Understanding the Burden of Legal Financial Obligations on Indigent Washingtonians

In criminal courts across the country, judges assess a variety of fines, fees and other legal financial obligations (LFOs) that many defendants struggle to pay. This paper examines the disproportionate burden that fine and fee assessment and collection practices impose on low-income, system-involved individuals, using administrative court data for criminal cases filed in Washington’s courts of limited jurisdiction between 2015 and 2020. The authors find that the majority of defendants do not or only partially pay their LFOs, but that these observations are more pronounced for indigent defendants. The authors also find that, of defendants who fully pay off their fines and fees, individuals with a public defender satisfy their debt after a greater number of days, as compared to individuals with private counsel. This is all in spite of public defender defendants generally being assessed smaller amounts in fines and fees at the outset. Additionally, the authors uncover that when defendants do pay off all of their fines and fees, they tend to do so on the day of assessment, with the likelihood of satisfying full payment generally decreasing as time goes on. These findings suggest that many people struggle with criminal justice debt, but that this problem disproportionately impacts indigent Washingtonians, subjecting them to a greater possibility of harm through the various methods of collections enforcement.

The Paradoxical Relationship Between Health Promotion and the Social Media Industry

Mounting evidence suggests that problematic adolescent social media use is associated with poor mental health. To respond to increased adolescent mental health concerns, health promoters increasingly rely on social media initiatives to promote their resources, programs, and services. This creates a paradoxical situation where social-media-linked adverse mental health outcomes are addressed using the same tools and platforms that can contribute to the development of such issues. It also highlights several areas of needed critical assessment in health promotion usage of social media platform features and products, such as addictive platform design, targeted marketing tools, data collection practices, impacts on underserved groups, and conflicts of interest. To advance subsequent action on these tensions, we offer three recommendations for health promoters that build upon existing scholarship and initiatives, including adapting ethical guidelines for health promoters using social media, adopting conflicts of interest policies, and promoting interdisciplinary scholarship.

Privacy Within the Private Order: A Critical Evaluation of the Market-Based System Governing Data Collection in the United States

This paper critically evaluates the market-based system governing data collection in the United States. The discussion is centred around Big Tech, a group of information intermediaries responsible for the ongoing extraction and exploitation of consumer data. The exploitative system is enabled by the ubiquitous privacy policy, which ostensibly offers data subjects ‘notice’ of data collection and the ‘choice’ to consent to said collection. This paper critiques the ‘notice and choice’ model, concluding the combined ambiguity and opacity of the privacy policy fail to offer subjects meaningful control over their data. To substantiate this argument, the paper evaluates the suitability of the market-based system in a broader sense, arguing that data collection practices precludes the knowledge parity necessary for an operative and fair market-based system. The paper concludes by ascertaining the suitability of state-based regulation, identifying data’s intrinsic relationship with ideals that are core to the Western tradition: equality, democracy, and autonomy.

Conducting Community-Based Qualitative Research With LGBTQ Older Adults of Color During COVID-19

COVID-19 continues to transform the way scientists conduct research with study participants, particularly older adults who are at high risk of becoming seriously ill from the virus. For older adults who may be negatively affected by the digital divide, inclusive data collection practices become even more nuanced. Qualitative researchers moving their research into digital spaces must think critically about their use of technology, and how it affects the quality of data as well as the participant experience. This presentation highlights ethical and methodological considerations from a completely digital, community-based, qualitative research study conducted alongside LGBTQ older adults of color during COVID-19. Strategies to build and strengthen community partnerships are discussed along with challenges and opportunities for collecting data in the current digital landscape. Publicly available records are identified as a potential data source to understand the lives of LGBTQ older adults of color when in-person research is not feasible.

Comparing Output from Two Methods of Participatory Design for Developing Implementation Strategies: Traditional Contextual Inquiry vs. Rapid Crowd Sourcing

BackgroundParticipatory design methods are a key component of designing tailored implementation strategies. These methods vary in the resources required to execute and analyze their outputs. No work to date has examined the extent to which the output obtained from different approaches to participatory design varies.MethodsWe concurrently used two separate participatory design methods: 1) field observations and qualitative interviews and 2) rapid crowd sourcing (an innovation tournament). Our goal was to generate information to tailor implementation strategies to increase the use of evidence-based data collection practices among one-to-one aides working with children with autism. Each method was executed and analyzed by study team members blinded to the output of the other method. We estimated the personnel time and monetary costs associated with each method to further facilitate comparison.ResultsObservations and interviews generated nearly double the number of implementation strategies (n = 26) than did the innovation tournament (n = 14). When strategies were classified into clusters from the Expert Recommendations for Implementing Change (ERIC) taxonomy, there was considerable overlap in the content of identified strategies. Strategies derived from observations and interviews were more specific than those from the innovation tournament. Nine strategies (23%) reflected content unique to observations and interviews and 4 (10%) strategies were unique to the innovation tournament. Only observations and interviews identified implementation strategies related to adapting and tailoring to context; only the innovation tournament identified implementation strategies that used incentives. Observations and interviews required more than three times the personnel hours than the innovation tournament, but the innovation tournament was more costly overall due to the technological platform used.ConclusionsThere was substantial overlap in content derived from observations and interviews and the innovation tournament. However, each yielded unique information. To select the best participatory design approach to inform implementation strategy design for a particular context, researchers should carefully consider what each method may elicit and weigh the resources available to invest in the process.Trial RegistrationN/A

Data Quality Assurance Begins Before Data Collection and Never Ends: What Marketing Researchers Absolutely Need to Remember

Data quality has become an area of increasing concern in marketing research. Methods of collecting data, types of data analyzed, and data analytics techniques have changed substantially in recent years. It is important, therefore, to examine the current state of marketing research, and particularly self-administered questionnaires. This paper provides researchers important advice and rules of thumb for crafting high quality research in light of the contemporary changes occuring in modern marketing data collection practices. This is accomplished by a proposed six-step research design process that ensures data quality, and ultimately research integrity, are established and maintained throughout the research process—from the earliest conceptualization and design phases, through data collection, and ultimately the reporting of results. This paper provides a framework, which if followed, will result in reduced headaches for researchers and more robust results for decision makers.

89. Positive Blood Culture Trends and Variability among U.S. Hospitals, 2012-2017

Background Although studies have shown blood culture rates have remained stable in recent years, understanding the variability in positivity over time and among hospitals may inform diagnostic and antimicrobial stewardship efforts. Methods We included all discharges from hospitals participating in the Premier Healthcare Database and Cerner Health Facts from 2012-2017 in months where a hospital reported at least one blood culture with antimicrobial susceptibility results. A blood culture episode was defined as one or more cultures drawn within 1 hour. Episodes on or before day 3 were defined as admission episodes (AE), and those drawn on day 4 or later were defined as post-admission episodes (PAE). Culture episodes yielding any organism were categorized as pathogen+ (i.e., at least 1 non-commensal organism identified) or commensal (i.e., only commensal organisms identified). Positive or commensal episode rates were calculated as the percentage of pathogen+ or commensal episodes among all blood culture episodes for AE and PAE. Logistic regression with generalized estimating equation models accounting for hospital-level clustering were used to measure time trends and facility level associations. Results Among 19.6 million discharges in 493 hospitals, 7.5 million blood culture episodes were identified; 336,102 (4.5%) were pathogen+, and 110,236 (1.5%) were commensals. The rate of pathogen+ AEs increased from 4.2% to 4.7% over the study period (p< .0001) and there was no significant temporal trend in the rate of pathogen+ PAEs (p=.7956) (Figure 1). AE commensals decreased significantly in 2016-2017 compared to previous years (1.6% in 2012 to 1.3% in 2017; p=.0092), and PAE commensals decreased significantly over the study period from 2.0% to 1.2% (p< .0001) (Figure 1). We observed substantial inter-hospital variability for each outcome (Figure 2). In addition, differences among hospital characteristics and seasonality were noted for AE and PAE pathogen+ rates and AE commensal rates (Figure 3), but not urbanicity or teaching hospital status. Monthly Positivity Rate of Blood Culture Episodes, Premier Healthcare Database and Cerner Health Facts, 2012-2017 Adjusted Odds Ratios and 95% Confidence Intervals of Blood Culture Episode Positive (Non-Commensal) and Commensal Rates and Associated Characteristics Conclusion While an increase AE pathogen+ rates and decrease in commensal rates could indicate improved culture ordering and collection practices, significant seasonal, regional, and facility-level variability calls for further investigation. Disclosures John A. Jernigan, MD, MS, Nothing to disclose

Metafoorid, millega me töötame: kogumismetoodika kajastused Eesti Rahva Muuseumi soome-ugri ekspeditsioonipäevikutes aastatel 1975–1989

Our aim is to examine how the principles of museum collecting are reflected in ethnographic fieldwork diaries. In recent decades, scholars and representatives of indigenous peoples have sharply criticized earlier modes of ethnographic collection and representation. The earlier acquisition policy was based on the understanding that ethnographers had a kind of prerogative to collect objects and that people had to relinquish their possessions in the name of science. By now such collecting practices have changed, but the analysis of the ethnographers’ earlier techniques enables us to gain a clearer sense of the historical context of museum collection. In this article, we study various metaphors related to museum collecting that we found in Soviet-era Finno-Ugric expedition diaries kept in the manuscript archive of the Estonian National Museum (ENM). We examine how the museum’s ethnographers used specific metaphorical expressions and descriptive models. An exploration of diaries through metaphors offers a way to discuss the formation of ethnographic knowledge. Such an approach can be more subjective, but the metaphorical models that reappear in the field diaries do show that certain beliefs and the fundamental nature of their expression were more prevalent among the museum’s staff. We analyze the diaries of Finno-Ugric fieldwork kept from 1975 to 1989, the most intensive period of the museum’s collecting work among the Finno-Ugric peoples. The objects collected during these years make up almost two thirds of the current Finno-Ugric collection of the ENM. The Finno-Ugric expedition diaries of the mature Soviet era reveal some metaphorical expressions and descriptions pertaining to museum collecting that are used repeatedly. We found that the metaphors of trade, war and loot characterized the era’s collection practices in the most expressive way. These metaphors reflect, in the humorous and grotesque key, the ENM’s staff’s perceptions of time-specific museological principles. In their 1980 monograph “Metaphors We Live By”, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson substantiated the universal potential of metaphor in human thought. While for Lakoff and Johnson, metaphor is a tool that enables us to talk about reality, what is more important is that metaphors serve as a meeting place of fundamental questions concerning people’s everyday experience and life. The analysis of the ENM fieldwork diaries partially confirms Lakoff and Johnson’s view. Although ethnographers use metaphors of trade, war and loot in their fieldwork diaries, they need not always be related to existential reflections, but are often just an entertaining play on words. At the same time, the playful use of metaphors does not in itself preclude the fact that they also reflect the discourses of the deep structure of ethnographic consciousness.

The Value and Interpretation of Race and Ethnicity Data in the Era of Global Migration: A Change Is in Order

Human migration and travel are leading to increasingly diverse populations throughout the world. Data collection practices need to adapt to these changes to expand our understanding of health disparities and to optimize the efforts to address health equity, particularly during public health emergencies such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. Race and ethnicity classifications in the United States have failed to evolve since the 1970s despite an increasingly diverse population. Current commonly collected categories are inadequate to accurately describe the economic, educational, and sociopolitical circumstances of different groups. Further, these categories lend little practical information to inform health policy. More predictive and actionable variables should be routinely collected to improve appropriateness and timeliness of health interventions. The immediate adoption of the collection of primary/preferred language and country of birth/origin by public health organizations, health systems, and clinical providers would be a concrete and valuable first step.

Protocol recommendations from 54 infant and toddler neuroimaging research labs

Infant and toddler MRI enables unprecedented insight into the developing brain. However, consensus about optimal data collection practices is lacking, which slows growth of the field and impedes replication efforts. The goal of this study was to collect systematic data across a large number of infant/toddler research laboratories to better understand preferred practices. Survey data addressed MRI acquisition strategies, scan success rates, visit preparations, scanning protocols, accommodations for families, study design, and policies regarding incidental findings. Respondents had on average 8 years’ experience in early life neuroimaging and represented more than fifty research laboratories. Areas of consensus across labs included higher success rates among newborns compared to older infants or toddlers, high rates of data loss across age groups, and age-specific scan preparation and participant accommodation. Researchers remain divided on best practices regarding incidental findings and decisions in longitudinal and cross-sectional study design. This study provides a summary of practices honed over years of work by a large collection of scientists, which may serve as an important resource for those new to the field. The ability to reference data about best practices facilitates future harmonization, data sharing, and reproducibility, all of which advance this important frontier in developmental science.