scholarly journals 431ACEs and Resilience in University Students in the Appalachian Region of the United States

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (Supplement_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Quinn ◽  
Julia Bernard ◽  
Judy McCook ◽  
Meira Yasin

Abstract Background Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with health outcomes. Resilience factors provide opportunities to mitigate ACEs. This study aimed to understand ACEs and resilience in students at a university in the United States. Methods Students in the 2018-2019 health explorations course completed an online questionnaire (N = 82). Descriptive statistics were completed for all variables. ACE score was created by adding yes responses to ACE questions (range 0-10). Resilience scores were calculated using the Devereux Adult Resilience Scale (DARS, range 20-46). Simple and multiple linear regression were completed with ACE and resilience as outcome measures. Age, gender, family structure, and profession were used as predictors. Results Mean age was 18.4 (SD 1.9%), majority of respondents were female (89%), white (92.7%), rural (55.3%), and single (95.1%). Mean ACE score was 1.63 (SD = 1.99) with 40% reporting no ACEs, 26% three or more, and 18% four or more. DARS score (N = 77) had a mean of 39.29 (SD = 6.14). Age resulted in a slight increase in ACE score, β = 0.20, p < 0.1, however, none of the predictors were significantly associated with ACE score. Future professions classified as helping professions resulted in a significant increase in DAR score, β = 3.91, p < 0.01. Conclusions The response rate was low (20.5%), however, this pilot study provided insights into adversities and resilience factors of first-year students. Future research should include a larger, more diverse sample. Key messages Understanding ACEs and resilience in college students is necessary to mitigate and address ACEs early in adulthood.

2020 ◽  
pp. 154134462094464
Author(s):  
Simone C. O. Conceição ◽  
Liliana Mina ◽  
Todd Southern

A key challenge for international students in the United States is a readiness to study and live in a culture that is vastly different from their own. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of the lived experiences of Brazilian students studying in the United States 6 months after returning home. Thirty-three Brazilian students responded to an open-ended, self-reflective online questionnaire focusing on their lived experience in the U.S. Three major themes emerged from the data based on the interactions between the multiple systems Brazilian students lived in the U.S.: personal growth and development, perspective transformation, and change in worldview. Participants claimed that they perceived their experiences influenced their perceptions about their own country and culture and gave them a new perspective expanding their horizons about themselves and their role in the world. The article concludes with practical implications, study limitations, and suggestions for future research.


Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
John R Phillips

The cover photograph for this issue of Public Voices was taken sometime in the summer of 1929 (probably June) somewhere in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Very probably the photo was taken in Indianola but, perhaps, it was Ruleville. It is one of three such photos, one of which does have the annotation on the reverse “Ruleville Midwives Club 1929.” The young woman wearing a tie in this and in one of the other photos was Ann Reid Brown, R.N., then a single woman having only arrived in the United States from Scotland a few years before, in 1923. Full disclosure: This commentary on the photo combines professional research interests in public administration and public policy with personal interests—family interests—for that young nurse later married and became the author’s mother. From the scholarly perspective, such photographs have been seen as “instrumental in establishing midwives’ credentials and cultural identity at a key transitional moment in the history of the midwife and of public health” (Keith, Brennan, & Reynolds 2012). There is also deep irony if we see these photographs as being a fragment of the American dream, of a recent immigrant’s hope for and success at achieving that dream; but that fragment of the vision is understood quite differently when we see that she began a hopeful career working with a Black population forcibly segregated by law under the incongruously named “separate but equal” legal doctrine. That doctrine, derived from the United States Supreme Court’s 1896 decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, would remain the foundation for legally enforced segregation throughout the South for another quarter century. The options open to the young, white, immigrant nurse were almost entirely closed off for the population with which she then worked. The remaining parts of this overview are meant to provide the following: (1) some biographical information on the nurse; (2) a description, in so far as we know it, of why she was in Mississippi; and (3) some indication of areas for future research on this and related topics.


Author(s):  
James L. Gibson ◽  
Michael J. Nelson

We have investigated the differences in support for the U.S. Supreme Court among black, Hispanic, and white Americans, catalogued the variation in African Americans’ group attachments and experiences with legal authorities, and examined how those latter two factors shape individuals’ support for the U.S. Supreme Court, that Court’s decisions, and for their local legal system. We take this opportunity to weave our findings together, taking stock of what we have learned from our analyses and what seem like fruitful paths for future research. In the process, we revisit Positivity Theory. We present a modified version of the theory that we hope will guide future inquiry on public support for courts, both in the United States and abroad.


Author(s):  
Travis D. Stimeling

This chapter offers a historiographic survey of country music scholarship from the publication of Bill C. Malone’s “A History of Commercial Country Music in the United States, 1920–1964” (1965) to the leading publications of the today. Very little of substance has been written on country music recorded since the 1970s, especially when compared to the wealth of available literature on early country recording artists. Ethnographic studies of country music and country music culture are rare, and including ethnographic methods in country music studies offers new insights into the rich variety of ways in which people make, consume, and engage with country music as a genre. The chapter traces the influence of folklore studies, sociology, cultural studies, and musicology on the development of country music studies and proposes some directions for future research in the field.


Author(s):  
Phil Zuckerman ◽  
Kyle Thompson

Despite widespread suspicion to the contrary, secular living can and does serve as an adequate, or even excellent, context for moral development. In this chapter, the authors present the contours of contemporary anti-atheist prejudice, with an emphasis on the United States. Next, they explore the empirical data showing that individual atheists and highly secularized societies, such as Sweden and Denmark, are often quite moral, which serves to counter and debunk anti-atheist prejudice. Then, the authors move to a philosophical discussion centering around secular morality itself, outlining general merits of atheistic morality specifically while simultaneously pointing out various problematic assumptions of theistic morality. Finally, the authors conclude and make recommendations for future research.


Author(s):  
Diarmaid Lane ◽  
Sheryl Sorby

AbstractIn recent years, there has been a surge in research in spatial thinking across the international community. We now know that spatial skills are malleable and that they are linked to success across multiple disciplines, most notably Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). While spatial skills have been examined by cognitive scientists in laboratory environments for decades, current research is examining how these skills can be developed in field-based environments. In this paper, we present findings from a study within a Technology Teacher preparation programme where we examined first-year students’ spatial skills on entry to university. We explain why it was necessary to embed a spatial skills intervention into Year 1 of the programme and we describe the impact that this had on students’ spatial scores and on academic performance. The findings from our study highlight a consistent gender gap in spatial scores at the start of the first-year with female students entering the Technology Teacher preparation programme at a lower base level than male students. We describe how we integrated spatial development activities into an existing course and how an improvement in spatial scores and overall course performance was observed. The paper concludes by discussing the long-term sustainability of integrating spatial interventions within teacher preparation programmes while also highlighting the importance of future research to examine spatial skills as a fundamental component of technological capability.


Author(s):  
Sarah L. Jackson ◽  
Sahar Derakhshan ◽  
Leah Blackwood ◽  
Logan Lee ◽  
Qian Huang ◽  
...  

This paper examines the spatial and temporal trends in county-level COVID-19 cases and fatalities in the United States during the first year of the pandemic (January 2020–January 2021). Statistical and geospatial analyses highlight greater impacts in the Great Plains, Southwestern and Southern regions based on cases and fatalities per 100,000 population. Significant case and fatality spatial clusters were most prevalent between November 2020 and January 2021. Distinct urban–rural differences in COVID-19 experiences uncovered higher rural cases and fatalities per 100,000 population and fewer government mitigation actions enacted in rural counties. High levels of social vulnerability and the absence of mitigation policies were significantly associated with higher fatalities, while existing community resilience had more influential spatial explanatory power. Using differences in percentage unemployment changes between 2019 and 2020 as a proxy for pre-emergent recovery revealed urban counties were hit harder in the early months of the pandemic, corresponding with imposed government mitigation policies. This longitudinal, place-based study confirms some early urban–rural patterns initially observed in the pandemic, as well as the disparate COVID-19 experiences among socially vulnerable populations. The results are critical in identifying geographic disparities in COVID-19 exposures and outcomes and providing the evidentiary basis for targeting pandemic recovery.


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