Staying at the top: playing position and performance affect career length in professional sport

In an effort to understand the process of skill acquisition and decline, researchers have largely neglected a critical aspect of this development – maximizing time at the highest levels of achievement. This study examined length of career for professional athletes in basketball, football, ice hockey, and baseball and considers whether career length differed by position and player performance (standardized career performance). Results revealed career length differences among positions in baseball and football but not basketball and ice hockey. In all sports, longer careers were associated with superior performance, reinforcing the notion that performance is a critical indicator of career length and suggesting positional demands influence career length. Results highlight the need for further work on this important stage of development.     

‘It should be teamwork’: a critical investigation of school practices and parent advocacy in special education

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) suggests that parents are critical members of the special education system. Through conducting interviews with parents, observing individualised education plan (IEP) meetings, and analysing the discourse between the parent and the professional, this critical qualitative research investigates the parent–school relationship when parents are fighting for more inclusive placements for their children. This study uncovers the bureaucratic processes schools utilise, which do not allow for equitable parent participation in IEP processes including: medical and deficit discourse, professionalised discourse, policy interpretations, and meeting practices. We then describe strategies that parent-advocates use in order to obtain adequate services for their children including: networking, bringing an advocate, and education. We conclude with recommendations for schools and parents which promote enhanced parent–school collaboration throughout IEP planning, with an end goal towards improving educational opportunities for students with disabilities.     

Fat in School: Applied Interdisciplinarity as a Basis for Consultation in Oppressive Social Context

Children and youth in schools are subject to the effects of the larger culture's attitudes and values related to body size. When negatively biased, these attitudes and values can have detrimental effects and thus emerge as relevant to educational and psychological consultants. Drawing on the nascent field of Fat Studies with its focus on the cultural meanings attached to large bodies, we identify direct implications of fat phobia for school-age children and youth. Via a brief case example, an initial review of literature, and several examples of health-positive programming, we describe the social justice implications of fat phobia for consultants in school and community settings. In this consideration of the role of consultants for addressing fat bias and supporting health, we also suggest the merit of applied interdisciplinarity as a strong ground for consultation research and practice. The academic area of Fat Studies provides illustration of the integration of disciplinary perspectives (e.g., sociology, anthropology, biology, psychology). Educational and psychological consultation is ideally situated for systematically engaging such interdisciplinarity in support of practical outcomes that are healthy, sustainable, and socially just.     

Noncredit Program Data Collection at Community Colleges: A Scoping Review

ABSTRACT

Noncredit enrollment at community colleges has grown significantly over the past two decades. However, unlike credit bearing programs, noncredit programs are seldomly empirically examined and evaluated, particularly those that are not grant funded. The lack of data results in a gap in knowledge about program effectiveness, as well as the students who participate in noncredit programs, it is difficult to objectively discuss the effectiveness of programs and develop valid policies to support them. This paper specifically aims to: (a) map the relevant literature regarding noncredit program data collection; (b) summarize existing knowledge about data collection processes; and (c) identify existing knowledge gaps in what is known about noncredit data collection. An established five stage process for conducting a scoping review guided the process: (a) identifying the research question; (b) identifying the related body of literature; (c) study selection; (d) presenting of data; and lastly, (e) collating, summarizing, and reporting results. The majority of data collected were head counts, types of courses offered and minimal demographic information. The results also show that, despite higher enrollments and the popularity of programs, there is a lack of comprehensive information on student needs. Thus, it is crucial to develop a standardized data collection system for all noncredit programs; collect data at a student level; and provide more detailed information regarding enrollment, completion, and outcomes such as employment and wage gains, as well as qualitative factors such as student satisfaction.     

‘Can you get pregnant when u r in the pool?’: young people's information seeking from a sexual health text line

Young people have questions about sex and development but may have trouble getting answers to them. Text messaging services can serve as a resource. This study analysed 1351 text messages sent to a sexual health text message service designed for young people in North Carolina to determine the types of questions asked of a confidential, accurate source of information. The majority of texts sought information about sexual health topics (89%). A smaller proportion asked for advice (7%) or reassurance (4%) that the sender was developing normally. Questions mainly asked about sexual acts (33.9%), unplanned pregnancy (20.2%), contraception (13.7%), physical or sexual development (12.9%) and sexually transmitted diseases (10.8%). Findings suggest that a confidential and accurate sexual health text message service could be an important resource for young people, especially if they seek advice before engaging in risky sexual behaviour.     

Audiences for crime media 1946–91: A historical approach to reception studies

The present paper argues that audience reception studies have tended to be ahistorical, neglecting consideration of the ways in which audiences’ orientation to media may have changed over the decades. The paper explores the potential of combining oral history methods with reception studies, and addresses some of the difficulties which arise. An apparently simple way to introduce a historical perspective is attempted by including audience age as a central part of an empirical research design. By analysing a series of focus group discussions in which people respond to crime media from different points over the postwar period, the concept of age is unpacked in terms of generation and life course factors, and these are shown to influence reception of crime media from both the present and the past. Generation and life course, together with gender, also affect people's positioning in society in relation to real‐world crime, and this too affects the reception of crime media. The paper concludes by suggesting three ways in which audiences may have changed over the postwar period in terms of their interpretive frames for making sense of crime media, namely the frames of personal relevance, realism and moral relativism.     

A Case Study of Edwin Howard Armstrong's Public Relations Campaign for Frequency Modulation

Edwin Howard Armstrong is commonly remembered as the inventor of frequency modulation (FM). There are those, however, who dispute this claim and assert that Armstrong's legacy is a work of fiction rather than history. This study examines the extensive public relations campaign on behalf of both FM and Armstrong from 1940 until after his death. This thesis is a case study of this campaign for the purpose of understanding the narrative presented to the American public.     

Library Anxiety Among Undergraduates Enrolled in a Research Methods in Psychology Course

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which organized training on accessing library resources affects library anxiety. The researchers revised and used the Multidimensional Library Anxiety Scale created by D. J. Van Kampen-Breit, which was designed to assess an individual's perception of an academic library and the information search process. Participants were given a pretest prior to information literacy sessions and a posttest following these sessions. Data analysis suggests a significant decrease in students’ anxiety levels following information literacy training sessions. The results of this study were applied to C. C. Kuhlthau's Information Search Process model and have implications for librarians, instructors, and students regarding factors related to library anxiety and its effective management.     

Midsession reversal learning: why do pigeons anticipate and perseverate?

Past research has shown that when given a simultaneous visual-discrimination midsession reversal task, pigeons typically anticipate the reversal well before it occurs and perseverate after it occurs. It appears that they use the estimation of time (or trial number) into the session, rather than (or in addition to) the more reliable cue, the outcome from the previous trial (i.e., a win–stay/lose–shift response rule), to determine which stimulus they should choose. In the present research, we investigated several variables that we thought might encourage pigeons to use a more efficient response strategy. In Experiment 1, we used a treadle-stepping response, rather than key pecking, to test the hypothesis that reflexive key pecking may have biased pigeons to estimate the time (or trial number) into the session at which the reversal would occur. In Experiment 2, we attempted to make the point of reversal in the session more salient by inserting irrelevant trials with stimuli different from the original discriminative stimuli, and for a separate group, we added a 5-s time-out penalty following incorrect choices. The use of a treadle-stepping response did not improve reversal performance, and although we found some improvement in reversal performance when the reversal was signaled and when errors resulted in a time-out, we found little evidence for performance that approached the win–stay/lose–shift accuracy shown by rats.