2013 — 2015 |
Stevens, Courtney Joyce |
F31Activity Code Description: To provide predoctoral individuals with supervised research training in specified health and health-related areas leading toward the research degree (e.g., Ph.D.). |
Mechanisms of Exercise Maintenance: Cancer Prevention in Healthy Older Women
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The vast majority of Americans do not engage in enough physical activity (PA) and rates of participation are particularly low for women aged 45 years or older. The association between regular PA and reduced risk for breast cancer is well established with some estimates suggesting that physically active women may be as much as 80% less likely to develop breast cancer compared to physically inactive women. For this reason, there is great public health incentive to increase PA rates among middle-aged women. How best to motivate PA behavior is an area of study in need of a more concrete theoretical framework. Research conducted across several broad areas of psychology including, clinical, social, and health have consistently implicated self-monitoring as an effective intervention for increasing participation in health behaviors (i.e., PA). In terms of what aspects of the PA experience might be most useful to self-monitor, recent work suggests that among the middle-aged female demographic, increased awareness of the immediate benefits PA holds for everyday life (i.e., affect improvement) may be important. The PA-affect relationship may be an especially relevant focus as more favorable affect during and immediately following exercise has been linked to subsequently greater PA intentions and more frequent exercise behavior over time. A crucial limitation of past work studying the PA-affect relationship has been the inherent inability to study the relationship using an experimental design. A specific aim of the proposed study is to address this gap in the literature. Although it is not possible to randomly assign an individual to have a pre-specified affective response to PA, it is possible to randomly assign an individual to attend to a pre-specified aspect of the PA experience through the use of self-monitoring. Specifically, this study will assign women aged 40-60 to self-monitor (by completing daily PA-journals) aspects of the PA experience that are psychological in nature (i.e., affect), physiological in nature (e.g., calories burned etc.), or neutral (i.e., self-reportonly the activity that was performed). The self-monitoring intervention will take part during first mont of study participation only - thereafter, participants will complete follow-up assessments at 3 and 6-months post-baseline that will assess levels of PA participation and other psychosocial variables. In addition to testing the effectiveness of the self- monitoring intervention, an exploratory aim of this project is to examine the mechanisms by which the self- monitoring interventions influenced behavior change and maintenance through a meditational analysis utilizing constructs from a novel theoretical model of PA, the Theory of Physical Activity Maintenance (PAM). The long-term objectives of this project are (1) to better understand the factors that motivate and maintain PA behavior among middle-aged women; and (2) to inform the design of future PA-based interventions and clinical trials focused on promoting women's health generally, and breast cancer prevention efforts specifically. ! ! !
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0.929 |
2015 — 2017 |
Witkow, Melissa Stevens, Courtney Becker-Blease, Kathryn |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Promoting Foundational Scientific Literacy Skills in Introductory Psychology
A rising tide of calls for improved science education underscores the importance and significance of incorporating stronger training of scientific thinking skills into first-year college science courses. This project addresses that need by developing, evaluating, and disseminating a set of scientific thinking teaching materials with proven efficacy in a variety of college settings. The materials will use core topics in Introductory Psychology in combination with real world issues and controversies to train students' scientific thinking skills. The project builds on cognitive psychology research on human learning and established best-practices for science education.
The overarching goals of the project are to develop, evaluate, and disseminate a set of flexible, research-based teaching modules to improve the training of scientific literacy and quantitative reasoning skills in Introductory Psychology. The project will develop a set of scientific thinking instructional modules, keyed to the major topics covered in Introductory Psychology. A unique element of the project is its intentionally collaborative framework, which involves a network of faculty from four academic sites in Oregon including two community colleges (CCs), a large four-year Research 1 institution (R1), and a selective, liberal arts undergraduate college (SLAC). This inter-institutional network will collaborate on the development and formative assessment of all resources, including identifying adaptations of modules for different course formats and student needs. A comprehensive assessment plan will provide a summative assessment of the effectiveness of the teaching modules at all three institution types (CC/R1/SLAC) prior to broader dissemination to the psychology teaching community.
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0.951 |
2019 — 2022 |
Witkow, Melissa Stevens, Courtney |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Promoting Graphical Literacy Skills At Two and Four Year Colleges Through Virtual Tutoring
With support from the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program: Education and Human Resources (IUSE: EHR), this project aims to serve the national interest by studying and understanding how all students develop graphical literacy, an essential concept for the modern workforce. This project will develop virtual tutoring systems and evaluate how they promote graphical literacy at both a two-year community college and a four-year primarily undergraduate institution. Understanding and interpreting graphical information is a critical foundational skill for STEM majors and the STEM-literate public. While college textbooks and curricula expect students to have mastered graph-reading skills, evidence indicates that college students struggle to read and interpret line and bar graphs. This is particularly true when graphs include multiple variables that increase the complexity and structure of the graph. Several versions of the tutoring system will be tested, each based on competing theories of how individuals learn, to evaluate the most effective method or methods for different students and in different environments. By its conclusion, this project will have developed several research-validated, flexible virtual tutoring systems that can be easily and freely disseminated.
This project will develop virtual tutoring systems for graphical literacy by drawing on preliminary data demonstrating common points of failure in graphical literacy exhibited by first- and second-year college students. Within these tutoring systems, a controlled experiment informed by cognitive and social-developmental theories of learning will test the independent and interactive effects of context and scaffolding to promote graphical literacy using a 2x2 ANOVA design. Additional hierarchical linear regression analyses will test the role of potential moderators of program impact as well as their interactions with program features. The proposed research is novel in that it explicitly examines competing learning theories and their interaction. An important element of the project is its intentionally inclusive framework that evaluates materials across both two-year and four-year college settings, as well as the role of individual learner characteristics on learning outcomes. An advisory board, consisting of faculty from biology, chemistry, exercise and health sciences, mathematics, and physics, will provide interdisciplinary insights, including discipline-specific applications or program modifications. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
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0.951 |