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Social support could be a powerful weight-loss treatment moderator or mediator but is rarely assessed. We assessed the psychometric properties, initial levels, and predictive validity of a measure of perceived social support and sabotage from friends and family for healthy eating and physical activity (eight subscales). Overweight/obese women randomized to one of two 6-month, group-based behavioral weight-loss programs (N=267; mean BMI 32.1±3.5; 66.3% White) completed subscales at baseline, and weight loss was assessed at 6 months. Internal consistency, discriminant validity, and content validity were excellent for support subscales and adequate for sabotage subscales; qualitative responses revealed novel deliberate instances not reflected in current sabotage items. Most women (>75%) “never” or “rarely” experienced support from friends or family. Using non-parametric classification methods, we identified two subscales—support from friends for healthy eating and support from family for physical activity—that predicted three clinically meaningful subgroups who ranged in likelihood of losing ≥5% of initial weight at 6 months. Women who “never” experienced family support were least likely to lose weight (45.7% lost weight) whereas women who experienced both frequent friend and family support were more likely to lose weight (71.6% lost weight). Paradoxically, women who “never” experienced friend support were most likely to lose weight (80.0% lost weight), perhaps because the group-based programs provided support lacking from friendships. Psychometrics for support subscales were excellent; initial support was rare; and the differential roles of friend versus family support could inform future targeted weight-loss interventions to subgroups at risk.

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Civic agriculture is characterized in the literature as complementary and embedded social and economic strategies that provide economic benefits to farmers at the same time that they ostensibly provide socio-environmental benefits to the community. This paper presents some ways in which women farmers practice civic agriculture. The data come from in-depth interviews with women practicing agriculture in Pennsylvania. Some of the strategies women farmers use to make a living from the farm have little to do with food or agricultural products, but all are a product of the process of providing a living for farmers while meeting a social need in the community. Most of the women in our study also connect their business practices to their gender identity in rural and agricultural communities, and redefine successful farming in opposition to traditional views of economic rationality.

With the exponential increase in Web access, program evaluators need to understand the methodological benefits and barriers of using the Web to collect survey data from program participants. In this experimental study, the authors examined whether a Web survey can be as effective as the more established mail survey on three measures of survey effectiveness: response rate, question completion rate, and the lack of evaluative bias. Community- and university-based educators ( n = 274) attending a 2-day program were randomly assigned to receive a Web or mail survey evaluating the program. Among those participants successfully solicited by e-mail, Web survey participants were more likely to respond (95%) than mail survey participants (79%). Web survey participants completed similarly high numbers of quantitative questions as mail survey participants, provided longer and more substantive responses to qualitative questions, and did not demonstrate evidence of evaluative bias. These results suggest that program evaluators could expand their use of Web surveys among computer users.

Cooperative extension, as an outreach mechanism of land grant universities in the USA, has long served the educational needs of rural and agricultural communities. The educational programming of extension, however, is generally divided into areas that reflect, reify and reinforce the gendered division of labour on farms in the USA. While it is well documented that extension inadequately serves women in providing knowledge about production practices in contemporary agriculture, the mechanisms by which women's access to knowledge is hindered are not well understood. Using Freire's ideas about authentic educational subjects we explore the social construction of authentic farming and educational programming in the cooperative extension system. Using interviews with extension educators at a large land grant university, this article describe how extension educators identify certain types of farmers and farming as authentic, while certain types of farms are seen as inauthentic. This belief feeds into the institutional discourse that the educational opportunities offered by extension are appropriate for all audiences of authentic farmers. We conclude by offering insights into how cooperative extension can reorient its programming toward the emerging cultural economies of agriculture in rural communities.For what is the object of Extension work? More bushels of corn? More bales of cotton? No, these are but means to an end. The end, the object of Extension work, is to aid the farmer and his family to improve living conditions on the farm, to provide a more satisfying rural life. (Clyde William Warburton, 1930.

The identities of women on farms are shifting as more women enter farming and identify as farmers, as reflected by the 30 percent growth in women farmers in the U.S. census of agriculture (USDA 2009). This article draws from identity theory to develop a quantitative measure of the identities of farm women. The measure incorporates multiple roles farming women may perform and weights these roles by their salience to two farm identities, farm operator and farm partner. We use a sample of women on farms (n = 810) in the northeastern United States to assess the measures of role identity in relation to reported decision-making authority, farm tasks, and farm and individual characteristics. The findings provide a multidimensional view of farming women in the northeastern United States, a far more complex view than traditional survey research has previously captured. This research provides a measure that other researchers can use to assess the multiple and shifting identities of farming women in other sections of the United States.* We thank L. Moist, A. Schwartzberg, A. Stone, R. Terman, and J. Findeis for their assistance in coordinating the outreach and research efforts that made this article possible. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.