert Altschull (New York: Longman, 1984---$29.95)

THE PROCESS OF ELECTRONIC NEWS GATHERING by Frederick Shook (1982, 180 pp.---no price given, paper)

THE BROADCAST NEWS PROCESS by Frederick Shook and Dan Lattimore (1982, 375 pp.---no price given, spiral bound, plus a short “Instructor's Manual”)     

Against methodocentrism in educational research

Abstract

This essay defines and critiques ‘methodocentrism’, the belief that predetermined research methods are the determining factor in the validity and importance of educational research. By examining research in science studies and posthumanism, the authors explain how this methodocentrism disenables research from taking account of problems and non-human actants that are presumed to be of no importance or value in existing social science research methodologies, both qualitative and quantitative. Building from a critique of these methods as profoundly anthropocentric, the authors examine three crucial problematics in which methodocentrism functions in educational research: the institutionalization of graduate training, a wide-spread privileging of the visual (part and parcel of empiricism), and the seeming necessity of ‘data’ in social scientific research methodologies. Ultimately, this article does not reject the necessity of particular studies having methods—rigorous, philosophically grounded approaches to problems in the world—but it argues that the belief that methods must be selected from existing options and assembled before approaching the ‘objects’ of study is not only a form of bad science, it is also deeply implicated in anthropocentric and colonialist politics. Instead, what research requires today is a thorough rethinking of the very distinction between subject and object and a renewed questioning of how agency functions in specific research settings.     

The role of shoe design on the prediction of free torque at the shoe–surface interface using pressure insole technology

The goal of the current study was to expand on previous work to validate the use of pressure insole technology in conjunction with linear regression models to predict the free torque at the shoe–surface interface that is generated while wearing different athletic shoes. Three distinctly different shoe designs were utilised. The stiffness of each shoe was determined with a material’s testing machine. Six participants wore each shoe that was fitted with an insole pressure measurement device and performed rotation trials on an embedded force plate. A pressure sensor mask was constructed from those sensors having a high linear correlation with free torque values. Linear regression models were developed to predict free torques from these pressure sensor data. The models were able to accurately predict their own free torque well (RMS error 3.72 ± 0.74 Nm), but not that of the other shoes (RMS error 10.43 ± 3.79 Nm). Models performing self-prediction were also able to measure differences in shoe stiffness. The results of the current study showed the need for participant–shoe specific linear regression models to insure high prediction accuracy of free torques from pressure sensor data during isolated internal and external rotations of the body with respect to a planted foot.