AIDS PREVENTION: IMPROVING NURSES' COMPLIANCE WITH GLOVE WEARING THROUGH PERFORMANCE FEEDBACK

A performance feedback procedure was used to increase glove wearing by nurses in a hospital emergency room in situations in which contact with body fluids was highly likely. Infection-control nurses provided biweekly performance feedback to staff nurses on an individual private basis to inform them of the percentage of contact opportunities in which they wore gloves. Observations made prior to (baseline) and during feedback in a multiple baseline design across 4 subjects indicated that substantial increases in glove wearing in target situations occurred after implementation of the feedback program and that increases occurred across most of the specific situations in which glove wearing was advised. Percentage increases in glove wearing ranged from 22% to 49% across subjects. The results are discussed in terms of prevention of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) by use of universal precautions.     

Use of didactic training and feedback to improve quality and acceptability of progress notes written by direct-care staff on a psychiatric inpatient unit

Writing progress notes represent a critical activity of practicing clinicians in a variety of settings. They provide a way for medical practitioners, insurance companies, and others to communicate in a timely fashion regarding ongoing clinical care. Previous research showed that intervention components like didactic training, using note templates, and feedback improved the quality of progress notes. At least two questions remain despite several studies already addressing progress note writing. First, previous research most often used multiple intervention components to improve progress notes. Thus, the relative impact of two common components of interventions, such as didactic training and feedback, is unclear. Second, previous research has not evaluated the acceptability of improved progress notes for the practitioners that actually utilize them. Thus, the purpose of the current study evaluated the components of didactic training and feedback on improved progress note writing for four direct staff employed by a psychiatric inpatient unit. A second purpose of this study was to evaluate the acceptability of the training procedures by both (a) the direct-care staff participating in this study and (b) four members of the psychiatric treatment team that used direct-care staff progress notes to inform their clinical care. Results showed that feedback was necessary to improve the accuracy of progress notes for three of four participants. The direct-care staff reported the training procedures as acceptable and the treatment team noted improvements in the quality of the progress notes after intervention. These data will be discussed in terms of ways to arrange effective training programs to improve direct-care staff's progress notes.     

Emergent control for play responses following instructive feedback for children with autism spectrum disorder

Play provides children learning opportunities in the natural environment to acquire communication skills. While working to establish skills that may lead to additional leisure and social opportunities of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), procedures need to be both effective and efficient. One way to increase efficiency of teaching is through the use of instructive feedback (IF). Therefore, the purpose of the current study is to systematically replicate and extend previous research by examining if play behaviors emerge when using IF to teach conceptually related primary (i.e., tacts) and secondary targets (i.e., play skills). The results of the present study extend previous research by demonstrating the effectiveness of teaching tacts to individuals with ASD, and that using IF during tact training can help promote the acquisition of play skills.     

Within-person association of volitional factors and physical activity: Insights from an ecological momentary assessment study

ObjectiveCurrent health behavior models of physical activity (PA) suggest that not all PA intentions are translated into actual PA behavior, resulting in a significant intention-behavior gap (IBG) of almost 50%. These models further suggest that higher self-efficacy and specific planning can aid in decreasing this gap. However, as most evidence stems from between-person (trait level), questionnaire-based research, it is unclear how large short-term IBGs are, how self-efficacy and planning covary within-persons across time and whether they similarly predict smaller IBGs. It is likely that day-to-day changes in circumstances and barriers affect these variables thus the applicability of theoretical models is uncertain. Here, within-person prospective analyses of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) data can provide insights.Methods35 healthy participants (aged 23–67) completed four EMA-based questionnaires every day for three weeks. Each prompt assessed PA (retrospectively, “since the last EMA prompt”); PA intentions, planning specificity, self-efficacy, and intrinsic motivation (prospectively, “until the next EMA prompt”) and momentary affect. Generalized logistic mixed-effect modeling was used to test predictors of PA.ResultsAcross the 2341 answered EMA prompts, PA intentions were not enacted in 25% of the episodes (IBG). In episodes with given intentions, PA likelihood increased with higher levels of self-efficacy, planning specificity, and intrinsic motivation. The latter two also positively predicted PA duration and intensity.ConclusionsShort-term intention behavior gaps seem to be smaller than what is known from more long-term studies, most likely as individuals can anticipate the actual circumstances of PA. Further, current health behavior models show validity in explaining within-person dynamics in IBGs across time. Knowing the relevance of planning specificity, self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation for day-to-day variations in PA enactment can inform respective real-time mHealth interventions for facilitating PA.     

The Relationship Between Client Emotional Expressions, Therapist Interventions, and the Working Alliance: An Exploration of Eight Emotional Expression Events

The relationship between client emotional expression and therapist interventions was studied in two working alliance conditions. An events-focused methodology was used to examine a total of 8 events taken from a variety of therapeutic orientations. Results indicated that, in the presence of a good client–therapist relationship, therapists showed higher levels of empathy and effectively focused on the immediately expressed feelings; in turn, their clients were engaged in exploration of feelings. In poor-relationship dyads, clients expressed negative feelings toward the therapists. Interventions rated as effective by clinical judges were characterized by accurate therapist understanding of clients' emotional expressions and working with strains in the therapeutic relationship. Ineffective interventions were associated with inaccurate assessments of clients' emotional states. Intensive analysis of these sessions led to three distinct models of in-session emotional expression events. Theoretical and practical implications of these models will be discussed.     

Automatic grading and hinting in open-ended text questions

Open-ended text questions provide better assessment of learner’s knowledge, but analysing answers for this kind of questions, checking their correctness, and generating of detailed formative feedback about errors for the learner are more difficult and complex tasks than for closed-ended questions like multiple-choice.The analysis of answers for open-ended questions can be performed on different levels. Analysis on character level allows to find errors in characters’ placement inside a word or a token; it is typically used to detect and correct typos, allowing to differ typos from actual errors in the learner’s answer. The word-level or token-level analysis allows finding misplaced, extraneous, or missing words in the sentence. The semantic-level analysis is used to capture formally the meaning of the learner’s answer and compare it with the meaning of the correct answer that can be provided in a natural or formal language. Some systems and approaches use analysis on several levels.The variability of the answers for open-ended questions significantly increases the complexity of the error search and formative feedback generation tasks. Different types of patterns including regular expressions and their use in questions with patterned answers are discussed. The types of formative feedback and modern approaches and their capabilities to generate feedback on different levels are discussed too.Statistical approaches or loosely defined template rules are inclined to false-positive grading. They are generally lowering the workload of creating questions, but provide low feedback. Approaches based on strictly-defined sets of correct answers perform better in providing hinting and answer-until-correct feedback. They are characterised by a higher workload of creating questions because of the need to account for every possible correct answer by the teacher and fewer types of detected errors.The optimal choice for creating automatised e-learning courses are template-based open-ended question systems like OntoPeFeGe, Preg, METEOR, and CorrectWriting which allows answer-until-correct feedback and are able to find and report various types of errors. This approach requires more time to create questions, but less time to manage the learning process in the courses once they are run.     

La cross-évaluation : une approche d’évaluation et de développement des processus de travail inter-équipes

Organizational agility has become an increasing focus for companies and has led to the emergence of new developmental methods. This article presents the cross-evaluation as an approach to evaluating and developing inter-team interface efficacity. Though 360 degrees feedback collective processes are being evaluated, and during reflexive workshops they decide what improvements to make in their team functioning. Based on a literature review and more specifically on the theories of social identity and groupthink this article describes the scientific bases of the cross-evaluation method and the biases that can be involved and how to reduce them. It suggests new avenues of research and practical suggestions for practitioners about an inter-team development method.     

Effects of textual prompts and feedback on social niceties of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder in a simulated workplace

Previous research demonstrates the efficacy of behavioral skills training with a textual prompt to establish greetings and conversational skills. This study examined the efficacy of a brief intervention of textual prompts with performance feedback for increasing social niceties of adolescents and young adults with autism spectrum disorder in a simulated workplace. Target social niceties included “Do you have a minute?” when a participant initiated an interaction and “Thank you for your time” when a participant ended the interaction. Results revealed this intervention was effective for 7 of 9 participants. This study expands upon previous studies by showing the efficacy of a resource-efficient training on acquisition and generalization of social niceties by people with autism spectrum disorder.