NASTY,BRUTISH AND LONG: ADVENTURES IN OLD AGE AND THE WORLD OF ELDERCARE By Ira Rosofsky

Nurses play a significant role in geriatric care. However, as the aging population and demand for geriatric nurses increase worldwide, shortages of nurses seem to arise. This creates the need to assess and address the motivation and attitudes of nurses toward geriatric care. The intent of this qualitative study is to surface the essence or the “lebenswelt” that describe the motivation and attitudes of a selected group of Filipino nurses toward geriatric care. A total of six registered nurses who had experienced taking care of elderly patients voluntarily participated as respondents of this study. A two-part instrument developed by the researchers was made to elicit necessary data and information. The first part comprised of the robotfoto intended to establish the baseline characteristics of nurses under study. The second part consisted of a semistructured individual in-depth interview using “aide memoire” to probe into the motivation and attitudes of the nurse respondents. Field texts were phenomenologically reduced via repertory grid. Two distinct and interesting themes, namely Geriatric Service Motivation Typology and the Yin-Yang of Geriatric Attitudes emerged. The first theme includes the Single Loop and Double Loop type of motivation The former involves a transactional and unidirectional process, while the latter constitutes a two-way relational and transformational process. The second theme consists of a harmonious combination of the two sides of the nurses' attitudes toward geriatric care. Through this study, the human side of nursing is seen and captured, thus increasing the awareness and knowledge of nurses, improving provision of optimum geriatric care, and inspiring nurses to pursue geriatric nursing with a yearning to serve the elderly with and from the heart.     

Resilience Among Children Exposed to Domestic Violence: The Role of Risk and Protective Factors

Individual and family characteristics that predict resilience among children exposed to domestic violence (DV) were examined. Mother–child dyads ( n  =   190) were assessed when the children were 2, 3, and 4 years of age. DV-exposed children were 3.7 times more likely than nonexposed children to develop internalizing or externalizing problems. However, 54% of DV-exposed children maintained positive adaptation and were characterized by easy temperament (odds ratio [OR] = .39, d  = .52) and nondepressed mothers (OR = 1.14, d  = .07), as compared to their nonresilient counterparts. Chronic DV was associated with maternal depression, difficult child temperament, and internalizing or externalizing symptoms. Results underscore heterogeneous outcomes among DV-exposed children and the influence of individual and family characteristics on children's adaptation.     

Football practice with youth players in the “Footbonaut”

In today’s leading football training centres, state-of-the-art performance diagnostic systems such as the “Footbonaut” allow controlled and standardized assessments of physical and mental components of agility, e.g. speed of action and ball control, that are considered to be decisive for talent identification and development. However, effects of induced physical and mental strain on performing football-specific practice patterns remain to be elucidated, particularly in youth players, and, thus, characterize the purpose of this study. 33 randomly assigned competitive football players (U14 to U16) performed a standardized Footbonaut practice pattern (i.e. 20 balls randomly drawn at 50?km/h each), prior to and immediately after either mentally demanding tasks (MDT; n?=?11; continuous Vienna Test System’s Stroop task and determination test), physically demanding tasks (PDT; n?=?11; consisted of 4?×?4?min of football-specific high-intensity intervals with 3?min of active recovery in between) or a control condition (CON; n?=?11). Continuous heart rates (HR) as well as self-perceptions of fatigue were assessed. Main findings revealed performances for speed of action (p?=?0.44; f?=?0.01) and ball control (p?=?0.15; f?=?0.03) that were not modulated in the face of induced physical and mental strain as indicated by increased HR following PDT (p?<?0.001; d?>?0.8), or in the face of increased self-perceptions of fatigue following PDT and MDT (both p?<?0.001; both d?>?0.8) compared to CON. This is in line with a suggested talent factor and previous reports on motivational trade-off aspects in youth players. However, the present study’s short-timed practice patterns make it difficult to reliably compare a measuring sensitivity to complex football-specific movement behavioural and technical proficiencies with respect to mental and physical strain of longer-lasting football games and, thus, need further investigation in favour of improving talent identification and development using the Footbonaut.     

Many-Level Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling: An Efficient Evaluation Strategy

Structural equation models are increasingly used for clustered or multilevel data in cases where mixed regression is too inflexible. However, when there are many levels of nesting, these models can become difficult to estimate. We introduce a novel evaluation strategy, Rampart, that applies an orthogonal rotation to the parts of a model that conform to commonly met requirements. This rotation dramatically simplifies fit evaluation in a way that becomes more potent as the size of the data set increases. We validate and evaluate the implementation using a 3-level latent regression simulation study. Then we analyze data from a statewide child behavioral health measure administered by the Oklahoma Department of Human Services. We demonstrate the efficiency of Rampart compared to other similar software using a latent factor model with a 5-level decomposition of latent variance. Rampart is implemented in OpenMx, a free and open source software package.     

Sharing Experiences Together: Within- and Across-Sector Collaboration among Public Preschool Educators

ABSTRACT

Research Findings: The current study explored the patterns of collaboration among early childhood educators in order to understand the extent to which collaborations exist for practitioners, either formally or informally, within and across public preschool, Head Start, and child care sectors in a community and the extent to which work environment factors support or hinder such collaborations. Work environment factors, including paid professional development time, agency in decision-making and educator salaries were examined as contributors to collaboration for lead and assistant teachers. This study used reports from 68 lead teachers, assistant teachers, and other early childhood educators working in public preschool programs. The current study found that collaboration occurs frequently and informally within sites and sectors; however, across-sector collaboration occurs less frequently and more formally. Teachers’ agency in decision-making and ability to cover basic living expenses were related to across-sector collaboration among teachers. Practice or Policy: This study has implications for educator professional development, with a specific focus on administrative strategies and policies facilitative of collaboration within sites and sectors as well as across sectors.     

A bottlenose dolphin discriminates visual stimuli differing in numerosity

A bottlenose dolphin was trained to discriminate two simultaneously presented stimuli differing in numerosity (defined by the number of constituent elements). After responding correctly to stimuli consisting of three-dimensional objects, the dolphin transferred to two-dimensional stimuli. Initially, a variety of stimulus parameters covaried with the numerosity feature. By systematically controlling for these stimulus parameters, it was demonstrated that some of these attributes, such as element configuration and overall brightness, affected the animal’s discrimination performance. However, after all the confounding parameters were under control, the dolphin was able to discriminate the stimuli exclusively on the basis of the numerosity feature. The animal then achieved a successful transfer to novel numerosities, both intervening numerosities and numerosities outside the former range. These findings provide substantial evidence that the dolphin could base his behavior on the numerosity of a set independently of its other attributes and that he represented ordinal relations among numerosities.     

Investigating Bidirectional Links Between the Quality of Teacher–Child Relationships and Children’s Interest and Pre-Academic Skills in Literacy and Math

This study investigated bidirectional links between the quality of teacher–child relationships and children’s interest and pre-academic skills in literacy and math. Furthermore, differences in the patterns of bidirectionality between boys and girls were explored. Participants were 461 Finnish kindergarteners (6-year-olds) and their teachers (n = 48). Teachers reported their closeness and conflict with each child twice throughout the kindergarten year. Children rated their interest in literacy and math, and were tested on their pre-academic skills. Cross-lagged path models indicated that teacher-perceived conflict predicted lower interest and pre-academic skills in both literacy and math. Results were similar for boys and girls. Implications for reducing conflictual patterns of relationships, together with promoting other factors, are discussed.