Contents

Note from Nayda

This is the second quarterly issue of our series of research newsletters for use in your programs. We all appreciated your input and suggestions after the first issue was published and we always look forward to getting feedback from you. We are very happy that our new research newsletter has been so useful. For your convenience, the name of each contributor is linked to their e-mail address.

Thank-you to all faculty who contributed this issue:

Dr. Nayda I. Torres , Professor and Chair, Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences

The NICHD Child Care Study Results: What do they mean for parents, child care professionals and decision makers?

By Christine M. Todd, Professor of Child and Family Development, University of Georgia

According to the results from the latest wave of the longitudinal National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Child Care Study, released April 2001, high quality child care continues to be very important. When the latest round of results were released, the media focused only on the findings related to child behavior problems. As Dr. Christine Todd points out, the media focused on one small part of the findings and distorted the more complex message of the overall findings -- the ways in which quality child care matters. In this article, Dr. Todd gives detailed information on the major findings and suggests implications of these results for parents, caregivers, employers and decision-makers.

The NICHD Child Care Study

The NICHD child care study has followed more than 1,300 children at 10 different sites across the country from birth into the school-age years. The study looked at the interaction between child characteristics, the home environment and child care settings to help explain how the children developed over time.

Findings from this study confirm what other studies have demonstrated -- the quality of child care matters. Caregivers with higher levels of education and who worked in settings with fewer children per adult were more sensitive and responsive to children and provided a more stimulating environment. More stimulating and well-organized environments resulted in children developing more advanced attention and memory skills and better vocabularies than children who spent more time watching TV. Children with extensive TV habits showed more behavior problems, had smaller vocabularies and did not do as well on math problems.

This longitudinal study also found that the type of care settings affects language development. Compared to children in other types of care, children in a family day care setting had better language outcomes during their toddler years, but lower language outcomes during their preschool years. By the preschool years, children in center care were displaying more advanced language and language skills. The positive effects of center-based care on cognitive development may be related to the finding that center-based caregivers had higher levels of training and education, provided more language stimulation and provided more structured activities than home-based providers

The number of hours in care also mattered. At age 4-1/2, 16% of the children who were in care 30 hours or more per week demonstrated higher levels of problem behaviors than children in fewer hours of care. This was also true for children who were in kindergarten, 17% of whom showed higher levels of these behaviors. However, children in care fewer than 10 hours per week showed very low levels of problem behaviors. Only 6% of these children demonstrated higher levels of these behaviors at 4-1/2 years, although this increased to 9% in kindergarten. The author notes that it will be important to follow children with few hours in child care through elementary school to determine if problem behaviors in this group increase as they spend more time in complex, large-group settings. She infers that children will begin to demonstrate more problem behaviors whenever they enter complex, large-group settings. This may happen sooner for children in child care than for children cared for at home.

The NICHD study also found that children's behavior was also related to the quality of parenting and the home environment. Children whose mothers were more sensitive and responsive to their needs displayed better pre-academic and language skills and fewer behavior problems, regardles of the child care situation. What important implications do these findings have for parents, caregivers, employers and decision-makers?

For Parents -- In selecting high quality child care, parents need to look for an environment where children spend less time watching TV and more time talking to adults. Children need to be exposed to caregiver-initiated activities that stimulate language and cognitive development as well as activities that promote social development. High-quality settings provide a balance between structured and unstructured activities. It is essential to provide time for less-structured activities to allow children to develop creativity and learn problem solving skills as they interact with others in socially appropriate ways.

For Caregivers -- Caregivers need to carefully examine the care setting they provide for children.

How do the caregivers interact with the children? What experiences do they provide to children? Do caregivers talk with children often in a sensitive and stimulating manner? Are there structured activities that help children pay attention, learn and remember? Is there also time to learn through play and interact with other children in unstructured activities? When children show aggressive or unkind behaviors, do caregivers teach them better ways to handle the situation? Children need guidance from adults as they learn to use words instead of hitting.

For Employers and Decision-Makers -- Employers and decision-makers can work together to ensure that there are many different high-quality care options available to parents in local communities. Employers can examine their benefit packages to ensure that parents have access to benefits that can help them afford higher quality care. Decision-makers can promote high-quality child care standards, caregiver professional development opportunities, and appropriate adult-child ratios for the age groups served. Quality care by parents and other caregivers will help ensure that children grow up to be good employees and caring, competent, productive and engaged adults.

Implications for Extension Programming

When designing workshops or trainings on quality care for children, these findings can assist you in providing your audiences with research-based information about the relationship between child care experiences and children's developmental outcomes. High-quality care -- both in the home and out of the home -- results in better outcomes for children.

Written by: Dr. Millie Ferrer, Professor, Leadership Development and Adult Education and Ed Burford, former Welfare to Work Coordinator

Traffic-Related Fatalities Among Older Drivers: Past and Future Trends

Bedard, M., Stones, M., Guyatt, G., & Hirdes, J. (2001). Traffic-related fatalities among older drivers and passengers: Past and future trends. The Gerontologist, 41(6), 751-756.

This study examines traffic fatalities as a public health issue and seeks to determine the relationships between age and traffic-related fatalities. In the past, younger drivers, those 30 years and younger, were the age group that experienced the highest fatalities resulting from automobile accidents. Young drivers were at higher risk due to inexperience and risk-taking behaviors (i.e. high speed, alcohol use, distractions in the vehicle). While older adults (those 65 and older) were involved in more accidents, in the past, the accidents were less likely to be fatal.

Using a forecasting strategy, the authors determined that by 2015, the percentage of older adults who die in traffic-related accidents will reach the same levels as currently experienced by younger drivers. For example, older adults accounted for 10% of traffic-related fatalities in 1975, 17% in 1998 and it is projected that by 2015 older adults will make up 27% of these deaths. The researchers also predict that from 1975-2015, the number of older women fatally injured will increase by 373% while the number of fatally injured men will increase by 271%.

These statistics cannot be attributed to demographics alone. While it is true that the population of older adults is increasing at a pace much faster than other age groups, it is clear that there are other factors contributing to the increased numbers of deaths due to automobile accidents. The researchers point out that as the baby boomers age, we can expect older adults to be driving more often, driving more miles, and continuing to drive at a faster speed than today's elders.

The researchers offer these suggestions:

  1. Older drivers must understand what kinds of situations put them at higher risk. For example, older adults are more at risk at intersections and in merging situations because of limited peripheral vision, reduced flexibility in the neck and shoulders, and shorter stature (particularly among women).
  2. Because older women typically have less driving experience than older men, they may need gender-specific refresher courses.
  3. Better screening protocols and strategies designed to identify and re-train drivers with reduced driving experience/abilities, health problems or physical impairments may reduce the risk of death to drivers and their passengers.
  4. Vehicle characteristics may need to be revised to make automobiles safer for older adults (i.e. positioning of seat belts, car designs, air bags, etc.).
  5. Revisions of signage, lighting, and traffic patterns and control may be useful ways to reduce the risk of death to older adults.

Application for County Extension Faculty

Older drivers are a serious concern in Florida where the population of older adults far exceeds the national averages. This research article alerts us to the fact that the situation will become more and more of a problem in the next several years. In spite of these concerns, driving remains the most important key to independence among older adults. Public transportation has not kept up with the needs in urban areas, and is virtually non-existent in rural areas.

Extension can best address the issues raised by the researchers by forming partnerships with public safety organizations and others who focus on issues related to aging. AARP has developed an excellent and well-respected driver re-education program titled AARP 55 Alive. Information can be found on the web at:  http://www.aarp.org/families/driver_safety/  and a course locator here: https://locator.aarp.org/vmis/programs/dsp/course_locator.jsp If classes are not available in your area, you may want to partner with your local AARP chapter to get a class started. Two especially helpful publications on the issues related to driving, driving safely, and concerns about when someone must give up their right to drive are also available on the web. The first, from AARP is simply titled http://www.aarp.org/families/driver_safety/driver_safetyissues/a2004-06-22-carsafety.html  and offers tips on safe driving while the second publication comes from Oregon State University Cooperative Extension Services and focuses more on physical and emotional issues related to driving than on specific tips for safe driving. This publication is also on the web. Begin at http://eesc.orst.edu/agcomwebfile/search/default.html and search for "DRIVING" under the Publications and Videos section. The 28-page booklet is available for $2.00 or can be downloaded in PDF format.

Written by: Carolyn S. Wilken , Ph.D., M.P.H., Associate Professor, Family Life

http://www.aarp.org/families/driver_safety/driver_safetyissues/

 

Research Summary: Unsafe Food Handling by Elders

This research summary is based on published research by M.A. Gettings and N.E. Kiernan Journal of Nutrition Education (Volume 33 (3) May/June 2001).

Despite the fact that senior citizens are highly vulnerable to food borne illness, a study by researchers at Pennsylvania State University revealed that older people tend to have more bad food handling habits than the rest of the population. The researchers interviewed people (n=74) ages 60 to 85 during focus groups held at local senior centers, neutral places that seniors visit frequently in both urban and rural settings.

Here are their findings:

  • Many seniors used touch, feel or sight to determine whether food was fully cooked instead of using a thermometer.
  • Some were storing hot food in large containers in the fridge, as opposed to portioning it in smaller containers to cool faster, thus risking that the center of the dish might remain at a high enough temperature for harmful bacteria to grow.
  • When told of their unsafe food handling, many countered that they've never been sick, so why change now?
  • The researchers indicated that this group of population is just doing what they learned from their mothers and grandmothers, and it was right at the time. However, these people who are 75 and 85 years old now learned from people who were cooking 50 and 60 years ago. Now things are so much different.

Conclusions:

  • This study concluded that educational efforts among seniors should include the most current, research-based scientific facts associated with food safety, the link between inappropriate practices and threat to their health and preferred delivery methods.
  • For food safety education, seniors in this study recommended programs, videotapes, television, newspapers, radio, church bulletins, and written educational pieces. Such educational efforts should help support safe food handling in home for the continued independence of seniors.

Written by: Dr. Amy Simonne ), Assistant Professor, Food Safety and Quality

Extension Educators Teach Retirement Planning Through Distance Education

Summary

The average American can expect to live 17 or more years in retirement. Yet only 39% of Americans have tried to calculate the amount of money they need to save to fund these years. Planning for retirement is complex and many experts suggest that retirement planning should include topics such as investing and managing assets, tax planning, estate planning, and planning for long-term care.

Sharon A. DeVaney and Janet C. Bechman, Purdue University, developed a distance education web-based course "Planning for a Secure Retirement" to help fill this need. This course can be found at www.ces.purdue.edu/retirement.

Justification for this program included a report from the think tank on retirement planning for the 21st century. This report addressed the need for individuals and families to assume financial responsibility for their retirement. In order to do this individuals and families need education as well as discipline to set goals, assess their financial position, evaluate that position and make decisions about their retirement plan. Yet most people have received no formal education on these topics.

This web-based program includes 10 modules. They are:

  1. Are you ready to retire?
  2. How much will your expenses be in retirement?
  3. When can you collect Social Security?
  4. Would you like a quick estimate of income needed for retirement?
  5. Are you eligible for Medicare and other health benefits?
  6. Do you have a retirement plan that your employer funds?
  7. Are you self-employed and responsible for your own retirement?
  8. Do you have an Individual Retirement Account (IRA)?
  9. What is a lump sum distribution? What should you do with it? and
  10. Do you have other concerns?

The authors link to variety of sites for expert information, such as IRS and Social Security. They have included several work sheets to make the course interactive. In addition a certificate is offered for persons completing 5 or more of the modules.

Implications for Extension Programming

The authors are to be commended for their creativity in using this technology to deliver Extension programming. The audience most likely to benefit from this type of delivery system is professionals and/or baby boomers. In the first year of operation over 7,000 individuals registered for the program.

I see this course as a good in-service for Florida Extension Educators as well as a good reference site for retirement information.

Source: DeVaney, Sharon A. and Bechman, Janet C. (2001). "Planning for a Secure Retirement with Distance Learning" in The Journal of the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education.

Written by: Dr. Jo Turner , CFP, Professor, Family and Consumer Economics

Youth Leadership

VanLinden, J. and Fertman, C. (1998). Youth Leadership: A Guide to Understanding Leadership Development in Adolescents. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Josephine vanLinden and Carl Fertman have been observing adolescents in leadership roles for over a decade. This extensive contact has prompted vanLinden and Fertman to develop their own unique theory on leadership development, one grounded in adolescent development theory, and therefore the first of it's kind. VanLinden and Fertman base their theory on the assumption that everyone has the potential to be a leader.

Leadership is a concept that is constantly redefined. VanLinden and Fertman define leadership as a personal and developmental process. They believe that leadership is composed of three stages and that individuals can progress through these stages with the development of skills and through the encouragement, guidance and support of older youth and adults.

  1. Stage 1 -- Awareness: Adolescents in this stage do not think of leadership as part of their daily lives. They view leaders as impressive and possessing traits that they believe are far removed from themselves.
  2. Stage 2 -- Interaction: Youth begin to recognize that they possess leadership abilities and potential. These youth acquire knowledge and skills in the areas of leadership information, communication, and decision-making.
  3. Stage 3 -- Mastery: Includes adolescents that possess the ability to use leadership skills and abilities to create and generate new interest and energy in some parts of their lives.

Within each of these three stages of leadership, vanLinden and Fertman have identified five leadership development dimensions:

  1. Leadership Information: Pertains to what adolescents know about leaders and leadership. Accurate information is crucial if an individual is going to develop into a good leader.
  2. Leadership Attitude: Adolescents dispositions, thoughts, and feelings (both positive and negative) toward identifying themselves as leaders.
  3. Communication skills: The exchange of thoughts, messages, and information. Communication is important because it permits the flow of information from one individual or group to another.
  4. Decision-making: choosing between competing courses of action
  5. Stress-management (locus of control): how adolescents react to and deal with the stress in their lives

Adults, including parents, and communities are crucial to the development of adolescents' leadership skills. They are very important to nurturing adolescent leaders. Adults are needed to engage youth in new activities to challenge adolescents in new ways. Adults are also important in teaching youth about communication, group dynamics, and stress management, all important factors in leadership development and guiding them through the experiential learning process. Organizations and communities also have an important role in fostering adolescents' leadership development. One way that this can be accomplished is by understanding that leadership opportunity is plentiful and adolescents are viable candidates for these positions. Attitudinal change within our organizations and communities, challenging people to think of everyone, including youth, as leaders is another way to increase youth leadership development. An illustration of these is the 4-H program's emphasis on developing youth-adult partnerships.

Written by: Karen Henry

Leadership Development: News You Can Use

One of the most explicit adolescent leadership development theories to date has been developed by vanLinden and Fertman. Prefaced with the ideas that anyone can be a leader, including youth, and that leadership is a developmental process, they prescribed three stages of leadership development: (1) Awareness, (2) Interaction and (3) Mastery. Also, vanLinden and Fertman describe five dimensions of leadership development that are within each of the three stages: leadership attitude, leadership information, communication skills, decision-making skills and stress management (locus of control). In addition, vanLinden and Fertman incorporate the ideas of transactional and transformational leadership into their theory. Transactional leadership focuses on the tasks and skills that are associated with being a leader, while transformational leadership focuses on the process of leadership and what it means to be a leader.

Despite the comprehensiveness of their theory, it has never been empirically tested. Because of this, Karen Henry, a University Scholar Student in the Department of Family, Youth, and Community Sciences, under the direction of Dr. Joy Jordan, developed a research study using this theoretical framework in the Spring and Summer of 2000. A survey instrument was developed to determine whether youth could be classified into these three stages of leadership development, using the five dimensions that vanLinden and Fertman prescribed. The research questions were (1) can reliable measures, or "indicators," of youth leadership development in adolescent 4-Hers' be developed, and if so, (2) is there a significant relationship between the stage of development and their leadership development, locus of control, and type of leadership experiences.

Methodology

The sample that was used for the study consisted of 550 4-H youth, between the ages of 13 and 18, attending an annual event at the University of Florida in July 2000. A 69-item survey instrument was designed using the five "dimensions" across each stage of leadership development. The five dimensions were structured into four major subscales within the survey:

  1. Leadership Attitude and leadership information (19 questions)
  2. Communication skills (17 questions)
  3. Decision-making skills (13 questions)
  4. Locus of control (or stress management) (10 questions)

Each of the items in these four subscales represented a possible indicator of stage 1, 2, or 3 level of development. Also, with the exception of the locus of control items, all three utilized the Likert Scale, with a range from 1-5, signifying, "never" through "always," with "about half the time" denoting the mid-point. The locus of control items were ten true/false questions. Reliability was confirmed by doing a Cronbach's alpha test. The overall reliability coefficient of the subscales leadership attitude and information, communication, and decision-making was .83, with reliability coefficients for the different stages ranging from .7123 to .4038.

In addition there were 10 questions in the survey pertaining to the youth's leadership experience, both inside and outside of 4-H, interest in pursuing future leadership endeavors, and whether or not they felt supported by the adults around them.

Results

Of the 550 surveys distributed, 338 usable returns were received. Youth were successfully classified into three distinct leadership stages with three hundred and twenty-seven (327) of the 338 usable surveys falling into one of these three stages.

  • Stage 1-- Awareness- 88 youth (27%)
  • Stage 2 -- Interaction- 85 youth (26%)
  • Stage 3 -- Mastery- 154 youth (47%)

The fact that almost 50% of the youth fell into stage three, can be attributed to the strong leadership development component that is associated with 4-H. In addition, age was not a factor in influencing the leadership stage of the youth; thereby signifying that adolescent development, itself does not account for the youth's progression through the stages.

These stages were then used as a independent variable for determining the relationship between the stages and the other measures within the study. The first analysis focused on their overall Leadership Development Score (LD), otherwise defined as the combined score of leadership attitude/information, communication skills and decision-making skills. Using an analysis of variance, a mean score was calculated for youth in each of the three stages and these analyses revealed a significant difference (p≤.01). The data illustrated that as youth progressed through the stages, then the higher their mean score in the area of 'leadership development.' The mean scores were: Stage 1 (149.76), Stage 2 (166.79) and Stage 3 (164.57). Scheffe post hoc analyses were used to determine where these differences were within the stages. 4-Hers' leadership scores in Stage 1 were significantly lower than those of Stage 2 and 3. The two point differential between Stage 2 and Stage 3, with the score of adolescents in Stage 2 being slightly higher, was not significant. And it could theoretically be expected, because of the overconfidence that youth in Stage 2 possess in regards to their ability to be a leader. Adolescents in Stage 3 have a more realistic view of their strengths and weaknesses as a leader.

The next question can be asked: "Did different levels of leadership experiences, both transactional and transformational, and within 4-H or other youth organizations, exist between the three stages of development?"

The officer positions that they held both inside (OFF) and outside of 4-H (OYL) were used as indicators of transactional leadership experiences. OFF described the score created by weighting both the type of position (President, VP, Secretary) and the level of the position (club, county, district, state). OYL signified officer or leadership positions that youth participated in within other youth organizations. It was determined that there were different levels of experience associated with each of the three stages. A significant difference existed regarding both OFF (p≤ .05) and OYL (p≤ .01) using ANOVA (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Variable

Leadership Experiences by Stages

F.

Sig.

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

OFF

18.82

22.40

28.31

3.63

0.028

OYL

1.08

1.10

1.66

6.27

0.002

O4hLD

2.40

2.48

3.39

7.38

0.001

Indicators of transformational leadership (O4hLD), or a different level of leadership experiences that was not position-based was examined for differences as well. Also, using an ANOVA analysis, significant differences (p ≤ .01) were found (see Figure 1). The data illustrates that as youth progress through the stages, they acquire, develop, and refine skills that help them to be better leaders. The experiences that these young people have coincide with an increase in their competencies and stages. Likewise, providing young people with transactional leadership roles, for example leading a club service project or teaching younger youth how to sew, constitutes a higher level of leadership experience and creates a significantly higher discrepancy between Stage 3 and the other two stages.

In regards to Locus of Control (Stress Management), those youth that were classified in a higher stage of leadership development, also possessed a higher locus of control score, and the differences were found to be significant (p ≤ .01).

Implications

What does this mean for Extension and the youth, adults, and organization in your community? Numerous implications exist with this research, especially regarding leadership development and Extension 4-H programming. If youth are, in fact, able to be classified into stages of leadership development, potential exists to develop programs that are stage-specific. This would allow for programs that better serve our youth. First, because programs would be stage-specific and the material and learning experiences would coincide with where the youth are developmentally. Most important, it would allow the potential capacity to track the youth's progress from one stage to another and through the various stages. This would allow 4-H professionals to more effectively measure and document the impact of the 4-H program on adolescent development.

Moreover, the data stresses the importance of adult, organizational, and community support of youth as they develop as leaders. Adult guidance and encouragement is crucial. They can assist youth with acquiring skills and processing experiences that could contribute to them being more developed leaders. Also, organizations and community opportunities can allow youth the means to develop leadership skills with practice. This is important for Extension to recruit, train, and develop adults, both employees and volunteers, that possess the skills to aid youth in their development, in leadership and otherwise. Also, Extension has resources they could contribute to help organizations and communities foster development of youth in their area.

Reference: VanLinden, J. and Fertman, C. (1998). Youth Leadership: A Guide to Understanding Leadership Development in Adolescents. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Written by: Karen Henry 4-H Student Assistant, UF University Scholar and Dr. Joy Jordan Associate Professor, Youth Development