An exploration of instructor perceptions of community college students’ attitudes towards evolution

Background

Faculty perception of student knowledge and acceptance of subject matter affects the choice of what to teach and how to teach it. Accurate assessment of student acceptance of evolution, then, is relevant to how the subject should be taught. To explore the accuracy of such assessment, we compared how community college instructors of life sciences courses perceive students’ attitudes towards evolution with those students’ actual attitudes towards evolution.

Results

The research had two components: (1) a survey of students of several biology classes at a community college about their acceptance of evolutionary theory and (2) interviews with the biology faculty teaching those classes about their perceptions of their students’ attitudes towards evolution. Results of the study indicate relatively high levels of acceptance of evolution among community college students at this West Coast institution. We also found that community college instructors of life sciences courses varied in accuracy of their perceptions of their students’ attitudes towards evolution–but not systematically. Although one professor assessed each class quite accurately, the other two professors frequently underestimated the acceptance of evolution among their students.

Conclusions

Errors in perception seemed independent of whether the class was composed of majors, nonmajors, or a combination. Clearly, in our sample there is much idiosyncrasy regarding community college instructor accuracy concerning student opinions about evolution.

     

Risk Literacy and Risk Perception Among Undergraduates in Mainland China: The Case of BSE

Risk response and cognitive characteristics of different groups are important aspects in risk research. In this article we discuss the general features of risk literacy and perception among undergraduates at Nanjing University and Huaiyin Institute of Technology in China in the case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The results show that: (1) there seem to be no relationships between respondents’ knowledge about BSE and their risk identification; (2) between all contrast samples, the greatest divergence appears in the judgment about probability of risk while the smallest one is the trust in science and technology to avoid BSE; (3) the judgment of hazard probability would be related to gender, family location, and the backgrounds of college and academic specialty. And only gender has impact on the affirmation of hazard with a significant level of 0.05. These findings provide insights into the comprehension of undergraduates’ risk literacy and perception, and can contribute to the improvement of risk communication and management in China.     

Phytoremediation for lightly toxic sites: Hazard perception and acceptance of remediation alternatives

Individuals perceive environmental hazards based on their own knowledge and experience. While much research has been conducted to examine the factors affecting hazard perceptions, there is a lack of understanding about the particular contexts or factors that influence public acceptance of hazard mitigation alternatives. Without this knowledge, expert groups cannot effectively communicate with the public and help them consider the use of emerging technologies to alleviate hazardous conditions. This study investigates the influence of perceived pollution hazard levels in abandoned industrial sites as well as knowledge levels of stakeholder groups on the acceptance of different types of remediation strategies. I compare local residents' perceptions with those of graduate students majoring in landscape architecture. The study results found that lower hazard levels were associated with a higher acceptance of on-site natural attenuation, the so-called phytoremediation, with students being significantly more likely to favor this option than residents. These results imply that the social acceptability of remediation technologies, including phytotechnology, is context dependent and can vary significantly depending on the hazard status of the site and the knowledge base of the stakeholder group.     

The Association between Weight Perception and BMI among High School Students

Objective: To assess the association between weight perception and BMI among a large, diverse sample of adolescents. This study used both measured and self‐reported height and weight to calculate BMI. Research Methods and Procedures: A convenience sample of students (n = 2032) in grades 9 through 12 completed a questionnaire assessing demographic characteristics, self‐reported height and weight, and body weight perception. These students were then weighed and had their height measured using a standard protocol. Results: Using BMI calculated from measured height and weight, 1.5% of students were classified as underweight or at risk for underweight, 51.2% of students were normal weight, and 47.4% were overweight or at risk for overweight. Among this same sample of students, however, 34.8% perceived themselves as underweight, 42.9% perceived themselves as about the right weight, and 22.3% perceived themselves as overweight. Even when using BMI calculated from self‐reported height and weight, >20% of students who were overweight or at risk for overweight perceived themselves as underweight. Discussion: Because perception of overweight is a key determinant of adolescent nutritional habits and weight management, many students who are overweight or at risk for overweight but who do not perceive themselves as such are unlikely to engage in weight control practices. Increasing awareness of medical definitions of overweight might improve accuracy of weight perceptions and lead to healthier eating and increased physical activity.     

Marginal hazard ratio estimates in joint frailty models for heart failure trials

This work is motivated by clinical trials in chronic heart failure disease, where treatment has effects both on morbidity (assessed as recurrent non‐fatal hospitalisations) and on mortality (assessed as cardiovascular death, CV death). Recently, a joint frailty proportional hazards model has been proposed for these kind of efficacy outcomes to account for a potential association between the risk rates for hospital admissions and CV death. However, more often clinical trial results are presented by treatment effect estimates that have been derived from marginal proportional hazards models, that is, a Cox model for mortality and an Andersen–Gill model for recurrent hospitalisations. We show how these marginal hazard ratios and their estimates depend on the association between the risk processes, when these are actually linked by shared or dependent frailty terms. First we derive the marginal hazard ratios as a function of time. Then, applying least false parameter theory, we show that the marginal hazard ratio estimate for the hospitalisation rate depends on study duration and on parameters of the underlying joint frailty model. In particular, we identify parameters, for example the treatment effect on mortality, that determine if the marginal hazard ratio estimate for hospitalisations is smaller, equal or larger than the conditional one. How this affects rejection probabilities is further investigated in simulation studies. Our findings can be used to interpret marginal hazard ratio estimates in heart failure trials and are illustrated by the results of the CHARM‐Preserved trial (where CHARM is the ‘Candesartan in Heart failure Assessment of Reduction in Mortality and morbidity’ programme).     

Tick bite risk resulting from spatially heterogeneous hazard,exposure and coping capacity

Tick-borne diseases have long been mainly associated with forests, the primary habitat for Ixodes ricinus, where they are mostly found. However, increasing evidence shows that humans also often get bitten in gardens, parks and other habitats generally associated with lower vegetation and tick density. Therefore, to understand the risk of infection from a tick bite and thus of potential subsequent infection, it is necessary to separate the factors of risk: hazard and vulnerability, here detailed as exposure and coping capacity, and to examine their spatial heterogeneity. This paper proposes a spatially explicit model for human movement through the entire landscape and forest visits to investigate the three components of risk. The population and its movements are set spatially in three study case landscapes extracted from Wallonia, south Belgium. Parameters that are challenging to estimate, such as the probability of a person getting bitten in various environments and the probability of inspecting one’s body to remove ticks, are analyzed in a wide range of combinations. Results show that, while bites are densest in the forest, they happen across the landscape at levels comparable when summed. When coping capacity is modified, as it could be through raising awareness and improving uptake of protective measures, the most at-risk group can change, and the riskier landscape can become the periurban or the rural landscape. This model offers a platform to investigate the respective contributions of hazard, exposure, and people’s capacity to cope with the hazard. It would benefit from empirical input parameters measured more specifically for its purpose.     

Cross-National Validation of an Eight-Factor Model of Societal Risk Perception

This study cross-nationally tested an eight-factor model of societal risk perception. The factors in the model were: Common individual hazards, Pollutants, Energy production and public transportation, Outdoor activities, Sex, deviance and addictions, Medical care, Weapons, and Psychotropic drugs. Using confirmatory factor analyses, the model was tested on a sample of Greek students and on a sample of French students, and was shown to satisfactorily account for the data in both samples. This model may be considered as a potentially useful tool for studying cross-national as well as individual differences (e.g., age, gender, worldviews or personality) in risk perception. Future studies are needed to determine: (a) whether this model applies to samples composed of persons of different ages or composed of persons from non-Western countries and (b) whether this model could be usefully expanded with one or more factors.     

On the relation between the cause-specific hazard and the subdistribution rate for competing risks data: The Fine–Gray model revisited

The Fine–Gray proportional subdistribution hazards model has been puzzling many people since its introduction. The main reason for the uneasy feeling is that the approach considers individuals still at risk for an event of cause 1 after they fell victim to the competing risk of cause 2. The subdistribution hazard and the extended risk sets, where subjects who failed of the competing risk remain in the risk set, are generally perceived as unnatural . One could say it is somewhat of a riddle why the Fine–Gray approach yields valid inference. To take away these uneasy feelings, we explore the link between the Fine–Gray and cause-specific approaches in more detail. We introduce the reduction factor as representing the proportion of subjects in the Fine–Gray risk set that has not yet experienced a competing event. In the presence of covariates, the dependence of the reduction factor on a covariate gives information on how the effect of the covariate on the cause-specific hazard and the subdistribution hazard relate. We discuss estimation and modeling of the reduction factor, and show how they can be used in various ways to estimate cumulative incidences, given the covariates. Methods are illustrated on data of the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation.     

Cross-Cultural and Site-Based Influences on Demographic, Well-being, and Social Network Predictors of Risk Perception in Hazard and Disaster Settings in Ecuador and Mexico

Although virtually all comparative research about risk perception focuses on which hazards are of concern to people in different culture groups, much can be gained by focusing on predictors of levels of risk perception in various countries and places. In this case, we examine standard and novel predictors of risk perception in seven sites among communities affected by a flood in Mexico (one site) and volcanic eruptions in Mexico (one site) and Ecuador (five sites). We conducted more than 450 interviews with questions about how people feel at the time (after the disaster) regarding what happened in the past, their current concerns, and their expectations for the future. We explore how aspects of the context in which people live have an effect on how strongly people perceive natural hazards in relationship with demographic, well-being, and social network factors. Generally, our research indicates that levels of risk perception for past, present, and future aspects of a specific hazard are similar across these two countries and seven sites. However, these contexts produced different predictors of risk perception—in other words, there was little overlap between sites in the variables that predicted the past, present, or future aspects of risk perception in each site. Generally, current stress was related to perception of past danger of an event in the Mexican sites, but not in Ecuador; network variables were mainly important for perception of past danger (rather than future or present danger), although specific network correlates varied from site to site across the countries.     

Health Hazard Appraisal in Patient Counseling

A program of annual health examinations was expanded to include counseling based on a computerized appraisal of individual patients'' specific health hazard factors. Data obtained from a specially designed questionnaire, laboratory tests and a physical examination yielded a printout showing a number of weighted risk factors and their relation to ten leading causes of death as determined for that patient. From all of this information, a risk (“apparent”) age was developed for the patient. The results were reviewed with each patient, and methods of correcting health hazards were stressed. A total of 488 persons were appraised, and 107 were randomly reappraised in less than a year, with the finding that the net risk age was reduced by 1.4 years. Such a reduction in risk age is significant; it indicates that appraisal-based counseling is an effective method of altering priorities of health practices.     

Analysis of Determining Factors of the Public's Risk Acceptance Level in China

This work will characterize risk acceptance in China, based on the psychometric paradigm, and explore the determining factors that influence the risk acceptable level to the Chinese public. For this purpose, a survey was conducted including 12 hazards, 10 risk attributes (including risk acceptance), and demographic variables. First, the research attempted to explore Nanjing citizens’ average risk acceptable level for 12 hazards in China. Second, intercorrelation analysis and factor analysis of nine risk attributes were performed to obtain the suitable risk perception factors as independent variables. Three risk perception models of acceptance were constructed, which were named “Environmental risk model,” “Daily risk model,” and “Technical risk model,” that explained 59.0–69.6% of variance separately. In general, the variables of Knowledge, Benefit, and Trust were found to be significant in all models, implying that these variables are the main determining factors. However, in the environmental risk model, the variable of effect was also significant, which means the determining factors would change for different types of hazards. These results could help the Chinese government to improve the communication of risks with the public and make effective mitigation policies to improve people's rational judgment on the acceptability of risks.     

A dynamic assessment of water scarcity risk in the Lower Brahmaputra River Basin: An integrated approach

Many international river basins are likely to experience increasing water scarcity over the coming decades. This water scarcity is not rooted only in the limitation of resources, i.e. the shortage in the availability of freshwater relative to water demand, but also on social factors (e.g. flawed water planning and management approaches, institutional incapability to provide water services, unsustainable economic policies). Therefore, the assessment of water scarcity risks is not limited to the assessment of physical water supply and demand, but it requires also consideration of several socio-economic factors. In this study, we provide a comprehensive dynamic assessment of water scarcity risks for the Lower Brahmaputra river basin, a region where the hydrological impact of climate change is expected to be particularly strong and population pressure is high. The basin area of Brahmaputra River lies among four different countries: China, India, Bangladesh and Bhutan. For water scarcity assessment, we propose a novel integration of different approaches: (i) the assessment of water scarcity risk, considering complex social-ecological system; (ii) the analysis of dynamic behaviour of the system; (iii) exploration of participatory approach in which limited number of stakeholders identify the most relevant issues with reference to water scarcity risks and provide their preferences for the aggregation of risk assessment indicators. Results show that water scarcity risk is expected to slightly increase and to fluctuate remarkably as a function of the hazard signal. Social indicators show trends that can at least partially compensate the increasing trend of the drought index. The results of this study are intended to be used for contributing to planned adaptation of water resources systems, in Lower Brahmaputra River Basin.     

Beyond the Hazard: The Role of Beliefs in Health Risk Perception

This article addresses how beliefs about health risks cluster and how these relate to perceptions of risk among Canadians. A principal components analysis conducted on items reflecting various beliefs from the Canadian National Health Risk Perception Survey extracted four underlying dimensions: Cancer Dread, Trust in Regulators, Environmental Concern, and Personal Agency. Factor scores were then used to investigate relationships between belief factors and the perceived health risk of various hazards with gender, education, income, and province of residence as covariates. Environmental and Therapeutic health risk perceptions were significantly higher in respondents with high Cancer Dread and high Environmental Concern, but lower in respondents with high Trust in Regulators. Environmental health risk perceptions were lower in respondents with high Personal Agency, whereas Social health risk perceptions were higher in respondents with high Cancer Dread and Personal Agency. Results suggest that information about health risk–related beliefs can be useful in improving our understanding of the public's perceived risk of health hazards.     

高寒生态脆弱区农户对气候变化的感知与适应意向——以甘南高原为例

以地处青藏高原东缘的甘南高原为研究区,基于农户调查数据,分析了农户的气候变化感知对其适应意向的影响,为制定有效的气候变化适应政策提供依据.结果表明: 纯农户、兼业户、非农户对气候变化的严重性的感知依次降低,但适应功效感知依次增强,且与非农户、纯农户相比,兼业户的可能性感知、自我效能感知与适应成本感知均较高;纯农户、兼业户、非农户对气候变化的积极适应意向趋于增强;气候变化风险感知、适应功效感知促使农户产生积极适应意向,而适应成本感知促使其产生消极适应意向.同时,农户拥有的耕地面积、牲畜数量、收入水平以及性格乐观程度与积极适应意向发生概率呈显著正相关,而固定资产拥有量、无偿现金援助机会、亲戚网及帮助网规模与其呈显著负相关.最后,提出了促使农户产生积极适应意向的对策建议及未来研究中需关注的问题.     

Spatial distribution of rainstorm hazard risk based on EW-AHP in mountainous scenic area of China

Rainstorm hazards seriously affect the lives of residents and activities of tourists in rainstorm harder-hit scenic areas. The assessment of rainstorm hazard risk has a great significance in the area. Based on the disciplines of geography and tourism, an assessment system has been constructed by using the Entropy Weight-Analytic Hierarchy Process and exponential model. Finally, the Huayang Ancient Town Scenic Area in China has been taken as study area, and its rainstorm hazard risk and spatial distribution have been evaluated. The results indicate the following: The rainstorm hazard risk areas are mainly concentrated along rivers, valleys, or roads; The specific spatial distributions are: rainstorm hazard risk of the Huayang Old Streets is high, that of the Red Cliff Valley and both sides of the Mandarin Duck River are higher, that of the Golden Monkey Valley and the Macaque Park are lower, that of the Tangluo Ancient Road is low, and the risks of other areas are medium; The main influencing factors of rainstorm hazard risk are elevation, terrain, gap and width of river, distance to river, building density, tourist flow and tourism activity; People's awareness, system of monitoring and early warning, emergency plan, facilities and equipment for rainstorm hazard prevention and mitigation need to be continuously improved.     

Employee Attitudes about the Impact of Visitation Dogs on a College Campus

Therapy and visitation dogs are becoming more common on college campuses to provide comfort and support to students, but little attention has been given to the concerns of faculty and staff who share space with the dogs in their workplaces. The purpose of this study was to assess the perceptions of faculty and staff with regard to both the benefits and the hazards (e.g., dander, bites, fleas) and risks associated with the presence of visitation dogs in their workplaces. One hundred and thirty-eight employees who worked in buildings with resident visitation dogs completed an online survey about their perceptions of the hazards and risks of the dogs and the effects of dogs on the wellbeing of both students and employees. In general, employees perceived that the dogs presented minimal risks, and most employees believed that they can reduce stress and provide comfort to students on campus. There were a few employees, however, who reported that the dogs did not improve the work environment and conferred no benefits to the staff or students. The findings of the present survey support the mostly positive attitudes that people have for dogs in the workplace, but they also highlight a potential challenge: accommodating individuals who believe very strongly that dogs do not belong in work environments.     

Attributable risk function in the proportional hazards model for censored time-to-event

Time-to-event endpoints are often used in clinical and epidemiological studies to evaluate disease association with hazardous exposures. In the statistical literature of time-to-event analysis, such association is usually measured by the hazard ratio in the proportional hazards model. In public health, it is also of important interest to assess the excess risk attributable to an exposure in a given population. In this article, we extend the notion of 'population attributable fraction' for the binary outcomes to the attributable risk function for the event times in prospective studies. A simple estimator of the time-varying attributable risk function is proposed under the proportional hazards model. Its inference procedures are established. Monte-Carlo simulation studies are conducted to evaluate its validity and performance. The proposed methodology is motivated and demonstrated by the data collected in a multicenter acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) cohort study to estimate the attributable risk of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infections due to several potential risk factors.     

Measuring the Quality of University Lectures: Development and Validation of the Instructional Skills Questionnaire (ISQ)

In higher education, student ratings are often used to evaluate and improve the quality of courses and professors’ instructional skills. Unfortunately, student-rating questionnaires rarely generate specific feedback for professors to improve their instructional skills. The impact of student ratings on professors’ instructional skills has proven to be low. This study concerns the psychometric properties of the Instructional Skills Questionnaire (ISQ), a new theory-based student-rating-of-teaching questionnaire with specific questions concerning lecturing skills. The ISQ is administered after a single lecture. This way, it serves as a formative feedback instrument for university professors during courses to assist them to improve and (re-) evaluate their skills if necessary. The ISQ contains seven dimensions of professors’ instructional skills and three student (self perceived) learning outcomes. In this study, Dutch students in 75 courses rated three 90-minute lectures (T1, T2 and T3) of their respective professors using the ISQ. In total, 14,298 ISQ-forms were used to rate 225 lectures. The teacher level reliabilities of the seven dimensions were found to be good at each measurement occasion. In addition, confirmatory multilevel factor analysis confirmed a seven dimensional factor structure at the teacher level at each measurement occasion. Furthermore, specific teacher level factors significantly predicted students’ (self-assessed) learning outcomes. These results partly supported the proposed theoretical framework on the relationship between the ISQ teaching dimensions and the student learning process, and provided evidence for the construct validity of the instrument. In sum, the ISQ is found to be a reliable and valid instrument, which can be used by professors and faculty development centers to assess and improve university teaching.     

Developing sociopolitical consciousness of race and social class inequality in adolescents attending progressive and no excuses urban secondary schools

Sociopolitical consciousness refers to an individual’s ability to critically analyze the political, economic, and social forces shaping society and one’s status in it. A growing body of scholarship reports that high levels of sociopolitical consciousness are predictive in marginalized adolescents of a number of key outcomes including resilience and civic engagement. The present study explored the role that urban secondary schools can play in fostering adolescents’ sociopolitical consciousness through a longitudinal, mixed methods investigation of more than 400 adolescents attending “progressive” and “no excuses” charter high schools. Analyses revealed that, on average, students attending progressive high schools demonstrated sizeable shifts in their sociopolitical consciousness of racial inequality, and students attending no excuses high schools demonstrated sizeable shifts in their sociopolitical consciousness of social class inequality. Qualitative interviews with participating students offered insight into the curriculum, programming, and practices that these youth perceived as contributing to these differences in their sociopolitical consciousness.