Objective. To evaluate the construct validity of the Short Form 12-item Survey among users of a homeless day shelter. Adding brief health assessments has potential to provide information regarding the effect that programs have upon the health status and functioning of homeless persons.Study Setting. A convenience sample of 145 homeless persons at a day shelter in an urban setting.Study Design. Participants were verbally administered the SF-12 that provides information on mental and physical health status and the Dartmouth Improve Your Medical Care Survey TM (IYMC) that provides information on functional health, clinical symptoms, medical conditions, and health risk. The IYMC survey system has been widely used in clinical settings to assess health status and the outcomes of care.Data Collection/ /Extraction Methods. Construct validity was assessed by the following approaches: (a) the method of extreme groups was used where multivariate analysis of variance determined if SF-12 summary scores varied for individuals who differed in self-reported clinical symptoms and medical conditions, and (b) convergent validity was assessed by correlating SF-12 summary scores with the subscales.Principal Findings. Four to 10 point differences in physical health (PCS12) and 5-11 point differences in mental health (MCS12) were found between those who reported acute symptoms and medical conditions and those who did not. A 13-point difference in PCS12 scores and a 7-16-point difference in MCS12 scores were found for those who reported none or few to several symptoms or conditions. The summary scores and subscales yielded satisfactory convergent validity coefficients that ranged from 0.62 to 0.88 with one exception.

The results suggest that providers of care should ensure that they meet the information needs of patients with specific conditions because patients' perceptions of both quality of care and quality of life are associated with the clinicians' ability to transfer key information to their patients.

The dyadic cooperative learning situation was examined by analyzing the impact of specific roles and activities on each member of the dyad. In learning scientific text passages, one member of the cooperating pair served as a recaller/ oral summarizer and the other pair member served as either an active or passive listener/facilitator. Members of some treatment conditions alternated recaller and listener roles, while those in other conditions had fixed roles. Serving as a no-treatment control, students in one group used their own study techniques. The results indicated that both roles (fixed vs. alternating) and listener activities (active vs. passive) are important variables in cooperative learning. On free recall of text main ideas, fixed recallers outperformed fixed listeners, and pairs incorporating an active listener outperformed those that did not. Certain combinations of role and listener activity resulted in better performance than that achieved by individuals using their own study methods. Additionally, persons who alternated recaller/listener roles subjectively evaluated the cooperative learning experience more positively than the cooperative groups.There has been a growing interest i n the potential of students interacting with one another t o improve their acquisition of academic knowledge a n d skills.Requests for reprints should be sent to Joni E. Spurlin, Academic Support Services, Room 156, Gail Borden Building, The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Galveston, TX 77550. Downloaded by [University of Glasgow] at 04:37 22 December 2014 452 SPURLIN, DANSEREAU, LARSON, BROOKSThe interaction among students based on equal partnership in the learning experience, as opposed to fixed teacher/learner or tutor/tutee roles, has been termed cooperative learning. Students cooperatively studying textbook material in dyads (pairs) have been shown to perform better on delayed recall and recognition measures than students studying individually McDonald, Larson, Dansereau, & Spurlin, 1983). Although often indicating positive results (McDonald et al., 1983;Sharan, 1980;Slavin, 1980), the prior studies on cooperative learning have not attempted to examine critical dimensions of the experience systematically, for example, interaction and processing strategies, and individual differences. The present study was designed to be a first step in remedying some of the drawbacks of prior cooperative learning studies by systematically analyzing the effects of learning (interaction) strategies on the acquisition of scientific knowledge in the context of a dyadic learning situation.A study by McDonald et al. (1983) provides the basis for the present research. In the McDonald et al. study, an individual text learning strategy developed by was modified for use in dyadic learning. This strategy required the student pairs to read approximately 500 words of a 2,500-word passage. One student then served as recaller and attempted to orally summarize from memory what had been learned. The other member of the pair served as ...

The associations between childbearing factors and measures of adult obesity appear to be larger in white women compared to black women but relatively small overall. However, when considered as part of the constellation of factors that lead to obesity, even these small associations may be important in an overall obesity prevention strategy.