History, Community Milieu, and Christian-Muslim Differentials in Contraceptive Use in Sub-Saharan Africa

In the globalization discourse, Christianity and Islam are often construed as representing two traditions that are conflicted and incompatible. This study engages the "clash of civilizations" discourse by examining Muslim-Christian differentials in the use of modern contraception in Nigeria, where Christians have a much higher contraceptive prevalence, and Tanzania, where Muslims are somewhat more likely to use contraception. Employing data from six nationally representative surveys conducted in the two countries between 1990 and 2004 and multilevel logistic regression, we find that the effects of religion remain strong but operate largely through the community religious milieu. Contraceptive use tends to be highest in religiously mixed areas, but the "optimal" religious makeup differs between the two nations, reflecting the historically shaped configurations of their religious expressions and politics.     

HOME ACCESS MODIFICATIONS: EFFECTS ON COMMUNITY VISITS BY PEOPLE WITH PHYSICAL DISABILITIES

We examined the effects of access modifications to home entrances of people with physical disabilities on their reported community outings. An interrupted time-series design was used, in which the introduction of ramps was staggered across the homes of 6 people with moderate to severe mobility impairments. Four participants reported increases in weekly outings following installation of ramps at their entrances, and 2 reported a small decrease. These findings suggest that reducing the response requirements of access to and from the residence of people with mobility impairments may increase community visits, but may be insufficient given other environmental barriers in the community.     

Training public-speaking behavior: an experimental analysis and social validation

The effect of an instructional package on public-speaking behaviors was analyzed in two experiments. The instructional package was designed to teach public-speaking trainees to look at the audience, make gestures, and perform a number of speaking behaviors. The results of Experiment I, with a university student serving as the trainee, showed that the percentage of each category of public-speaking target behavior increased only after the instructional package was introduced for that category. The results of Experiment 2, with three low-income paraprofessional staff members of a neighborhood service center serving as trainees, showed that the percentage of target behaviors increased after the instructional package was introduced for the respective trainee. Audience ratings of public-speaking performance were correlated with direct observations of target responses. All trainees showed marked improvements in audience ratings from pretraining to posttraining. This study demonstrated an effective procedure for training public-speaking behaviors.     

Effects of environmental design and police enforcement on violations of a handicapped parking ordinance.

This study presents two experiments that evaluate strategies to reduce violations of a handicapped parking ordinance. The first experiment compared effects of upright versus ground handicapped parking signs on percentage of intervals in which cars were parked illegally. Introducing upright signs produced an immediate reduction in the percentage of intervals of inappropriate use of parking spaces. The second experiment examined effects of a police enforcement program on percentage of intervals of inappropriate use of parking spaces and frequency of inappropriately parked cars. Results showed consistent reductions in percentage of intervals of inappropriate use and number of inappropriately parked cars compared with a control site where no enforcement program was introduced. Implications of the research data for law enforcement and public policy are discussed.     

Effects of a poverty-clients agenda on resource allocations by community decision makers

A coalition of human service agencies in one city used the Concerns Report Method of Basic Needs and Vital Services to obtain information on the concerns of their poverty clients. Results were disseminated to local decision makers of the United Way agency, city commission, and county commission during their annual budget deliberations. Two standard accounting methods were used to compare budget allocations to agencies serving low-income people before and after dissemination of the Concerns Report, to other items in the three budgets, and to allocations to similar agencies in a second city. Allocations to agencies serving those most in need in the experimental community grew 17% faster than the total budget, increased 3.96% in share of total budget, and gained 22% over other allocations following dissemination of the Concerns Report.     

TRAINING COUNSELING SKILLS: AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS AND SOCIAL VALIDATION

A community development perspective suggests the value of using local resources to solve local problems. Two low-income staff of a community service center served as nonprofessional counselors after receiving a training program consisting of written instructions, practice, and performance feedback. The effects of the 40-hour training program were positive for both counseling and problem-solving skills. There was also evidence of generalization of counseling performance across clients, problems, and time. In addition, expert judges' ratings of performance were obtained as a measure of social validity. These findings suggest that the training procedures are effective in enhancing the counseling and problem-solving skills of low-income nonprofessionals.     

On differentiation in applied behavior analysis

Distinct types of activity in the field of applied behavior analysis are noted and discussed. Four metaphorical types of activity are considered: prospecting, farming, building, and guiding. Prospecting consists of time-limited exploration of a variety of beaviors, populations, or settings. Farming consists of producing new behaviors in the same setting using independent variables provided by the researchers or normally available in the setting. Building consists of combining procedural elements to create new programs or systems or to rehabilitate aspects of existing programs. Guiding involves pointing out connections between the principles of human behavior and the problems, populations, settings, and procedures with which researchers are (or could be) working. Advantages of each sphere are noted, and benefits of this division of labor to the field as a whole are discussed.     

Larger IOR effects following forget than following remember instructions depend on exogenous attentional withdrawal and target localization

When words are onset in the visual periphery, inhibition of return (IOR) for a subsequent target is larger when those words receive an intervening forget instruction than when they receive a remember instruction Taylor (Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58A, 613-629, 2005). The present study manipulated the allocation of endogenous and exogenous attention to assess the source of the forget > remember IOR difference. We determined that the forget > remember IOR difference likely arises from the differential withdrawal of exogenous-rather than endogenous-attention. Furthermore, this forget > remember IOR difference occurs only when a spatially compatible localization response is required; it does not occur when a simple detection response or a perceptual discrimination is required. This suggests that the forget > remember difference in the magnitude of IOR is not due to differences in perceptual/attentional processing. Instead, an instruction to remember or forget biases spatial responses in accordance with whether a location has previously contained relevant or irrelevant information. We suggest that directed forgetting in an item-method paradigm is not accomplished by changes in attention; rather, the changes in attention are coincident with changes in memory and may serve to bias later responses away from a source of unreliable information.