The Ohio COVID-19 Survey: Preliminary Findings and Their Use During the Pandemic

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has created exceptional health and economic uncertainty for Ohioans in 2020. In the spring of 2020, the state commissioned the Ohio COVID-19 Survey (OCS) to ask residential Ohio adults about how the pandemic was affecting them. The purpose of this research is to provide state leadership with real-time information about the effects of the pandemic and concurrent recession on Ohio households.Methods: The OCS is a special supplement to the Ohio Medicaid Assessment Survey (OMAS), a stratified random digit dial, cell phone and landline telephone survey. This study includes data collected weekly between April 20, 2020, and August 24, 2020. We conducted descriptive time-series analysis of the survey data and provided updates to the state's COVID-19 Response Team throughout the survey period.Results: Preliminary findings from the OCS reflect 3 themes among respondents: 1) elevated levels of concern over health and household economics; 2) disproportionate effects that exacerbate existing inequities; and 3) majority adjustment to "new normal" and acceptance of public health guidelines .Conclusion: Preliminary findings indicate that groups that were struggling before the pandemic have faced the biggest challenges with regard to health and household economics since it began. Data from the OCS enabled us to provide real-time analysis to state leadership regarding Ohioans' experience during the first 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Further analysis and integration of additional data will allow us to provide deeper insights as Ohio seeks to move into recovery.

Appropriations

This chapter considers how media landscapes in the home have shifted over this century and examines how devices relate to each other and to householders to create dynamic and evolving media ecologies. At the turn of this century, a typical domestic media ecology comprised a cathode-ray television in the living room, perhaps connected to a videocassette recorder; a desktop computer in a home office, perhaps connected to a dial-up modem; and a landline telephone, often located in a communal area in the home. More recently, the home has become a place for high-definition “smart” televisions, intelligent multifunction set-top boxes, game consoles, digital radio, high-speed broadband, cabled and wireless home networks, mobile computing, cloud connections, online government service provision, gesture-controlled games, and much more. How and why have these technologies been appropriated? How has this ongoing appropriation reconfigured the domestic media ecology and the life that is lived within this ecology?

Validity of the Food Insecurity Experience Scale and Prevalence of Food Insecurity in the Bahamas

Background: Despite United Nations’ recommendations to monitor food insecurity using the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES), to date there are no published reports of its validity for the Bahamas, nor have prevalence rates of moderate or severe food insecurity been reported for the nation. At the same time, food security is a deep concern, with increasing incidence of natural disasters and health concerns related to diet-related disease and dietary quality plaguing the nation.Objectives: This paper aims to examine 1) the validity of the FIES for use in the Bahamas, 2) moderate and severe food insecurity prevalence, and 3) the socio-demographic factors which contribute to increased food insecurity.Methods: The FIES was administered via randomized and weighted landline telephone survey in Nassau, Bahamas to 1,000 participants in June and July of 2017. The Rasch modelling procedure was applied to examine tool validity, and outcomes used to report prevalence. A regression analysis informed the relationship between household variables and food security.Results: The FIES met acceptable ranges for fit statistics for all eight items and the overall Rasch reliability is 0.7. The prevalence of moderate and severe food insecurity is 21%, and the prevalence of severe food insecurity is 10%. Statistically significant variables that contribute to food insecurity include education, age, gender, and presence of diabetes, high blood pressure, or heart disease.Conclusions: This study, which is among the first to comprehensively measure food security in The Bahamas, provides a baseline for further research and evaluation of practices aimed at mitigating food insecurity in SIDS. Further, this study provides a baseline for future research which may seek to understand the impacts of Hurricane Dorian. Post-disaster food security data is needed to further understand the extent to which food security is impacted by natural disasters and identify which sectors and stakeholders are most vital in restructuring the agricultural sector and improving food availability following such catastrophic events.

Phone Speech Recognition Improvement in Noisy Environment: Use of a Bluetooth Accessory

Objective: To evaluate speech understanding in noise and patient satisfaction using the new Cochlear Wireless Phone Clip device. Material and Methods: Twenty-nine experienced cochlear implant (CI) users (>6 months usage) were situated in a soundproof room where a 65 dB SPL Spanish cocktail noise was generated continuously from 4 loudspeakers. Lists of disyllabic words were presented through the clinic landline telephone to the patients. Patients were tested first holding the phone and then with the Cochlear Phone Clip© paired to the CP910 using various mixing ratios (2:1, 4:1, and Phone Clip© only). Results: Statistically significant ( P < .001) improvement of speech recognition performance was found in cell phone usage by wireless transmission and also when using this new device. Kepler questionnaire results showed that before using Phone Clip in everyday life, 55.2% of patients described themselves highly or greatly affected by their deafness for telephone use and 80% moderately to greatly affected. Kim questionnaire results showed statistically significant differences ( P < .001) in the subjective satisfaction of the Bluetooth-implemented CI compared to the conventional mode for sound quality, noise interference, and sound accuracy. Conclusions: The wireless Phone Clip© device helps implanted people to improve subjective and objective speech recognition performance through the phone in noisy environments.

The Closing Sequences and Ritual Expressions of Informal Mobile Phone Calls Between Saudis: A Conversational Analysis

Although much work has been conducted on studying conversational openings of telephone and ritual expressions, conversational closings and ritual expressions have received less attention by researchers due to the complexity and difficulty of identifying the beginning of closings in telephone conversations. The parts of closing and ritual expressions on telephone have been examined in some languages, but Arabic has not been studied in landline telephone or mobile phone. Therefore, this study seeks to identify the sequences and ritual expressions between Saudi friends and relatives to explore the strategies of closing informal mobile phone calls by using a conversation analysis approach. Thirty audio-recorded and transcribed mobile phone conversations served as the data source for this study. The results found that the majority of mobile phone closing conversations include three parts: pre-closing, leave taking, and terminal exchange that are similar to many languages such as English, Japanese, and German. Also, various expressions were used in pre-closing and leave taking sequences, but the expressions of using prayers were used more frequently in the sequences. Finally, closing conversation is affected by various external and internal social factors in the sequences and the use of ritual expressions.

Conversation Analysis: Opening Sequences and Ritual Expressions of Informal Mobile Phone Calls between Saudis

Much work of studying opening conversations has been conducted on landline telephone calls; whereas, mobile phone conversations have received less attention by researchers despite of the dominance of using mobile phone in our social life. Informed by conversation analysis (CA) approach, this study aims to identify the opening sequences and ritual expressions of informal mobile phone conversations among Saudi friends and relatives. Another goal is that to identify whether the opening sequences of mobile phone are similar or different from the landline telephone. The study will answer the following questions: what are the opening sequences and ritual expressions of mobile phone? And what are the similarities and differences between mobile phone and landline telephone in terms of the opening sequences. Thirty audio-recorded and transcribed mobile phone conversations served as the data source for this study. Data were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively by using the CA approach. Findings showed that the majority of opening sequences of mobile phone calls were reduced to three sequences: summons answer, greeting exchanges, and how-are-you exchanges due the impact of caller ID. In addition, the sequence of identification/recognition can be found when the caller does not know the callee or the number is silent. Therefore, mobile phone and landline telephone have similarities and differences in the opening sequences in general. However, the differences observed can be a reason of the cultural practices for language use more than the effect of medium used in communication such as landline telephone and mobile phone in Saudi Arabic. Finally, more data are needed to investigate gender differences.

Prospects for the Development of Online Trade in the Russian Federation in the Context of Globalization and the Information Society Establishment

The modern trade exists in the context of globalization and the information society establishment. The authors review the development of online trade in the Russian Federation and put the following research questions: how is the information and communication environment established in Russia? is there a link between the economic, information, communication and trade globalization, on the one hand, and the development of digital technologies in the trade sector, on the other hand? what are the prospects for the development of Russian digital trade in the global space? The results have indicated that the use of personal computers, local computing networks, and landline telephone networks in the Russian Federation has reached a level where a further increase in their number is not accompanied by an adequate increase in digital competencies. As a result of the study, the authors have found a relationship between the public activity in online trade and the development of the information society. They have also identified the factors that contribute to positive changes in the structure of Internet use by the population of the Russian Federation to order goods and services; factors hindering the development of online trade; and factors that do not influence the development of online trade. Regardless of the weak and deteriorating legal environment and the low efficiency of investment in innovation, the information society establishment and the development of online trade and the digital economy in the Russian Federation have positive dynamics supported by the activity of global players in the online space.

The Effects of Respondent and Question Characteristics on Respondent Answering Behaviors in Telephone Interviews

In a standardized telephone interview, respondents ideally are able to provide an answer that easily fits the response task. Deviations from this ideal question answering behavior are behavioral manifestations of breakdowns in the cognitive response process and partially reveal mechanisms underlying measurement error, but little is known about what question characteristics or types of respondents are associated with what types of deviations. Evaluations of question problems tend to look at one question characteristic at a time; yet questions are comprised of multiple characteristics, some of which are easier to experimentally manipulate (e.g., presence of a definition) than others (e.g., attitude versus behavior). All of these characteristics can affect how respondents answer questions. Using a landline telephone interview, we use cross-classified random effects logistic regression models to simultaneously evaluate the effects of multiple question and respondent characteristics on six different respondent behaviors. We find that most of the variability in these respondent answering behaviors is associated with the questions rather than the respondents themselves. Question characteristics that affect the comprehension and mapping stages of the cognitive response process are consistently associated with answering behaviors, whereas attitude questions do not consistently differ from behavioral questions. We also find that sensitive questions are more likely to yield adequate answers and fewer problems in reporting or clarification requests than nonsensitive questions. Additionally, older respondents are less likely to answer adequately. Our findings suggest that survey designers should focus on questionnaire features related to comprehension and mapping to minimize interactional and data quality problems in surveys and should train interviewers on how to resolve these reporting problems.

The Telephone and Its Uses in 1980s U.S. Activism

Claims that today’s digital technologies are unprecedented in their effect on society are founded on a weak understanding of the roles played by pre-digital technologies. Although the landline phone was the most ubiquitous American technology of the twentieth century, and an important influence on social and political life, it has received little attention in most fields of scholarship. But widespread use of the landline telephone is key to explaining how activists in the U.S. Central America movement of the 1980s sustained their commitment and sense of community. Telephony’s emotional and sensory qualities, underpinned by the powers of the human voice, were significant factors in the Central America movement’s longevity and potency. Communications technology had a profound influence on the character and results of protest movements well before the digital age.

Keeping Communications Flowing During Large-scale Disasters: Leveraging Amateur Radio Innovations for Disaster Medicine

Medical facilities may struggle to maintain effective communications during a major disaster. Natural and man-made disasters threaten connectivity by degrading or crippling Internet, cellular/mobile, and landline telephone services across wide areas. Communications among staff, between facilities, and to resources outside the disaster area may be lost for an extended time. A prototype communications system created by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) provides basic communication services that ensure essential connectivity in the face of widespread infrastructure loss. It leverages amateur radio to provide resilient email service to local users, enabling them to reach intact communications networks outside the disaster zone. Because amateur radio is inexpensive, always available, and sufficiently independent of terrestrial telecommunications infrastructure, it has often augmented telecommunications capabilities of medical facilities. NLM’s solution is unique in that it provides end-user to end-user direct email communications, without requiring the intervention of a radio operator in the handling of the messages. Medical staff can exchange email among themselves and with others outside the communications blackout zone. The technology is portable, is deployable on short notice, and can be powered in a variety of ways to adapt to the circumstances of each crisis. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2018;12:257–264)