COMMUNICATION

Steven M. Giles

• Promoting Fidelity Using Remote and On-Site Support
  Awarded $19,971 for the period 9/1/05 to 8/31/06, Year 4 of 5
  Source: National Institutes of Health (NIH)

  All Stars is a program that seeks to prevent high-risk behaviors in adolescents aged 10 to 14. It uses interactive methods to discuss values, ideals, norms, and personal commitments, involving parents through homework assignments and an audio CD to improve their parenting skills. Teachers and community leaders are also trained in All Stars interactive teaching skills and underlying program concepts.

  In collaboration with researchers at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, Dr. Giles supervises development of teacher measures, including a protocol for scoring videotaped observations. He also hires, supervises, and trains coders at WFU, ensuring that at least 2 qualified coders rate each videotape and maintain consistency. He attends research team meetings and corresponds with coaches who assist teachers in improving their implementation of the All Stars curricula. He also writes reports and publications related to the fidelity with which All Stars is implemented in the classroom.

• An Investigation into the Communication of Social Norms Related to Thinness and Body Image among College Students
  Source: WFU Social, Behavioral, and Economic Science Research Fund

This pilot study aims to determine the ways that parents, dating partners, and campus organizations may foster unrealistic norms of ideal body image for college women, enhancing the risk for eating disorders. It will ask the following questions:
1. In what ways, if any, do female college students feel pressure to be thin?
2. How is the pressure communicated by those closest (e.g., parents, dating partners, organizational members)?
3. What is the relationship between attitudes that foster eating disorders and social networks?
4. How do the pressures to be thin felt by female students change as they progress through their college careers?
5. How does the prevalence of eating disorders and subthreshold eating disorder attitudes and behaviors change as female college students progress through the academic system?

Interview data will inform a template for the design of preventative message strategies.

• Building Teacher Mastery via an Internet Training System
  Awarded $99,132.00 for the period 5/1/05 to 4/30/06
  Source: NIH

This Phase II STTR project aims to complete development of a web-based training system called the All Stars Online Community, designed to improve teachers' delivery of All Stars, an adolescent substance use prevention program. It will provide training material tailored to each teacher's current level of curriculum mastery, from novice to advanced. Teachers will receive continuous, consistent support and feedback, and a discussion form will allow teachers to ask questions and to get assistance from master teachers.

During Phase II, web-based content and procedures will be expanded, especially the content for advanced teachers. A companion DVD will include examples of teachers delivering All Stars sessions. A randomized field trial will test whether the online training improves curriculum implementation and interactive teaching skills. Effects of training on student outcomes, including changes in student mediators and substance use, will be assessed.

This project will advance the field of substance use prevention through technological innovations to improve the poor implementation associated with reduced outcomes in experimental trials. The project is consistent with Wake Forest's efforts to use technology to improve instruction. The funding will defray university costs by providing computer equipment, stipends for three graduate students, and indirect costs.

Allan Louden

• Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Initiative: Summer Institute for Youth
  Awarded $829,676 for the period 6/1/07 to 12/31/09
  Source: US Department of State

The Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Fellows Initiative provides two Summer Institutes: the Founders (ages 15-17) and the Diplomats (ages 17-19). The program seeks to create an environment that encourages individual expression, communication, and information-sharing to advance positive relationships among youth from Eurasia, Europe, and the United States of various ethnic and religious groups.

• BFTI Grant – Embassy Funding
  Awarded $35,104 for the period 6/1/07 to 8/31/07
  Source: US Department of State

• Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Initiative – Western and Central
  European Participants
  Awarded $31,500 for the period 6/15/06 to 7/30/06
  Source: US Department of State (DOS)

• Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Fellows Initiative: Summer Institute
  for Youth
  Awarded $171,750 for the period 6/23/06 to 3/31/07
  Source: DOS

  Professor Louden has won the opportunity for Wake Forest to be the first host of a new national program to promote international understanding among youth. Over 22 days in July, 35 high-school-aged students from 32 European and Eurasian countries and 10 of their counterparts from across the US live together in a residence hall, participate in three workshops, complete a community service project, visit the European Studies Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, spend a weekend with Winston-Salem area host families, and take field trips to Williamsburg, Washington, DC, and Philadelphia.

  Two of the workshops are led by Wake Forest faculty. John Dinan, the Zachary T. Smith Associate Professor of Political Science, leads “Comparative Constitutionalism.” Students examine the US constitution-making process and compare it to those within the European Union and in post-Soviet countries. Ross K. Smith, Wake Forest debate coach, leads “Media Criticism in the Age of the Internet” in which students explore how the Internet and blogs influence the media, public opinion, and political situations around the world. The third workshop, “Bridging Differences though Public Argument” is led by a professor from the University of Pittsburgh.

• Southeastern Europe Youth Leadership Institute (SEEYLI)
  Awarded $137,178 for the period 11/1/04 to 11/15/05, Year 2
  Source: Open Society Institute and DOS

Wake Forest is one of two US universities selected to host a 2004 Southeastern Europe Youth Leadership Institute, involving an international staff and guests from Albania, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia. Along with 13 community leaders and teachers representing the 6 countries, 60 high school students, ranging in age from 15 to 17, will spend the month of July on the Wake Forest campus, including 2 weeks with volunteer families in the Winston-Salem area. Workshops and cultural activities are designed to explore US politics and culture and to promote interactions among the students and their hosts, with debate used as a vehicle for exploring civic issues. Kristen McCauliff, Wake assistant debate coach, coordinates summer administration.

Ananda Mitra

• Rapid Responses to Problem Drinking on College Campuses
  Awarded $15,824 for the period 8/1/07 to 7/31/08
  Source: National Institutes of Health/ WFU Health Sciences

The research team will implement and evaluate a comprehensive intervention to reduce the incidence of alcohol-related problems among college students at schools chosen by NIAAA. The study has three specific aims:

1. assist NIAAA and the college in designing and refining an intervention focused on changing both campus and community environments to reduce alcohol abuse;
2. provide technical assistance to support implementation with a high degree of intensity and fidelity;
3. evaluate the intervention’s impact using a quasi-experimental design with objective measures, students’ self-reports, and dormitory resident advisors’ reports of alcohol use and alcohol-related incidents.

Two or more intervention schools are paired with control schools, and a pilot study with a historically black college or university will be conducted.

• SPARC Study to Prevent Alcohol-Related Consequences
  Awarded $16,289 for the period 9/28/07 to 7/31/08
  Source: National Institutes of Health/Wake Forest University Health Sciences

The Study to Prevent Alcohol-Related Consequences (SPARC I) is a five-year, NIAAA-funded randomized trial that enlists community support to implement environmental strategies to prevent excessive drinking on and around college campuses. The ultimate goal is to reduce high-risk drinking and alcohol-related consequences among college students. Preliminary analyses indicate that the intervention is having significant effects on several indicators of alcohol-related problems, but more time is needed to effectively work through the conceptual model and to realize and assess its full impact. Implementation will be extended for two years.

• Impacts of the Workplace on Indian Call-Center Workers
  Awarded $7,670, Spring 2007
  Source: WFU Social, Behavioral, and Economic Science Research Fund

  Successful operation of call-centers in India depends on the cultural competence and morale of the phone operators, who, in a virtual diaspora, work outside India while living in it. Their experience is both new and increasing, but, as yet, no reliable studies have assessed its potentially damaging effects. Evaluation of the acculturation processes and the morale/quality of life of the workers is needed to formulate their training and professional development. Focus-group meetings will be held in India to establish the critical items for a web-based questionnaire, administered to a statistically significant sample of call-center employees. The intellectual merit of this study lies in the use of a novel conceptual framework – diasporic studies – to compare the effects of call-center work with removal from place of origin. Through partnership with the Indian Institute of Health Management Research (IIHMR), research-based interventions will be devised to address the possible negative effects of the techno-diasporic condition. This pilot study will provide preliminary data for proposals to extramural sources.