Biomedical subjects

Frederick L Newman

Publications and source records attributed to Frederick L Newman.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

Internal barriers to help seeking for middle-aged and older women who experience intimate partner violence.

There has been relatively little qualitatively or quantitatively published research to guide the field in identifying and addressing barriers to seeking help for older women who experience domestic violence. Women over the age of 45 have seldom been participants in research on domestic violence. This paper describes results from a qualitative study that focused on reactions to and internalization of abusive behaviors of an intimate partner. Twenty-one focus groups were conducted with 134 middle- aged and older women. Analysis of the data identified six factors that describe reactions to abusive behavior that become barriers to help seeking, including self-blame, powerlessness, hopelessness, the need to protect family, and the need to keep such abuse secret from others. These.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2004

Planning for long-term care: concept, definition, and measurement.

PURPOSE: This study explores the development and testing of an instrument to measure long-term-care planning behavior. DESIGN AND METHODS: Researchers operationalized proposed constructs and response styles as statements in a questionnaire. A telephone survey involved 150 randomly selected residents of Miami-Dade County, Florida who were between the ages of 55 and 70. Responses underwent exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and reliability testing. RESULTS: The trimmed long-term-care planning instrument of 23 items had five subscales with high internal reliability (coefficients >.70), a comparative fit index of.987, and a root mean square error of approximation of.050. Responses involved making choices about housing, readiness to use help from family and friends, maintaining one's health, saving and investing money, and not accepting the need to ask for help. IMPLICATIONS: Future research of long-term-care planning behaviors can use the instrument. Practitioners may use the instrument as a diagnostic inventory, alone or in combination with personalized educational interventions aimed at increasing awareness of and planning for future dependency and long-term-care assistance.

Aged↗

PubMed2003

Equivalence to normal?

The two articles discussed are integral ingredients of a greater whole Ken Howard envisioned. The first (Saunders, Howard, & Newman, 1988) refined our understanding of clinical significance, challenging researchers to clearly define the character and range of behaviors identified as normal or nonclinical for a specific population. The second (Rogers, Howard, & Vessey, 1993) focused on tests of equivalency between two experimental groups. Both were part of a general theme: A study's outcome requires a careful delineation of the norms and "normality" for that population as well as to whether the differences or equivalencies of the outcomes from these norms are important to the client, to the client's family, or to the community/society in which the client is to function. Ken's second authorship, typical on his many publications, honored his dedication to mentoring those who would improve upon what is currently understood.

Confidence Intervals↗

PubMed2003

Longitudinal Analysis when the Experimenter does not Determine when Treatment Ends: What is Dose-Response?

The most appropriate amount of psychotherapy to address a particular problem is of interest to clinicians, consumers and those responsible for funding of care. The dose-response relationship has been examined within the context of randomized clinical trials, meta-analysis as well as naturalistic studies; however, each of these approaches has limits. Many of these approaches have conceptually blurred two distinct concepts: do participants with different characteristics need different amounts of therapy and do otherwise equal participants show different outcomes when given different levels of (a particular type of) therapy? For any study design, if the experimenter does not determine the duration of therapy, then the length of therapy is said to be endogenous. This endogeneity can bias any attempt to untangle the answer to these two questions. An extension of the biasing effect of this endogeneity involves the choice of times to assess outcome; if outcome assessment depends on when therapy is terminated (rather than exogenously chosen) then estimates of the trajectory of outcome may be biased. Design considerations to minimize this effect are discussed.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2003

Familias Unidas: the efficacy of an intervention to promote parental investment in Hispanic immigrant families.

This paper reports a test of the efficacy of Familias Unidas, a Hispanic-specific, ecologically focused, parent-centered preventive intervention, in promoting protection against and reducing risk for adolescent behavior problems. Specifically, the intervention was designed to foster parental investment, reduce adolescent behavior problems, and promote adolescent school bonding/academic achievement, all protective factors against drug abuse and delinquency. One-hundred sixty seven Hispanic families of 6th and 7th grade students from three South Florida public schools were stratified by grade within school and randomly assigned to intervention and no-intervention control conditions. Results indicated that Familias Unidas was efficacious in increasing parental investment and decreasing adolescent behavior problems, but that it did not significantly impact adolescent school bonding/academic achievement. Summer-vacation rates of adolescent behavior problems were six times higher in the control condition than in the intervention condition. Furthermore, change in parental investment during the intervention was predictive of subsequent levels of adolescent behavior problems. The findings suggest that Familias Unidas is efficacious in promoting protection and reducing risk for adolescent problem behaviors in poor immigrant Hispanic families.

Adolescent↗