Behavioural weight loss treatment preferences of college students with overweight and obesity.

The college environment increases risk of weight gain in young adults with overweight/obesity. Behavioural weight loss interventions are proven effective, however, young adults' adherence to such programs is poor. The purpose of the study was to determine weight loss treatment preferences of 2- and 4-year college students for the development of population-specific interventions.

LGBTQ Youth-Serving Community-Based Organizations: Who Participates and What Difference Does it Make?

LGBTQ youth are at greater risk for compromised health, yet large-scale health promotion programs for LGBTQ young people have been slow to develop. LGBTQ community-based organizations-which provide LGBTQ-focused support and services-have existed for decades, but have not been a focus of the LGBTQ youth health literature. The current study used a contemporary sample of LGBTQ youth (age 15-21; M = 18.

Static and Dynamic Balance in Adults Undergoing Lumbar Spine Surgery: Screening and Prediction of Postsurgical Outcomes.

Introduction: Balance and fall risk before and after lumbar surgery was assessed to determine whether balance at baseline predicts long-term postsurgical outcomes.

Methods: Forty-three patients in the United States and Israel performed the single-leg stance (SLS) test, four square step test (FSST), and 8-foot up-and-go (8FUG) test before and 2 to 4 months after lumbar spine surgery. They completed the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) and pain rating before and 12 months after lumbar surgery.

Statistical considerations for crowdsourced perceptual ratings of human speech productions.

Crowdsourcing has become a major tool for scholarly research since its introduction to the academic sphere in 2008. However, unlike in traditional laboratory settings, it is nearly impossible to control the conditions under which workers on crowdsourcing platforms complete tasks. In the study of communication disorders, crowdsourcing has provided a novel solution to the collection of perceptual ratings of human speech production.

A Meta-Analysis of Program Characteristics for Youth with Disruptive Behavior Problems: The Moderating Role of Program Format and Youth Gender.

There is high variability in efficacy for interventions for youth with disruptive behavior problems (DBP). Despite evidence of the unique correlates and critical consequences of girls' DBP, there is a dearth of research examining treatment efficacy for girls. This meta-analysis of 167 unique effect sizes from 29 studies (28,483 youth, 50% female; median age: 14) suggests that existing treatments have a medium positive effect on DBP (g = .

Health-related material needs and substance use among emergency department patients.

Emergency department (ED) visits related to substance use are common. ED patients also have high levels of health-related material needs (HRMNs), such as homelessness and food insecurity. However, little research has examined the intersection between ED patient HRMNs and substance use.

Feasibility of the Stroll Safe Outdoor Fall Prevention Program.

Objective: Although half of falls occur outdoors, existing prevention programs focus primarily on risk factors for indoor falls. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of the Stroll Safe outdoor fall prevention program and to obtain feedback to refine the program and research methods to plan a larger scale study.

Method: A quasi-experimental design (N = 24) was used.

Evaluating the relationship between binge drinking rates and a replicable measure of U.S. state alcohol policy environments.

Excessive alcohol consumption contributes significantly to premature mortality, injuries and morbidity, and a range of U.S. state policies have been shown to reduce these behaviors.

Establishing an international laboratory network for neglected tropical diseases: Understanding existing capacity in five WHO regions.

Limited laboratory capacity is a significant bottleneck in meeting global targets for the control and elimination of neglected tropical diseases (NTD). Laboratories are essential for providing clinical data and monitoring data about the status and changes in NTD prevalence, and for detecting early drug resistance. Currently NTD laboratory networks are informal and specialist laboratory expertise is not well publicised, making it difficult to share global expertise and provide training, supervision, and quality assurance for NTD diagnosis and research.

Disparities in food access around homes and schools for New York City children.

Demographic and income disparities may impact food accessibility. Research has not yet well documented the precise location of healthy and unhealthy food resources around children's homes and schools. The objective of this study was to examine the food environment around homes and schools for all public school children, stratified by race/ethnicity and poverty status.

Latino-American Mothers' Perspectives on Feeding Their Young Children: A Qualitative Study.

Objective: We explored the cultural beliefs that influence Latino-American mothers' feeding practices with their young children and the sources they referenced in making food choices for their children.

Method: We conducted semistructured interviews with 12 Latino-American mothers focusing on their experiences of feeding their young children. Data analysis, based in grounded theory, consisted of interview transcription, content analysis, coding, and theme development.

Approximations in English language arts: Scaffolding a shared teaching practice.

Recent research highlights the importance of providing teacher candidates with opportunities to approximate practice. Less attention focuses on tools teacher educators use within and surrounding approximations to focus candidates' attention on features of practice. This multi-case study investigates how three teacher educators use different approximations in ways that strategically reduce the complexity of learning to teach and scaffold the development of practice.

Acculturative Stress and Mental Health: Implications for Immigrant-Origin Youth.

"In this article, the authors provide an overview of the current global and US debates on immigration as a key developmental context for immigrant-origin youth. Relying on a conceptual framework that highlights both risk and protective factors, the authors provide evidence from their longitudinal study that empirically links acculturative stress to key mental health outcomes during adolescence. They conclude with a discussion of clinical implications of their work with an emphasis on what is needed to meet the growing mental health needs of immigrant youth.

Multilevel Models for Communication Sciences and Disorders.

Purpose Research in communication sciences and disorders frequently involves the collection of clusters of observations, such as a series of scores for each individual receiving treatment over the course of an intervention study. However, little discipline-specific guidance is currently available on the subject of building and interpreting multilevel models. This article offers a tutorial on multilevel models, using notation from the R statistical software, and discusses their implications for research in communication sciences and disorders.

Feeding Patterns and Parental Perceptions of Feeding Issues of Preterm Infants in the First 2 Years of Life.

We explored parental feeding practices, feeding issues during the first 2 yr of life, and the relationship between feeding issues and levels of maternal distress in preterm infants. Four hundred twenty mothers (239 with preterm infants, 181 with full-term infants) participated in the study. The Behavior-Based Feeding Questionnaire for Infants With Premature History and the Parenting Stress Index-Chinese Version were used as the two outcome measures.

Centering justice: Transforming paradigms of approach, design and implementation.

This concluding article presents visions for future research, prevention, intervention, and policy. This paper positions existing research paradigms against social justice principles, problematizing the ideological underpinnings of the legal system and its disproportionate impact on oppressed groups, including through the persistent overrepresentation of youth of color and/or marginalized genders. Highlighting the areas of challenge suggested by each of the manuscripts within the themed issue, this paper encourages critical shifts in the approach, design, and implementation of work with system-involved youth.

"This is probably the reason why she resorted to that kind of action": A qualitative analysis of juvenile justice workers attributions for girls' offending.

A large body of evidence suggests that within the juvenile justice system, girls fare worse than boys on several measures, including number of arrests, length of stay, and mental health outcomes while in the system. Scholarship suggests a myriad of gendered social factors that precipitate girls' involvement in the juvenile justice system; however, less is known about how stakeholders within the juvenile justice system perceive the girls they work with or interpret their experiences. The current paper examines the attributions that juvenile justice system workers make about the reasons girls offend.

The Protective Effect of Prenatal Social Support on Infant Adiposity in the First 18 Months of Life.

Objective: To determine whether prenatal social support was associated with infant adiposity in the first 18 months of life in a low-income, Hispanic sample, known to be at high risk of early child obesity.

Study Design: We performed a longitudinal analysis of 262 low-income, Hispanic mother-infant pairs in the control group of the Starting Early child obesity prevention trial. Prenatal social support was measured using an item from the Maternal Social Support Index.

Critical issues for youth involved in the juvenile justice system: Innovations in prevention, intervention, and policy.

This introduction to the themed issue presents a targeted review of historical and contemporary trends in the prevention, intervention, and policy response to juvenile justice system-involved youth. These trends underscore often overlooked ideological assumptions that implicate individual-level problem definitions, a pattern of victim blaming tendencies despite having a workforce increasingly trained in assessing context, and a system whose rehabilitative mandate is at odds with the social demand to maintain itself and its structures through keeping youth system-involved. Further, contemporary trends point to efforts that redirect blame from individual youth to families, and which ultimately ignore the broader sociopolitical context of mass incarceration that has selectively disenfranchized those same families.

A virtual reality head stability test for patients with vestibular dysfunction.

Background: The contribution of visual information to standing balance in patients with vestibular dysfunction varies between patients. Sensitive tools to detect kinematic response to visual perturbation are needed to individualize treatment.

Objective: Using the Oculus Rift headset and sensors, we developed a novel virtual reality (VR) test of head stability (HST) in response to visual perturbation.

"If they focus on giving us a chance in life we can actually do something in this world": Poverty, inequality, and youths' critical consciousness.

Critical consciousness (CC) has emerged as a framework for understanding how low-income and racial/ethnic minority youth recognize, interpret, and work to change the experiences and systems of oppression that they face in their daily lives. Despite this, relatively little is known about how youths' experiences with economic hardship and structural oppression shape how they "read their world" and motivate participation in critical action behaviors. We explore this issue using a mixed-methods design and present our findings in two studies.

A bitter pill to swallow? Patterns of critical consciousness and socioemotional and academic well-being in early adolescence.

An increasing body of research on critical consciousness explores how youth understand and react to inequality in their social contexts. The operationalization of critical consciousness remains inchoate, however. Developmental psychology traditionally conceptualizes critical consciousness as three components (critical reflection, political efficacy, and critical action), but how levels of these components combine for different youth or relate to outcomes remains unclear.

Using a Multi-level Framework to Test Empirical Relationships Among HIV/AIDS-Related Stigma, Health Service Barriers, and HIV Outcomes in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

HIV/AIDS-related (HAR) stigma is an ongoing problem in Sub-Saharan Africa that is thought to impede HIV preventive and treatment interventions. This paper uses a systematic sample of households (Level 1) nested within near-neighbor clusters (Level 2) and communities (Level 3) to examine multilevel relationships of HAR stigma to health service barriers (HSBs) and HIV outcomes in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, thereby addressing methodological and conceptual gaps in the literature from this context. Findings suggest differential patterns of prediction at Level 1 when examining two different dimensions of stigma: more highly stigmatizing attitudes predicted more household health service barriers; and perceptions of greater levels of community normative HAR stigma predicted higher household HIV ratios.

Head mounted displays for capturing head kinematics in postural tasks.

Tracking head motion in a simple, portable and accurate manner during performance of postural tasks in a virtual reality environment could have important implications for investigating normal and pathological head kinematics. We investigated concurrent validity of head tracking of two Head Mounted Displays (HMDs), Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, vs. a gold-standard motion capture system (Qualisys).