Tagging and searching: Search retrieval effectiveness of folksonomies on the World Wide Web

Many Web sites have begun allowing users to submit items to a collection and tag them with keywords. The folksonomies built from these tags are an interesting topic that has seen little empirical research. This study compared the search information retrieval (IR) performance of folksonomies from social bookmarking Web sites against search engines and subject directories. Thirty-four participants created 103 queries for various information needs. Results from each IR system were collected and participants judged relevance. Folksonomy search results overlapped with those from the other systems, and documents found by both search engines and folksonomies were significantly more likely to be judged relevant than those returned by any single IR system type. The search engines in the study had the highest precision and recall, but the folksonomies fared surprisingly well. Del.icio.us was statistically indistinguishable from the directories in many cases. Overall the directories were more precise than the folksonomies but they had similar recall scores. Better query handling may enhance folksonomy IR performance further. The folksonomies studied were promising, and may be able to improve Web search performance.     

First‐Generation Undergraduate Students' Social Support,Depression, and Life Satisfaction

First‐generation undergraduate students face challenging cross‐socioeconomic cultural transitions into college life. The authors compared first‐ and non‐first‐generation undergraduate students’ social support, posttraumatic stress, depression symptoms, and life satisfaction. First‐generation participants reported less social support from family and friends, more single‐event traumatic stress, less life satisfaction, and marginally more depression symptomatology than non‐first‐generation participants, but significant generation–gender interactions showed first‐generation women doing worse and first‐generation men doing better than others.     

Response to Grace’s reflections on Allen and West’s paper

Since the 1970s, school effectiveness research has looked for process-variables filling the black box between mainly structural school features and cognitive outcomes in students. Two concepts came to the fore: school climate and school culture. Both concepts are currently used interchangeably, although it is open to debate whether both are actually the same thing. Because of the way culture and climate are defined and subsequently measured, we propose school culture is a better frame from which to study school effectiveness. This article goes through the premises of perceptual measurement usually overlooked in climate research, and we demonstrate empirically by means of very basic and simple methods and techniques that perceptual measurement and measurement based on assumptions are different approaches and might yield totally different results on an aggregated level. We conclude by demonstrating how culture can be probed and integrated in the models traditionally used in school effectiveness research in an advantageous and theoretically sound way.     

The role and the training of teacher-counsellors

The example of teachers not seeking counselling was used. Some reasons for this situation were given as well as one possible way to change it by providing early information and training during the students' regular studies. My hope is that if teachers have the necessary information, abilities and positive experiences, when they have problems, it should be easier for them to use counsellors than it is for other today.Teachers were used as an example of how one group could be encounraged to make use of counsellors. However, similar strategies could be used with other groups whose jobs involve high personal stress (for example social workers, medical doctors etc.). The example of teachers was also used to show how change can be introduced within a system. Here it might be useful to develop the ability to work with a counsellor during the regular education, so that it becomes part of their understanding of their professional role.     

Gender differences in the academic career

This study examines sources of satisfaction, indicators of stress, academic performance, and reward structure in the academic careers of male and female faculty at a major midwestern state university. Faculty pairs were selected from five academic divisions. A total of 58 matched pairs were identified. Of these, 63 faculty responded, yielding data for 23 matched pairs. Subjects were mailed the Academic Career Development Survey, consisting of 144 items. Results indicated that self-reported physical and mental health, and professional and personal life satisfaction were high for both males and females. Both males and females placed high importance on their career and on marriage/other intimate relationships; however, both reported high levels of dissatisfaction with these factors. Gender differences were found in both satisfaction and type of stress reported; no gender differences were found in composite teaching and research performance indices. Salary data, obtained for 42 matched pairs, indicated similar salary levels for men and women. Results were discussed with respect to prior research on gender differences and the academic career.     

Student achievement and differential reinforcement of incompatible behavior: Hand raising

Workbook reading achievement of five second-grade girls was assessed under two teacher-contact contingencies. Under one contingency, teacher contacts were made during on-task behavior. Under the other contingency, differential reinforcement of an incompatible behavior (DRI) was in effect, with teacher contacts contingent on students' hand-raising behavior. Both reading achievement and time on task were greater under the on-task contingency than under DRI for hand raising.     

New Counselor Educators’ Scholarly Productivity: Supportive and Discouraging Environments

Eighteen new counselor educators shared in‐depth reports of their efforts to establish an early record of scholarly productivity, critical to their success in academe. Analyses of their experiences using consensual qualitative research methods revealed components of both highly positive and highly discouraging program environments and their impact on participants’ research goals.     

Compensatory changes in physical activity and sedentary time in children and adolescents with cystic fibrosis

Physical activity (PA) is a key element in Cystic Fibrosis (CF) treatment strategies, yet little is known as to whether activity compensation occurs. This study examined whether PA and/or sedentary time on one day were temporally associated with time spent in these intensities the following day in youth with CF. Time spent sedentary and in different PA intensities were objectively-measured for seven consecutive days in 50 youth (22 boys; 12.0 ± 2.7 years); 25 with mild-to-moderate CF and 25 age- and sex-matched controls. Multilevel analyses (day and child) were conducted using generalised linear latent and mixed models. On any given day, every additional 10 minutes spent in sedentary time or moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) were associated with 1.9 (95%CI: ?3.6 to ?1.2) and 12.4 (95%CI: ?22.1 to ?2.9) minutes less sedentary time the following day, respectively. These temporal associations were also observed when split by group (3.1 vs. 1.9 minutes for healthy and CF, respectively). These findings indicate that youth do not compensate their PA, irrespective of disease status, between days, but may compensate their sedentary time between days. Experimental studies are warranted to fully elucidate whether compensatory responses to PA and sedentary time occur, which is fundamental for informing PA promotion strategies.