Publications by authors named "J A Shepperd"

Virtual technologies gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic for use in research, including research with children. As scholarship from the field of science, technology and society (STS) suggests, technologies are never neutral, but embedded with social values and, as such, used by people to navigate identities and relationships. Building on childhood studies research that has shown how children appropriate and use research tools, this article asks: How do child research participants use this virtual "window" into their homes and their lives? Using observations from a virtual and in-person study in the United States, we show how children used virtual technologies to manage relationships, filter what researchers saw of their lives, and navigate issues of privacy and self-disclosure.

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Objective: Caregivers' self-efficacy for managing their child's asthma appears to influence their success with managing their child's disease. We examined how caregiver self-efficacy operates in the context of multilevel social-environmental support factors to shape asthma outcomes.

Method: Caregivers of children (< 18 years old) with asthma completed surveys at baseline (T1) and 3 months later (T2).

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Background: Most relatives of women with ovarian cancer are unaware of their increased risk for cancer and their eligibility for genetic counseling. State cancer registries offer a platform to communicate about inherited risk to this population.

Methods: We conducted a two-arm randomized trial to test a theory-based communication intervention-Your Family Connects (YFC)-compared to the standard Georgia Cancer Registry (GCR) contact.

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Objective: Pediatric asthma management is challenging for parents and guardians (hereafter ). We examined (1) how caregivers mentally represent trigger and symptom management strategies, and (2) how those mental representations are associated with actual management behavior.

Methods: In an online survey,  = 431 caregivers of children with asthma rated 20 trigger management behaviors and 20 symptom management behaviors across 15 characteristics, and indicated how often they engaged in each behavior.

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Several studies suggest that "don't know" (DK) responses to risk perception items may represent meaningful expressions of uncertainty about disease risk. However, researchers are often discouraged from including a DK response option in survey items due to concerns about respondents overusing it to minimize cognitive effort-a phenomenon often referred to as . Our objective was to investigate whether patterns of DK responses to risk perception survey items were consistent with satisficing behavior.

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