Future Sex Educator Perceptions of Rural Versus Urban Instruction: A Case for Community-Centered Sexual Health Education

Instructors of sexual health courses in rural areas face unique challenges as they are often forced to use school-based prevention curricula field-tested in urban areas. Research has yet to consider what future sex educators’ regional expectations are for their profession and how those expectations might have an impact on the classroom. Drawing from interviews with 26 sex-educators-in-training, we find that future educators tended to expect that rural communities would be less diverse, more conservative, and less informed about sexual health matters, even though research demonstrates that today's rural communities inconsistently align with those perceptions.     

Ethics in health sciences librarianship

Against a background of discussion about drafting of an ethical code for librarians and a review of articles confronting ethical issues in librarianship, the authors surveyed the 150 institutional members of the Health Science Librarians of Illinois (HSLI) regarding their perceptions of ethical concerns. Among the issues addressed in the survey are library organization, personnel policies, and professional competency, along with the traditional concerns of professional versus personal values, privacy and confidentiality, access to materials, and materials selection criteria in a health sciences context. Based on a 60% response rate, survey results indicate widespread agreement on some issues and a conspicuous lack of consensus on others. Further research is suggested in order to assess the need for a separate ethical code for health sciences librarians.     

Valuing the Arts: A Contingent Valuation Approach

Government funding of the arts has received considerable attention in the United States in recent years. Efforts to cut funding to the National Endowment for the Arts and declining budgets for state arts agencies have raised questions about how much individuals value the arts. This paper applies the contingent valuation method to assess this value, using surveys of random households and of arts patrons. Our analysis estimated a mean willingness to pay (WTP) among all Kentucky households from $6 to$27, depending on the estimation technique used and on whether the scenario discussed is to increase arts performances by 25 per cent, or to avoid a 25per cent or 50 per cent decrease in the number of performances. Among arts patron households, the mean WTP ranges from $61 to $132.Consumer demand for arts performances in large part follows a predictable pattern. The likelihood of respondents agreeing to make the donation that is requested rises as the size of the donation decreases. The likelihood is higher to avoid a 50 per cent decline in performances than to avoid a 25 percent decline in performances. The mean WTP rises with income, and arts patron households have a much higher WTP than all households. WTP rises with on-site use factors such as frequency of attendance. The WTP also rises for arts patrons households with off-site use such as watching arts events on television or reading about the arts in newspapers and magazines.