Food (in)security communication: a Journal of Applied Communication Research forum addressing current challenges and future possibilities

ABSTRACT

This forum brings together food, (in)security, and communication. The authors participating in this forum center communication as both process and tool for understanding, mitigating, and making meaning of food (in)security. The nine authors together discuss the role of communication in food (in)security, the central challenges for scholars and practitioners working on food (in)security, and the creative possibilities and impacts influencing the future of food (in)security. The forum produces a call for applied scholars to re-imagine communication frameworks in order to make meaningful differences in their communities.     

Spelling of Inflected Verb Morphology in Children with Spelling Deficits

Children with spelling deficits demonstrate significant difficulty using inflectional morphology in their writing. This study investigated whether phonological deficits account for these pronounced difficulties or if they are more accurately explained by limitations in morphological or orthographic awareness. Twenty–six 11—13–year–old children with spelling deficits, 31 younger spelling–level–matched children, and 31 age–matched children were asked to spell a series of verbs with past tense and progressive markers in dictated sentences and in list form. Performance on spelling tasks was compared to performance on phonological, morphological, and orthographic awareness tasks. Results suggest that children with spelling deficits have significant difficulty including inflections as well as spelling inflections and base words. Difficulty was most pronounced in a sentence context. Ability to spell inflectional forms was related to variation in morphological awareness in children with spelling deficits and to variation in orthographic awareness in spelling–level–matched children.     

Build It and They Will Come? Patron Engagement Via Twitter at Historically Black College and University Libraries

This study is a social media analysis on the use of Twitter at Historically Black Colleges and University (HBCU) libraries. While information science researchers have begun examining how libraries use social media, the vast majority of these studies are situated at large flagship research-intensive universities. Additionally, there currently exist deficiencies in research on social media deployment at HBCU libraries. We leverage, the IBM Watson's analytic engine, to systemically examine over 23,000, tweets over an eighteen-month period, around a set of objective measures including propagation of retweets and sentiment to assess follower engagement. The analysis found little evidence of follower engagement with library generated content. However, we observed a substantial volume of library tweets coalesced around institutional boosterism, rather than library related phenomena. This non-library related content represented the vast majority of retweets, but paradoxically was propagated by non-followers. Additionally, tweets relating to institutional boosterism produced the most positive sentiment within the data.     

The Suasory Force of Sticky Messages: An Application to the Application of Sunscreen

Stickiness refers to the set of persuasive message properties: simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and stories (SUCCES). Heath and Heath (2007) argue that a sticky message is expected to be more memorable and hence more persuasive than a non-sticky message. A 2 (sticky v. non-sticky message) x 3 (pretest v. posttest v. delayed test) longitudinal experiment is employed to examine the persuasiveness of sticky messages on applying sunscreen. Results of a mixed model analysis of variance show that the sticky message produces attitudes and behaviors more favorable to the message recommendation than the non-sticky message. Specifically, a time × message induction non-additive effect was found, which sustained only in the sticky message condition across time. Despite this interesting effect, its explanation remains elusive.     

Unconscious and unnoticed professional practice within an outstanding school for children and young people with complex learning difficulties and disabilities

This article describes a three‐year project undertaken at Pear Tree School for children and young people with severe and multiple and profound learning difficulties. Lesley Sullivan, the school's head teacher, believed that much of the value within the work of this outstanding school went unidentified by existing approaches to planning, monitoring and evaluation. Richard Crombie, educational psychologist, was engaged to work on the project. Also involved were Kate Walker and Rebecca Warnock, deputy head teachers, as well as the whole staff, children and some parents. The project takes as its starting point that essential, but very often unnoticed and unconscious, professional practice is rooted in implicit processes learnt experientially. We set ourselves the task of finding meaningful frameworks for identifying and developing that practice. This meant close observation within and outside school coupled with feeding back to staff, and their subsequent engagement with and use of explanatory frameworks.     

Biomechanical characteristics of adults walking forward and backward in water at different stride frequencies

The aim of this study was to examine spatiotemporal characteristics and joint angles during forward and backward walking in water at low and high stride frequency. Eight healthy adults (22.1 ± 1.1 years) walked forward and backward underwater at low (50 pulses) and high frequency (80 pulses) at the xiphoid process level with arms crossed at the chest. The main differences observed were that the participants presented a greater speed (0.58 vs. 0.85 m/s) and more asymmetry of the step length (1.24 vs. 1.48) at high frequency whilst the stride and step length (0.84 vs. 0.7 m and 0.43 vs. 0.35 m, respectively) were lower compared to low frequency (P < 0.05). Support phase duration was higher at forward walking than backward walking (61.2 vs. 59.0%). At initial contact, we showed that during forward walking, the ankle and hip presented more flexion than during backward walking (ankle: 84.0 vs. 91.8º and hip: 22.8 vs. 8.0º; P < 0.001). At final stance, the knee and hip were more flexed at low frequency than at high frequency (knee: 150.0 vs. 157.0º and hip: ?12.2 vs. –14.5º; P < 0.001). The knee angle showed more flexion at forward walking (134.0º) than backward walking (173.1º) (P < 0.001). In conclusion, these results show how forward and backward walking in water at different frequencies differ and contribute to a better understanding of this activity in training and rehabilitation.     

The Nature–Nurture Question: Teachers’ perceptions of how genes and the environment influence educationally relevant behaviour

Despite a substantial body of research suggesting genetic influence on educationally relevant behavioural traits, it is not clear how the nature–nurture question is perceived by teachers. In order to answer this question, we surveyed 667 UK primary school teachers, and for comparison also surveyed 1,340 parents about their perceptions of genetic and environmental influence on personality, intelligence, behaviour problems, learning difficulties, and mental illness. For these five domains of behaviour, the percentages of teachers who reported that genetics were at least as important as environment were .87, .94, .43, .94, and .91, respectively. Results for parents were similar (.92, .93, .54, .86, and .89). We also found that 80% of teachers reported no coverage of genetics during teacher training.     

An Empirical Investigation Demonstrating the Multidimensional DIF Paradigm: A Cognitive Explanation for DIF

Differential Item Functioning (DIF) is traditionally used to identify different item performance patterns between intact groups, most commonly involving race or sex comparisons. This study advocates expanding the utility of DIF as a step in construct validation. Rather than grouping examinees based on cultural differences, the reference and focal groups are chosen from two extremes along a distinct cognitive dimension that is hypothesized to supplement the dominant latent trait being measured. Specifically, this study investigates DIF between proficient and non-proficient fourth- and seventh-grade writers on open-ended mathematics test items that require students to communicate about mathematics. It is suggested that the occurrence of DIF in this situation actually enhances, rather than detracts from, the construct validity of the test because, according to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), mathematical communication is an important component of mathematical ability, the dominant construct being assessed. However, the presence of DIF influences the validity of inferences that can be made from test scores and suggests that two scores should be reported, one for general mathematical ability and one for mathematical communication. The fact that currently only one test score is reported, a simple composite of scores on multiple-choice and open-ended items, may lead to incorrect decisions being made about examinees.