Movie Stars and the Distribution of Financially Successful Films in the Motion Picture Industry

Audiences choose to see films using information from previous films. A stochastic consumer choice process based on this assumption generates a particular distribution of financially successful films among film types. Movie stars can be used to mark these successful film types. Thus, their star power originates not only from box-office appeal but also from marking power. Evidence of 960 top 20 films released in the United States and Canada between 1940–1955 and 1960–1995 is consistent with this model.     

Increasing state public health professionals' proficiency in using PubMed

Objective: The paper provides an overview of a strategy to increase utilization of online bibliographic databases by public health workers.Methods: A web-based survey of professional staff in the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services was conducted to assess their use of and interest in training in online bibliographic databases. Based on the findings from the assessment, the department, in collaboration with the state university, provided brief ninety-minute training sessions for interested staff on the use of PubMed.Results: Seventy of 115 (61%) of staff completed the survey. Only 39% of staff reported using an online bibliographic database to conduct a literature search in the past year, and only 10% (n=7) reported having ever received any training in their use. Perceived proficiency with the use of PubMed was higher upon completion of the brief training. The majority of training participants (n=27) indicated that they were very likely to use PubMed in the next year to search the literature.Conclusions: A collaboratively designed training can increase public health workers'' proficiency in and intentions of using online bibliographic databases.

Highlights

• A web-based assessment of Montana public health workers identified a lack of training in and use of online bibliographic databases and an interest in receiving training in their use.
• Brief training in the use of online bibliographic databases increased state public health workers'' self-assessed proficiency in and intentions of using these resources.

Implications

• Low-cost strategies, such as inexpensive web-survey tools, to assess staff needs and brief training sessions for public health workers were effective in increasing public health workers'' self-assessed proficiency in using online bibliographic databases.
• Collaboration between state health departments and universities to design and provide relevant training in the use of online bibliographic databases is an effective approach to addressing public health workers'' skills in using these resources.

     

Doctoral dissertations in instructional design and technology, 1977 through 1988

This is a summary of data on doctoral dissertations completed in instructional design and technology programs over the period 1977–88. During this period, 1,518 dissertations were completed at 46 different institutions, with nearly half completed at only 7 institutions. The 1,518 dissertations were chaired by 286 different professors, but approximately half were chaired by just 39 professors. The number per professor ranged from 89 to 1. Output was fairly steady over the 12 years, averaging 127 per year, with a low of 106 in 1980 and a high of 149 in 1983 and 1985.     

Telling physical education teacher education tales through pedagogical case studies

This paper analyses two pedagogical case studies (PCS) from a multidisciplinary perspective to highlight the problems of theoretical knowledge in tertiary physical education teacher education (PETE) programmes, school-based physical education (PE) practice and continuous professional learning (CPL) in PE. We argue that a critical view of tertiary PETE and PE teacher educator CPL practice or practices is particularly important if PETE programmes want to develop future PE and current teacher practitioners who are transformative agents. In setting up the pedagogical case study accounts, we recall common conversations about the bodies of knowledge in tertiary PETE programmes that have been positioned as problematic. The accounts highlight the existence of an artificial divide between PE educators as theory generators and both pre-service PE teachers and school-based PE practitioners as theory appliers. We suggest that part of the reason why this divide exists can be attributed to a general misunderstanding of theoretical and practical knowledge that have been wrongly compartmentalised into ‘theory’ and ‘practice’, and hence erroneously taught as isolated entities without any connection or direct link with each other, or the former considered to be less relevant and perhaps even irrelevant in practice.     

Is there a thing called dyslexia?

A controversy whether developmental dyslexia is qualitatively different from other forms of reading disability has existed among reading specialists for many years because poor readers, regardless of the labels attached to them, resemble each other symptomatically (i.e., in reading achievement). For this reason, it is difficult to establish a priori criteria based on symptoms to identify dyslexia and compare it with other forms of reading disability. One possible solution to this impasse is to see if poor readers differ in the etiology of their reading disability and, if they do, then to see whether one group of poor readers fits the traditional definition of dyslexia. This strategy was adopted in the present study. In this paper, it was hypothesized that the etiology of dyslexia is different from that of other forms of reading disability because there is a difference in the components that malfunction in dyslexia and other forms of reading disability. Studies have shown that the two components that account for a large proportion of variance in reading are decoding and comprehension. Previous studies also indicate that dyslexic children are deficient in decoding skills but not necessarily in comprehension. In this study, reading-disabled children were divided into two groups on the basis of their listening comprehension. Children whose listening comprehension was at or above grade level were placed in one group; poor readers with below-grade-level listening comprehension were placed in the second group. Both groups, however, were matched for reading comprehension. The two groups and a control group of normal readers were administered a number of tasks that were designed to assess the efficiency of the components of reading. It was found that poor readers with normal listening comprehension were deficient in tasks that involved grapheme-phoneme conversion (Component I, decoding). When tested on tasks that minimized decoding requirements, their reading comprehension was comparable to that of normal readers. In contrast, the group with sub-average listening comprehension was poor in measures of reading comprehension, even when decoding requirements were minimal. With the exception of very few children, this group also had adequate decoding skills. Because poor readers with normal listening comprehension had average or above average IQ, they conform to the traditional definition of dyslexia. Poor readers with below average listening comprehension had below average IQ and could be considered as “general reading backward.” It was, therefore, concluded that the etiology of developmental dyslexia is different from that of general reading backwardness. In this paper, the termetiology refers to proximal causal factors such as decoding and comprehension and not to distal causal factors such as genetic and neurological characteristics.     

Linking School–Family–Community Partnerships in Urban Elementary Schools to Student Achievement on State Tests

This study examines the relationship between the quality of school, family, and community partnership programs and student performance on state-mandated achievement tests. Data from 82 elementary schools, located in a large urban area, were collected to explore the relationship between family and community involvement and students' achievement test performance. Analyses show that, controlling for school characteristics, the degree to which schools were working to overcome challenges to family and community involvement predicted higher percentages of students scoring at or above satisfactory on state achievement tests. The findings suggest that schools' efforts to involve families and the community in students' learning may be a useful approach to help students achieve in school, especially for students in early elementary grades. Also, the findings illustrate the importance for schools located in large urban areas to address obstacles to family and community involvement to realize the benefits associated with family and community involvement.