A Framework for User Agency during Development of Interactive Risk Visualization Tools

ABSTRACT

Participating in user-centered design provides potential users of interactive risk visualization tools agency in influencing tool development. This article identifies and characterizes pathways for agency that users may experience as they participate in design of interactive tools for visualizing environmental risks. We present an empirically based conceptual framework for better understanding user agency during visualization tool development based on findings from interviews with professional visualization tool developers and discuss practical implications and future research recommendations.     

Research Experiences of Staff within a Specialist UK Higher Education Institution: Challenges,opportunities and priorities

The study discussed here was based on a collective case approach involving a specialist UK higher education institution. Six individual interviews were carried out with a cross-sectional sample of the institution’s staff members. Additional information was gained through observations and examination of relevant documents. These data were interrogated with the purpose of exploring how the institution had made the transition from a teacher training college to a teaching-led higher education institution with a particular commitment to developing research capacity. This analysis yielded a number of key findings: first, the institution had experienced a cultural shift, with research forming a more noticeable profile; second, practitioner-oriented research was the dominant research endeavour; and third, there appeared to be an incomplete understanding of the potential of research to change a staff member’s career and teaching practice. The article concludes by giving consideration to the implications of the findings.     

Publishing in Discipline-Specific Non-Library Journals for Promoting Information Literacy

Academic librarians tend to publish in traditional “library” journals rather than journals directed at other academic disciplines, thereby missing the opportunity to inform and educate a key audience. This article alerts librarians to publishing opportunities in discipline-specific academic journals in the Arts & Humanities, Sciences, and Social Sciences, both as a means of promoting information literacy (IL) and effecting outreach to faculty. Selection criteria are defined and discussed. The results of the study are presented by discipline in table format with data on each journal including publisher, affiliation, publication frequency, review time, acceptance rate, and ranking indicators.     

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.     

Parental Mediation of Children's Internet Use

This article examines parental regulation of children and teenagers' online activities. A national survey of 1511 children and 906 parents found that 12–17-year-olds encounter a range of online risks. Parents implement a range of strategies, favoring active co-use and interaction rules over technical restrictions using filters or monitoring software, but these were not necessarily effective in reducing risk. Parental restriction of online peer-to-peer interactions was associated with reduced risk but other mediation strategies, including the widely practiced active co-use, were not. These findings challenge researchers to identify effective strategies without impeding teenagers' freedom to interact with their peers online.     

Psychosocial and behavioral factors related to the post-partum placements of infants born to cocaine-using women

OBJECTIVE: One objective was to determine if cocaine-using women who did not maintain infant custody (NMC) would report more psychological distress, domestic violence, negative coping skills, lower social support and more childhood trauma than cocaine-using women who maintained custody (MC) of their infant. A second objective was to evaluate the relative contribution of psychosocial factors to infant placement. METHODS: Psychosocial profiles of MC women (n=144) were compared with NMC (n=66) cocaine-using women. Subjects were low income, urban, African-American women who delivered an infant at a county teaching hospital. The Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI), an assessment of coping strategies (COPE), Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) and Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) were administered. The associations of infant placement status to demographic factors, drug use and psychosocial measures were evaluated. RESULTS: The NMC group reported greater overall psychological distress, psychoticism, somatization, anxiety and hostility than the MC group. The NMC group had more childhood neglect and physical abuse and used more negative coping strategies than the MC group. Lack of prenatal care [OR=.83, CI (.75-.91), p<.0001], heavier prenatal cocaine use [OR=2.55, CI (1.13-4.34), p<.007], greater psychological distress [OR=2.21, CI (1.13-4.34), p<.02] and a childhood history of emotional neglect [OR=1.10, CI (1.02-1.19), p<.02] were associated with increased likelihood of loss of infant custody after control for other substance use and demographic variables. CONCLUSIONS: NMC women have more negative psychological and behavioral functioning post-partum than MC women. Less prenatal care and greater cocaine use, psychological distress and maternal childhood emotional neglect are associated with the post-partum placement of infants born to cocaine-using women. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Results of this study indicate that poor, urban women who use cocaine prenatally display several measurable differences on psychosocial and behavioral risk factors based on child placement status. Among these risk factors heavier cocaine use, lack of prenatal care, more severe psychological symptoms and early childhood experiences of emotional neglect increase the likelihood of loss of infant custody. Routine, objective assessments of psychosocial and behavioral characteristics of women who use cocaine during pregnancy can aid Child Protective Service workers and clinicians by providing baseline data from which to tailor interventions and set improvement criteria for mother-child reunification.     

The effect of the number of syllables on handwriting production

Four experiments examined whether motor programming in handwriting production can be modulated by the syllable structure of the word to be written. This study manipulated the number of syllables. The items, words and pseudo-words, had 2, 3 or 4 syllables. French adults copied them three times. We measured the latencies between the visual presentation and the first production (L1), the first and second production (L2), and the second and third production (L3). The results show an effect of the number of syllables in L1 for pseudo-words but not for words and on L2 and L3 for all the items (Experiments 1 and 2). Experiment 3 ruled out an interpretation of the latencies for pseudo-words in terms of reading time with a delayed copying task. Experiment 4 replicated the previous results and assessed the effect of varying the temporal interval between the second and third trials. The results of the four experiments confirm the role of the syllable in word writing. The number of syllables of a word modulates the time course of handwriting production.

School Fights: Resisting Oppression in the Classroom in Gloria Velásquez’s Latina/o Young Adult Novel <Emphasis Type="Italic">Juanita Fights the School Board</Emphasis>

There is a long history of discrimination and marginalization of Chicanas/Latinas in the classroom due to xenophobia, language barriers, citizenship status, oversexualization, and much more. Through an analysis of Gloria Velasquez’s (Juanita Fights the School Board, Piñata Books, Houston, 1995) I seek to demonstrate the ways in which Chicanas/Latinas have been resisting the oppressions they experience in the classroom by creating alternative ways of knowing. In Velasquez’s narrative, Juanita is expelled for fighting and must appear before the school board to make a case for why she should be allowed to return to school. As the novel progresses, it is revealed that the policies, teachers, and administrators of Roosevelt High School are biased against students of color. By way of Juanita Fights the School Board, I introduce my concept of “conocimiento narratives” as a way to read stories like these as having the potential for healing in the lives of Chicanas/Latinas. Juanita uses the knowledges imparted by her family, her communities, and her culture to challenge and transform the discrimination she experiences at school.