Concurrent Validity of Actigraph-Determined Sedentary Time Against the Activpal Under Free-Living Conditions in a Sample of Bus Drivers

This study explored the validity of ActiGraph-determined sedentary time (<50 cpm, <100 cpm, <150 cpm, <200 cpm, <250 cpm) compared with the activPAL in a free-living sample of bus drivers. Twenty-eight participants were recruited between November 2013 and February 2014. Participants wore an activPAL3 and ActiGraph GT3X+ concurrently for 7 days and completed a daily diary. Time spent sedentary during waking hours on workdays, non-workdays, during working-hours, and non-working hours were compared between instruments. During working hours, all ActiGraph cut-points significantly underestimated sedentary time (p < 0.05), whereas during non-working hours the <50 cpm cut-point demonstrated the closest agreement (ActiGraph sedentary time: 250 ± 75 minutes versus activPAL sedentary time: 236 ± 65 minutes). Receiver operating characteristic analyses revealed that on workdays and non-workdays the ActiGraph cut-points exhibited relatively low sensitivity (all <0.62) and specificity (all <0.49) values. The use of the ActiGraph to measure sedentary time in this understudied, highly sedentary and at risk occupational group is not recommended.     

Cultural engagement across the life course: Examining age–period–cohort effects

Longitudinal studies of cultural engagement are uncommon. This paper explores whether there are stable latent clusters of cultural engagement over time and whether age–period–cohort (APC) effects explain within-person changes between these clusters across the life course. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey (N?=?25,149), I conduct longitudinal latent class analysis to uncover the latent patterns of cultural consumption across nine activities: cinema, watching live sport, attending the theatre, eating at a restaurant, doing DIY, attending an evening class, meeting with local groups, volunteering, and going to a club/pub. Then, I explore whether APC effects are observable in the data using scatterplot smoothing, lowess regression. Six latent clusters are consistently observed in each wave: None, DIY, Restaurant/Pub, Cinema/Theatre, Volunteer, and All (almost all activities). A large number of respondents have highly stable patterns of cultural engagement but there is also a substantial degree of variation. Transitions between latent clusters over time occur between those that are compositionally similar (in terms of activities). These changes in patterns of cultural engagement are partially explained by age effects, such as time constraints and health. Additionally, there is some evidence of cohort effects among the youngest cohorts moving into the “All” latent cluster, the cluster with the most cultural breadth.     

Comparing and assessing the consequences of two different approaches to measuring school effectiveness

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability - Nations, states, and districts must choose among an array of different approaches to measuring school effectiveness in implementing their...     

Typing With Purpose: Linking the Word Processing Curriculum to Real World Applications Through Service Learning

Service learning actively engages students in the curriculum through participation in projects that meet a community need. It links the curriculum to the “real world,” thus providing an authentic context for learning. Over the past two years, university and high school staff have collaborated to develop, implement, and evaluate a service learning component in a word processing course that includes students with and without disabilities. In this article, we share strategies for incorporating service learning into the word processing curriculum and meeting the needs of diverse learners.     

Community College Students' Conceptual Understanding of Statistical Measures of Spread

This study investigated the conceptual understanding of measures of spread among community college students in an introductory statistics course. The course is centered around deemphasizing computational skills and focused, rather, on development of conceptual understanding. Open-ended questions were developed to explore and assess students' conceptual understanding of measures of spread. A detailed analysis of the students' responses is presented to reveal the range of students' conceptions of the measures of spread. The analysis of a wide variety of responses provides evidence of the students' ability to organize concepts of spread in a way that is meaningful to them individually. Some common student misconceptions revealed by this study should be examined closely and taken into consideration to promote students' development of understanding of spread.     

Applying early decision: Student and college incentives and outcomes

Colleges’ early decision (ED) admission policies require accepted students to commit to attend the school without comparing outside options. With data from two liberal arts schools we find evidence that students with higher willingness and ability to pay and lower measured ability levels are more likely to apply ED. Applying ED raises the probability of acceptance by 40 percentage points. We address the potential selection of students into ED, including estimating an upper bound of 46 percentage points following Altonji, Elder, and Taber (2005). One college appears to use the ED process to screen applicants with high SAT scores and female applicants, thereby avoiding the potential adverse selection of applicants in the regular decision process. Finally, even conditional on higher socioeconomic status and other observable characteristics, applying ED is correlated with higher financial aid packages, perhaps because the college's financial aid resources are higher earlier in the admission process.     

Transactivism and Postmodernity: An Agonistic Analysis of Transliterature

Combining scholarship on hurtful messages with research on humor as a communication strategy, this investigation compared humorously and non‐humorously phrased comments that hurt recipients’ feelings. The topics of hurtful messages, the relationship between recipients and the person who hurt their feelings, as well as recipients’ perceptions about the amount of hurt elicited and about the speaker's intentions and feelings were examined. The results indicated that humorous messages used to convey hurtful information were seen as less intentionally hurtful, as expressing less intense feelings across most message topics, and as causing less hurt as compared to non‐humorously phrased comments. These findings suggest that incorporating humor may make hurt‐evoking statements more palatable to recipients than non‐humorously phrased hurtful comments. The implications of this project for future research on hurtful communication and humor usage in personal relationships are discussed.     

The Function of Parental Communication Patterns: Reflection-Enhancing and Reflection-Discouraging Approaches

This study explored patterns and effects of communication apprehension and classroom apprehension in Nigerian classrooms. Significant correlation was found between student communication apprehension and student classroom apprehension. Analysis of variance revealed significant differences in classroom apprehension by class type, but no significant differences in communication apprehension by choice of occupation. Perceptions of academic performance were negatively associated with classroom apprehension scores.     

Comparing opportunity to learn and student achievement gains in southern African primary schools: A new approach

A popular explanation for low student achievement in many developing countries’ primary schools is that students have relatively little opportunity to learn (OTL) the skills needed for academic success. However logical this explanation may be, surprisingly little empirical evidence has been presented to support it. In this paper we address this gap by estimating the effect of OTL on students’ academic performance using rich data we gathered on the teaching process in a large number of South African and Botswana Grade 6 classrooms. We use an innovative classroom fixed effects approach to estimate the impact of OTL on students’ mathematics achievement gains. We found statistically significant but very different results for our South Africa and Botswana samples. The discussion of those results in the context of differences in the two school systems gives us insights into the importance and limits of OTL as an explainer of student learning in low achievement schools.