Assessing the National Library of Medicine's Informationist Awards.

Objective: To understand the experience of the informationist recipients of NLM-funded Administrative Supplements for Informationist Services and gather evidence for their impact on NIH-funded biomedical research.

Methods: A mixed methods approach consisting of a survey of principal investigators and a focus group of informationists.

Results: Informationists appeared to have a positive impact on their team's research, especially in the areas of data storage, data management planning, data organization, and literature searching.

Internet delivered behavioral obesity treatment.

Objectives: To evaluate the efficacy of an Internet behavioral weight loss program; and determine if adding periodic in-person sessions to an Internet intervention improves outcomes.

Methods: 481 healthy overweight adults (28% minority) were randomized to one of 3 delivery methods of a behavioral weight loss program with weekly meetings: Internet (n=161), InPerson (n=158), or Hybrid (Internet+InPerson, n=162). Outcome variables were weight at baseline and 6 months and percent of subjects achieving a 5 and 7% weight loss.

Predictors of assistive technology use: the importance of personal and psychosocial factors.

Objective: To validate an assistive technology (AT) baseline and outcomes measure and to quantify the measure's value in determining the best match of consumer and AT considering consumer ratings of their subjective quality of life, mood, support from others, motivation for AT use, program/therapist reliance, and self-determination/self-esteem.

Design: Prospective multi-cohort study.

Setting: Vocational rehabilitation offices and community.

Consumer health information on the Web: trends, issues, and strategies.

Nurses are at the forefront of the current trends in patient information and choice in medical care. The trends in health information access and quality, and decision support strategies are reviewed. Valuable online resources for nurses to share with their patients and families will be presented.

Families of young technology-dependent children and the social worker.

Health care social workers are increasingly providing services to young children who are technology-dependent through participation on individualized family service plan (IFSP) teams, as well as in clinical settings. Such participation suggests that new models for assessing the impact of medical technologies on family functioning will, of necessity, also begin to emerge. Assessment implications from a family systems perspective are presented that may be used to guide the development of future assessment strategies for health care social workers.

Tentative findings of a study of the technology needs and use patterns of persons with mental retardation.

An examination of the technology use patterns and needs of 680 persons with mental retardation was conducted as part of a grant application process in response to P. L. 100-407, the Technology-Related Assistance for Individuals with Disabilities Act of 1988.

Use of microcomputers by young children with severe disabilities: a brief review of studies and their implications.

Microcomputers increasingly are being employed with young children having disabilities, although little research has been conducted. A review of available research suggests a variety of questions must be addressed by professionals in rehabilitation to optimize potential applications of this new technology with these children.

Young children with respiratory problems and assistive technology needs: a nursing care perspective.

An examination was conducted of the technology needs of 33 children with respiratory problems ages 0-5 years as part of a larger survey of persons with disabilities. Unmet technology needs were reported for these children in all areas of life functioning. Children's needs for assistive technology exceeded their usage of equipment and devices in two thirds of the identified areas of functioning.

An ecobehavioral examination of a simple strategy for increasing mealtime language in residential facilities.

Typically in large residential facilities for retarded person, meals are served in an institutional style that does not appear to encourage appropriate peer interactions. An ecological program alternative is serving meals in a family style. The present study was designed to examine both the feasibility of serving family style meals and the effects of family style meal service on mealtime language.

Teaching number-word equivalences: a study of transfer.

The study was designed to determine whether retarded adolescents and nonretarded preschool children would generalize to other tasks involving printed number names if they were taught the number names in an auditory-receptive task. Four nonretarded preschool children and three retarded children participated. All children could count and use spoken and printed numerals.

Establishing words and objects as functionally equivalent through manual sign training.

This study was designed to determine if sign-object and sign-word training would lead to acquisition of word-object associations and to test the proposal that if two stimuli control the same response, training a new response to one of the stimuli would increase the probability of the second stimulus also controlling that response. The participants were six institutionalized retarded males, each having some receptive and productive speech as well as imitative motor and verbal skills. Nonsense words, signs, and objects were used as the stimuli in this study.