Engagement versus participation: A difference that matters

The kind of engagement that transforms a person is more than mere participation. It is risk‐taking, spontaneous, socially supported, heart‐pounding co‐creation. Some campuses, the University of Maryland Baltimore County for one, are taking small steps to foster this kind of engagement. They've found that it's good, hard work.     

Working with 'Difficult' Children from the Inside Out: Loss and Bereavement and how the Creative Arts can Help

Most teachers will come into contact with pupils who are experiencing or have experienced a loss or bereavement and they often feel ill equipped to offer the kind of support they would like to. This paper offers insights into the nature of this area and a specific approach through which children may be supported. The writer discusses some research and thinking on loss and bereavement and the implications of this. She presents two case studies of work with individual students using the creative arts. She also discusses the connections between behavioural problems, loss and the use of the arts in supporting the students.     

Improving decision quality: A process for communicating data

Human performance (HP) practitioners rely on stakeholders to use quantitative data to make a multitude of performance improvement decisions. By improving stakeholders' capacity to process quantitative data, the quality of decisions made by those stakeholders can also be improved. This article describes a process for successfully communicating quantitative data to groups who make data‐driven decisions. It also provides practical suggestions for improving three factors critical to the process: information integrity, information layering, and information processing.     

Mapping the literature of health care chaplaincy

Objective:

This study examined citation patterns and indexing coverage from 2008 to 2010 to determine (1) the core literature of health care chaplaincy and (2) the resources providing optimum coverage for the literature.

Methods:

Citations from three source journals (2008–2010 inclusive) were collected and analyzed according to the protocol created for the Mapping the Literature of Allied Health Professions Project. An analysis of indexing coverage by five databases was conducted. A secondary analysis of self-citations by source journals was also conducted.

Results:

The 3 source journals—Chaplaincy Today, the Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy, and the Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling—ranked as the top 3 journals in Zone 1 and provided the highest number of most frequently cited articles for health care chaplaincy. Additional journals that appeared in this highly productive zone covered the disciplines of medicine, psychology, nursing, and religion, which were also represented in the Zones 2 and 3 journals. None of the databases provided complete coverage for the core journals; however, MEDLINE provided the most comprehensive coverage for journals in Zones 1 and 2, followed by Academic Search Complete, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and ATLA. Self-citations for the source journals ranged from 9% to 16%.

Conclusions:

Health care chaplaincy draws from a diverse body of inter-professional literature. Libraries wishing to provide access to journal literature to support health care chaplaincy at their institutions will be best able to do this by subscribing to databases and journals that cover medical, psychological, nursing, and religion- or spirituality-focused disciplines.

Highlights

• Health care chaplaincy is a broadly inter-professional field that draws from and contributes to medical, nursing, psychological, and religion or spirituality literature.
• Two of the three source journals were sponsored by professional chaplaincy organizations.
• Journals and books were cited with almost equal frequency.

Implications

• For full coverage of the health care chaplaincy literature, librarians should consider searching in databases beyond MEDLINE, for example, CINAHL and Academic Search Complete, to assure comprehensive coverage.
• Health care chaplaincy researchers and educators considering publication will find the study useful for identifying relevant journals from related disciplines.

     

Information-seeking behavior changes in community-based teaching practices.

A National Library of Medicine information access grant allowed for a collaborative project to provide computer resources in fourteen clinical practice sites that enabled health care professionals to access medical information via PubMed and the Internet. Health care professionals were taught how to access quality, cost-effective information that was user friendly and would result in improved patient care. Selected sites were located in medically underserved areas and received a computer, a printer, and, during year one, a fax machine. Participants were provided dial-up Internet service or were connected to the affiliated hospital's network. Clinicians were trained in how to search PubMed as a tool for practicing evidence-based medicine and to support clinical decision making. Health care providers were also taught how to find patient-education materials and continuing education programs and how to network with other professionals. Prior to the training, participants completed a questionnaire to assess their computer skills and familiarity with searching the Internet, MEDLINE, and other health-related databases. Responses indicated favorable changes in information-seeking behavior, including an increased frequency in conducting MEDLINE searches and Internet searches for work-related information.     

Cross-cultural adaptation of the Organizational Stressor Indicator for Sport Performers (OSI-SP) in Taiwan

The purpose of this study was to translate Arnold and her colleagues’ (Arnold, Fletcher, & Daniels, 2013) Organizational Stressor Indicator for Sport Performers (OSI-SP) into Chinese and examine its psychometric properties with Taiwanese athletes. In study 1, the psychometric properties of the items and the underlying structure of the translated Chinese OSI-SP were examined. In study 2, we used confirmatory factor analysis to examine the factorial structure and examined measurement invariance across genders. In study 3, we examined concurrent and discriminant validity via correlations among the Chinese OSI-SP, coping self-efficacy, perceived stress, and burnout to provide further evidence of criterion validity. Study 4 examined the test-retest reliability of the Chinese OSI-SP. Across these phases, results showed the 5-factor, 16-item Chinese OSI-SP had adequate factor structure, measurement invariance, criterion validity, and reliabilities. We suggest future studies may use this revised Chinese OSI-SP in Taiwan and other Chinese athletic settings.     

Calibration of two objective measures of physical activity for children

A calibration study was conducted to determine the threshold counts for two commonly used accelerometers, the ActiGraph and the Actical, to classify activities by intensity in children 5 to 8 years of age. Thirty-three children wore both accelerometers and a COSMED portable metabolic system during 15 min of rest and then performed up to nine different activities for 7 min each, on two separate days in the laboratory. Oxygen consumption was measured on a breath-by-breath basis, and accelerometer data were collected in 15-s epochs. Using receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analysis, cutpoints that maximised both sensitivity and specificity were determined for sedentary, moderate and vigorous activities. For both accelerometers, discrimination of sedentary behaviour was almost perfect, with the area under the ROC curve at or exceeding 0.98. For both the ActiGraph and Actical, the discrimination of moderate (0.85 and 0.86, respectively) and vigorous activity (0.83 and 0.86, respectively) was acceptable, but not as precise as for sedentary behaviour. This calibration study, using indirect calorimetry, suggests that the two accelerometers can be used to distinguish differing levels of physical activity intensity as well as inactivity among children 5 to 8 years of age.