Relationships between peer interactive play and social competence in at‐risk preschool children

Relationships between peer interactive play and social competence in a sample of preschool children (N = 85) considered at risk for academic difficulties were examined. Ratings of peer interactive play and social emotional development were collected from parents and teachers on the Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale and Vineland Social‐Emotional Early Childhood Scale. Multivariate techniques revealed significant correlations between parent and teacher ratings on the measures. Results are discussed within the context of conducting multifaceted, ecological assessments of preschool children. Implications for school psychologists are noted with regard to the important associations between peer interactive play and social–emotional development. The psychometric integrity of the PIPPS is further validated and extended beyond the initial standardization sample to include a sample of primarily Caucasian children living in a more rural area. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 41: 173–189, 2004.     

Journal usage in NHS hospitals: a comparison report of total usage at an acute NHS Trust and a specialist NHS Trust in the North West of England

BACKGROUND: Health care libraries spend a large amount of their non-pay budgets on the purchase of scientific, technical and medical journals. In a typical hospital library in the National Health Service (NHS) North West Strategic Health Authority (SHA), this can represent between 80 and 90% of the collection development budget. METHODS AND RESULTS: Data were collected from 1 December 2005 to 30 November 2006 using COUNTER-generated usage statistics obtained from publishers' administration tools. Between the two trusts included in the study, 93 376 full-text article downloads were recorded; of these, 15 952 or 17.1% articles were downloaded from national core content journals via Proquest. Photocopies made by users for their own use were recorded whenever this data were available. CONCLUSIONS: NHS staff at the sites included in this study recorded a high volume of journal usage. There was a marked difference in usage patterns between the acute and specialist trusts in the study. The journals provided by national core content represented a much higher proportion of total usage at the acute trust (29.9%) compared with the specialist cancer trust (4.5%). This study supports the view that the local purchasing of journal titles is an important component of the overall journal-based information provision to NHS staff.     

Knowledge is power: Issues of measuring training and performance in cycling

ABSTRACT

Mobile power meters provide a valid means of measuring cyclists’ power output in the field. These field measurements can be performed with very good accuracy and reliability making the power meter a useful tool for monitoring and evaluating training and race demands. This review presents power meter data from a Grand Tour cyclist’s training and racing and explores the inherent complications created by its stochastic nature. Simple summary methods cannot reflect a session’s variable distribution of power output or indicate its likely metabolic stress. Binning power output data, into training zones for example, provides information on the detail but not the length of efforts within a session. An alternative approach is to track changes in cyclists’ modelled training and racing performances. Both critical power and record power profiles have been used for monitoring training-induced changes in this manner. Due to the inadequacy of current methods, the review highlights the need for new methods to be established which quantify the effects of training loads and models their implications for performance.     

DEVELOPMENTAL TASKS OF ADULTHOOD: IMPLICATIONS FOR COUNSELING COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS

Although debate continues regarding the degree of trauma associated with the transitions into and through adulthood, there is widespread agreement that these developmental shifts represent a complex period as individuals seek to develop a sense of identity distinct from their families of origin. Society appears to further complicate these tasks with its lack of clearly defined indices of adulthood and its apparent lack of support for individuals in transition. This article reviews major developmental tasks of adults during early adulthood along with issues associated with transition into middle and later adulthood and provides suggestions for community college counselors working with these individuals.     

Emerging Adults' Use of Relational Maintenance Behaviors with Their Parents

This study represents a preliminary investigation into emerging adults' (i.e., ages 18–25 years) use of relational maintenance behaviors with their parents and whether these behaviors are related to perceived commitment, trust, and control mutuality. Participants were 273 undergraduate students who completed a series of instruments in reference to their general interactions with one parent. Results indicated that emerging adults use the networks, assurances, positivity, tasks, conflict management, and advice relational maintenance behaviors with their parents, and their use of relational maintenance behaviors is related directly to perceived commitment, trust, and control mutuality.     

Designing a decision-support system for enrollment management

Over the next two decades, effective enrollment management is going to be critical to the future of tuition/enrollment-dependent colleges and universities, especially in states where the number of high-school graduates is expected to decline by 30–40% (WICHE, 1984). This paper outlines the conceptual framework, design, and implementation plan for building a decision-support system (DSS) for enrollment management at the college level in a private, comprehensive university. It begins with a brief overview of the DSS as a concept, the computer-hardware environment, and the fourth-generation software tools used to implement the system (Briggs, 1982; Goetz, 1982; Moore and Greenwood, 1984). Research designs and application-development strategies are reviewed to illustrate the potential of the DSS approach to enrollment management.Paper presented at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Forum of the Association for Institutional Research, Portland, April 28–May 1, 1985.     

Event duration memory: The effects of delay-interval illumination and instructional cuing

The effect of interference treatments on pigeons’ working memory for event duration was investigated, using a successive matching-to-sample procedure. In three experiments, birds were trained to match different keylight durations (2 or 6 sec) to different comparison colors (red or green) following delays of 0 to 12 sec. The interfering effect of delay-interval illumination and illumination change was assessed in Experiments 1 and 2. It was found that the absolute levels of houselight illumination influenced delayed matching accuracy. Birds trained with houselight illumination showed larger decrements in matching accuracy with increasing delays than did birds trained with darkened delay intervals. In addition, increases in delay-interval illumination relative to baseline produced greater interference with delayed matching accuracy than did decreases in houselight illumination relative to baseline. In Experiment 3, the effect of interpolated instructional cues to remember or forget was examined. As in other directed forgetting experiments employing conventional modality characteristics as the samples to be remembered, it was found that instructional cues to forget, presented during the delay interval, reduced matching accuracy compared to instructional cues to remember. It was concluded that these findings support models of temporal memory that assume temporal information is coded into categorical information onto some nontime dimension over models that assume temporal information is remembered amodally as specific time durations.     

Developing and Piloting a Baselining Tool for Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship (ESDGC) in Welsh Higher Education

Mainstreaming Education for Sustainable Development in higher education is vital if graduates are to possess the abilities, skills, and knowledge needed to tackle the sustainability issues of the future. In this article we explain the development and piloting of a baselining tool, the Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship Development Framework, developed with support from the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales. We draw comparisons with the Sustainability, Tracking, Assessment and Rating System Program, developed by the North American Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. The resulting framework offers consistency with existing Welsh Government strategic documentation, builds on increasing momentum, and has relevance across the higher education sector globally.