Project Senior Art was conceived in answer to the growing need for worthwhile directed activities in our community senior centers and to provide valuable community-based learning experiences for university art students. This intergenerational program recognizes the unique intellectual abilities of older adults and meets the educational needs of senior participants and college art students, providing both creative opportunities for personal growth. Fundamental to the successful development and implementation of the program, and the focus of this study, is ascertaining the experiential art and crafts preferences of the targeted senior adult population. Personal interviews, focus group discussions, and a survey instrument were used to secure the information necessary to plan experiential art activities, recruit student facilitators, and provide the core course content. A high interest in traditional and nontraditional art activities was expressed, with senior adults citing photography, painting, and memory book making as the most preferred media.

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Survey instruments have been developed to measure whether someone claims to be religious but do not address the degree to which someone is satisfied with their religious commitment. The Religious Surrender and Attendance Satisfaction Scale (RSASS) was revised to measure both a person's level of religious commitment and satisfaction with level of religious commitment. This study was conducted to determine initial validity for the satisfaction portion of the RSASS. Construct validity measures provided initial confirmation of the utility of RSASS as a measure of satisfaction with religious commitment, that can be used by nurses in practice and research.

Recognizing and understanding the potentially powerful roles that religiousness and spirituality (RS) may serve in the prevention and amelioration of disease, as well as symptom management and health related quality of life, significantly enhances research and clinical efforts across many areas of behavioral medicine. This article examines the knowledge established to date and suggests advances that remain to be made. We begin with a brief summary of the current knowledge regarding RS as related to three exemplary health conditions: (a) cardiovascular disease; (b) cancer; and, (c) substance abuse. We then focus on particular concerns for future investigations, emphasizing conceptual issues, possible mediators and moderators of relationships or effects, and methodology. Our discussion is framed by a conceptual model that may serve to guide and organize future investigations. This model highlights a number of important issues regarding the study of links between RS and health: (a) RS comprise many diverse constructs, (b) the mechanisms through which RS may influence health outcomes are quite diverse, and (c) a range of different types of health and health relevant outcomes may be influenced by RS. The multidimensional nature of RS and the complexity of related associations with different types of health relevant outcomes present formidable challenges to empirical study in behavioral medicine. These issues are referred to throughout our review and we suggest several solutions to the presented challenges in our summary. We end with a presentation of barriers to be overcome, along with strategies for doing so, and concluding thoughts.

Pender’s health promotion model guided this descriptive/correlational study exploring the relationship between religiosity and health-promoting behaviors of pregnant women at Pregnancy Resource Centers (PRCs). A consecutive sample included women who knew they were pregnant at least 2 months, could read/write English, and visited PRCs in eastern Pennsylvania. Participants completed self-report surveys that examined religiosity, demographics, pregnancy-related variables, services received at PRCs, and health-promoting behaviors. Women reported they “sometimes” or “often” engaged in health-promoting behaviors, Hispanic women reported fewer health-promoting behaviors than non-Hispanic women, and women who attended classes at the centers reported more frequent health-promoting behaviors than those who did not attend classes. In separate multiple linear regressions, organized, non-organized, and intrinsic religiosity and satisfaction with surrender to God explained additional variance in health-promoting behaviors above and beyond what Hispanic ethnicity and attending classes at the PRCs explained in pregnant women at PRCs.

Salivary cortisol has been measured extensively in developmental research over the last three decades. The purpose of this article is to summarize the contributions to and limitations of salivary cortisol measurement in developmental research and propose future directions for research that includes salivary cortisol measurement. The properties of cortisol, the history of its burgeoning popularity, and the utility and limitations of (a) cortisol as a biological indicator, (b) saliva as a source of cortisol, and (c) various saliva collection methodologies are described. The current state of understanding about what is and is not reliably predictable from cortisol is summarized and the value of salivary cortisol measurement in developmental research is discussed, addressing whether methodology could be driving research design. Recommendations are made for streamlining study design and reporting within developmental research.

Book Summary: The International Guide to Student Achievement brings together and critically examines the major influences shaping student achievement today. There are many, often competing, claims about how to enhance student achievement, raising the questions of "What works?" and "What works best?" World-renowned bestselling authors, John Hattie and Eric M. Anderman have invited an international group of scholars to write brief, empirically-supported articles that examine predictors of academic achievement across a variety of topics and domains. Rather than telling people what to do in their schools and classrooms, this guide simply provides the first-ever compendium of research that summarizes what is known about the major influences shaping students’ academic achievement around the world. Readers can apply this knowledge base to their own school and classroom settings. The 150+ entries serve as intellectual building blocks to creatively mix into new or existing educational arrangements and aim for quick, easy reference. Chapter authors follow a common format that allows readers to more seamlessly compare and contrast information across entries, guiding readers to apply this knowledge to their own classrooms, their curriculums and teaching strategies, and their teacher training programs.

An abundance of evidence supports that stress predicts poor health, and religiosity, broadly defined, typically predicts good health. It is possible that one mechanism by which religiosity positively impacts health is through reduction in or prevention of the stress response, and that Surrender (Surrender to God) is a measure that captures aspects of religiosity that would predict lowered stress levels. In the present investigation, two samples were studied in order to investigate the relationship between one characterization of religiosity (Surrender) and stress. Participants in Study 1 were 460 (306 female) Southern Appalachian undergraduate university students who completed the Surrender Scale (Wong-McDonald & Gorsuch, 2000) and the State–Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI, Spielberger, 1983) online during spring 2009. Study 2 utilized a high-risk (low income and/or high pregnancy risk) sample of 230 pregnant women involved in a longitudinal study who completed the Surrender Scale and the Prenatal Psychosocial Profile (PPP, Curry, Campbell, & Christian, 1994), which contains an 11-item stress measure, during their first research contact early in pregnancy. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that Surrender was consistently inversely related to stress on both the STAI and the PPP. These findings contribute to the current understanding of the religiosity–health association in two ways. First, they offer support for Surrender and its associated lower stress levels to be explored as a mechanism by which religiosity influences health. Second, findings support the exploration of the potential for stress reduction through increasing Surrender in reportedly religious individuals. (APA PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

Excerpt: Are home and private schools a “cost” to traditional public schools? This argument has often been used by local school districts, and others, to push for legislation that would restrict the establishment of these alternative schools.

Excerpt: Driven by parents’ beliefs that home- school learning environments can be superior to those of public or private schools, as well as a desire by parents to spend more time together as a family, Nevada homeschooling has undergone remarkable growth during the past decade.