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INTRODUCTION: With the ratification of the Sustainable Development Goals, there is an increased emphasis on early childhood development (ECD) and well-being. The WHO led Global Scales for Early Development (GSED) project aims to provide population and programmatic level measures of ECD for 0-3 years that are valid, reliable and have psychometrically stable performance across geographical, cultural and language contexts. This paper reports on the creation of two measures: (1) the GSED Short Form (GSED-SF)-a caregiver reported measure for population-evaluation-self-administered with no training required and (2) the GSED Long Form (GSED-LF)-a directly administered/observed measure for programmatic evaluation-administered by a trained professional. METHODS: We selected 807 psychometrically best-performing items using a Rasch measurement model from an ECD measurement databank which comprised 66 075 children assessed on 2211 items from 18 ECD measures in 32 countries. From 766 of these items, in-depth subject matter expert judgements were gathered to inform final item selection. Specifically collected were data on (1) conceptual matches between pairs of items originating from different measures, (2) developmental domain(s) measured by each item and (3) perceptions of feasibility of administration of each item in diverse contexts. Prototypes were finalised through a combination of psychometric performance evaluation and expert consensus to optimally identify items. RESULTS: We created the GSED-SF (139 items) and GSED-LF (157 items) for tablet-based and paper-based assessments, with an optimal set of items that fit the Rasch model, met subject matter expert criteria, avoided conceptual overlap, covered multiple domains of child development and were feasible to implement across diverse settings. CONCLUSIONS: State-of-the-art quantitative and qualitative procedures were used to select of theoretically relevant and globally feasible items representing child development for chi

BACKGROUND: The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration awarded State Targeted Response grants to support states' efforts to address the opioid epidemic. In Nevada, one component of this grant was mobile recovery outreach teams (MROTs) that utilized peer recovery support specialists to provide care for qualifying patients in emergency departments (EDs). The Mobile Emergency Recovery Intervention Trial (MERIT) is a mixed methods study to assess the feasibility/acceptability and effectiveness of the MROT intervention. This protocol mainly describes the R33 research activities and outcomes. The full protocol can be found protocols.io. METHODS: Data will be derived from state-level data sets containing de-identified emergency department visits, substance use disorder treatment records, and mortality files; in-person mixed methods interviews; participant observation; and self-report process evaluation forms. Primary outcomes include Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) initiation and non-fatal overdose; secondary outcomes include MAT retention and fatal overdose. Quantitative hypotheses will be tested using generalized linear mixed effects models, Bayesian hierarchical models, and marginal Cox models. Qualitative interview data will be analyzed using an inductive thematic analysis procedure. DISCUSSION: It is impossible to conduct a randomized controlled trial of the effectiveness of the MROTs, given the ethical and logistical considerations of this intervention.This study's innovative design employs a mixed methods formative phase to examine feasibility and acceptability, and a quasi-experimental outcomes evaluation phase employing advanced statistical methods to mitigate bias and suggest causal inference regarding the effectiveness of the MROTs.Innovative interventions have been deployed in many states; evidence regarding their effectiveness is lacking, but critical to informing an effective public health response to the opioid epidemic.

© 2019, © 2019 National Association of Geoscience Teachers. An interdisciplinary undergraduate atmospheric science modeling course was cotaught at a midsize public university by three professors from atmospheric science, statistics, and design using a blended learning approach. The in-class portion of the course taught upper-level students numerical weather prediction modeling and statistical evaluation methods. Online modules were used to teach data visualization techniques and three foundational design principles upon which their efficacy depends : legibility, visual hierarchy, and appropriate use of color. Geoscience students need data visualization skills to prepare for careers in government, industry, and research that increasingly require work with big data and communication with diverse collaborators and audiences. This article focuses on the instructional approach for the visualization component of the course—specifically, the three teaching innovations used: online modules, an interdisciplinary teaching team, and design-focused data visualization instruction. Although course enrollment was low at four students, several valuable lessons were learned that can improve the teaching of visualization in geoscience courses, including the utility of structuring visualization instruction around two separate but complementary visualization skills: visualization for analysis and visualization for sharing knowledge. Evaluation of students’ visualization work at the conclusion of the course demonstrated improvement in the foundational design principles as well as improved ability to select appropriate visualization strategies for different situations. The methods used to assess these improvements are presented alongside illustrative examples of student work. Pre- and postcourse surveys indicate the students felt more confident in creating data visualizations upon completion of the course, and qualitative assessments of student work confirm increased application of found

Big data visualization–the visual-spatial display of quantitative information culled from huge data sets–is now firmly embedded within the everyday experiences of people across the globe, yet scholarship on it remains surprisingly small. Within this literature, critical theorizations of big data visualizations are rare, as digital positivist perspectives dominate. This paper offers a critical, design-informed perspective on big data visualization in wearable health tracking ecosystems like FitBit. I argue that such visualizations are tools of individualized, neoliberal governance that operate largely through experiences of seduction and addiction to facilitate participation in the corporate capture and monetization of personal information. Exploration of my personal experience of the FitBit ecosystem illuminates this argument and emphasizes the capacity for harm to individuals using these ecosystems, leading to an exploration of the complex professional challenges for user experience designers working on visualizations within the ecosystems of wearables.

As the journalism profession continues to reinvent itself, journalism professors struggle to keep up with technological advancements that provide their students with industry-relevant skills. This study seeks to understand how journalism professors find information about online tools for teaching, to learn about the efficacy of their current strategies for navigating the fractured information landscape. The diffusion of innovations perspective is applied to in-depth qualitative interviews with journalism professors. The study finds that early adopters are the most adept at seeking information about, and using, online tools. Consequently, they experience the least stress around information seeking about online tools.

Proposing a new, dynamic conception of citizenship, this book argues against understandings of citizenship as a collection of rights that can be either possessed or endowed, and demonstrates it is an emergent condition that has temporal and spatial dimensions. Furthermore, citizenship is shown to be continually and contingently reconstituted through the struggles between those considered insiders and outsiders. Significantly, these struggles do not result in a clear division between citizens and non-citizens, but in a multiplicity of states that are at once included within and excluded from the political community. These liminal states of citizenship are elaborated in relation to three specific forms of non-citizenship: the 'respectable illegal, the 'intimate foreigner' and the 'abject citizen'. Each of these modalities of citizenship corresponds to either the figure of the clandestino/a or the nomad as invoked in the 2008 Italian Security Package and a second set of laws, commonly referred to as the 'Nomad Emergency Decree'. Exploring how this legislation affected and was negotiated by individuals and groups who were constituted as 'objects of security', author Kate Hepworth focuses on the first-hand experience of individuals deemed threats to the nation. Situated within the field of human geography, the book draws on literature from citizenship studies, critical security studies and migration studies to show how processes of securitisation and irregularisation work to delimit between citizens and non-citizens, as well as between legitimate and illegitimate outsiders.

In May 2008, Berlusconi's newly elected coalition introduced new measures to facilitate the expulsion and repatriation of European community citizens, simultaneously declaring a 'State of Emergency with regards to the Settlement of Nomadic Communities in Lazio, Campania and Lombardy Regions'. Through an analysis of these laws and their material effects, this article will show how they constituted Romanian Roma as abject European citizens. In the process, it will argue that this process of abjection was dependent on earlier processes that first categorised the Roma as 'nomads' and relegated them to the abject space of the 'nomad camp'. The article will conclude by arguing that the constitution of the Roma as abject citizens does not only occur through the act of expulsion, but through the condition of deportability induced by the threat of expulsion. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.