The main runway at Reagan National Airport has reopened after a vintage aircraft flipped when it landed.
Film producer Pietro Serapiglia says the aircraft was part of a group of vintage biplanes flying in Tuesday morning to promote the opening of 3-D film "Legends of Flight." Serapiglia says the plane landed, but then flipped over.
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority says no commercial …
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The Metro Emergency Operations Center's new facility underconstruction near Southridge Center will be better equipped becauseof a $211,155 homeland security grant.
"What that means is we're going to do security enhancements,cameras and things we wouldn't be able to afford to do otherwise,"Kanawha County Commissioner Kent Carper said.
Carper gives Charleston Mayor Danny Jones credit for getting thegrant. Jones gives credit to Carper and Mark Wolford, the city'semergency services director.
"It's just another example of us working together," Jones said.
No matter who is responsible, the West Virginia Department ofMilitary Affairs and …
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top commander in Iraq shortly after the fall of Baghdad, says he supports Democratic legislation that calls for most American troops to come home from Iraq within a year.
His comments are welcome ammunition for the Democratic-controlled Congress in its standoff with the White House on war spending. This month, the House of Representatives passed a $50 billion (euro33.75 billion) bill that would pay for combat operations but set the goal that combat end by Dec. 15, 2008. The White House threatened to veto the measure, and President George W. Bush's Republican colleagues in the Senate blocked its passage.
The Defense …
But what will be as important is his ability to recruit high-caliber players to the program. Recruiting the Chicago area is a major part of that goal, but Purnell said he thinks the building blocks are already in place.
''I know some of the [area] AAU coaches, like Larry Butler and Mac Irvin,'' Purnell said during his introductory news conference Tuesday. ''But those kids are interested in the here and now and what DePaul will be about. Kids are interested in national exposure, playing time. I …
City, suburban and nationwide law enforcement agencies arehoping that tomorrow night starts without a bang.
A gunshot bang, that is.
The fourth annual symbolic anti-crime effort, National NightOut, will be held across the nation tomorrow, when more than 17million people are expected to turn on their porch lights and gooutside to meet their neighbors.
Chicago War Against Crime Week started Sunday to coincide withNational Night Out.
Events here tomorrow night will range from a bonfire to "burnout crime" at North Park Village, 5801 N. Pulaski, to a puppet showin the Rogers Park police district beat representative office at 7064N. Clark.
…
WASHINGTON - The Senate, ignoring a veto threat from the White House, authorized $23 billion in water projects Monday, including work to restore the hurricane-ravaged Louisiana coast and Florida's Everglades.
The measure, passed by the House earlier this year, was approved 81-12. It now goes to President Bush, who threatened a veto after the bill's anticipated cost ballooned by $9 billion as projects were added in negotiations between the House and Senate.
The Senate vote was approved by a veto-proof margin and the bill's supporters said they are optimistic that if the president rejects the measure, his veto will be overridden by two-thirds vote.
"He knows it's …
The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a challenge to the Defense Department policy forbidding gays and lesbians from serving openly in the U.S. military, granting a request by the Obama administration.
The court said it will not hear an appeal from former Army Capt. James Pietrangelo II, who was dismissed under the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
The federal appeals court in Boston earlier threw out a lawsuit filed by Pietrangelo and 11 other veterans. He was the only member of that group who asked the high court to rule that the Clinton-era policy is unconstitutional.
In court papers, the administration said the appeals …
A massive, hurry-up reinspection of Chicago's 52 bridges and 303viaducts was begun this week by a team of four engineering firmshired as costs for the Michigan Avenue bridge rehab soared.
Prodded by pressure from state highway engineers and angryaldermen, the city Transportation Department set these goals for the$767,000, 10-week first phase of the new inspection program: To produce more accurate cost estimates for the bridge and viaductrepairs the city will tackle during the next three years. Estimatesnow stand at $187.3 million. To avoid repeating the problems of the two-year rehabilitation ofthe Michigan span over the Chicago River, which is being financedwith …
PARIS (AP) — Frenchman Teddy Tamgho breaks indoor …
Germany repeated as the gold medalist in the women's pursuit and Canada beat the United States in the men's team pursuit final at the Vancouver Olympics.
Germany edged Japan by two-hundredths of a second after escaping the semifinals with Anni Friesinger-Postma's belly slide across the line.
Katrin Mattscherodt replaced Friesinger-Postma in Saturday's final, teaming with Stephanie Beckert and Daniela Anschutz Thoms to overcome a deficit of nearly two seconds midway through the race.
Poland claimed the women's bronze, overcoming the United States.
No one cut it closer than the German women.
Matched against the Americans in …
KOLKATA, India (AP) — India goes into the second test against the West Indies on Monday safe in the knowledge that its new spin attack is capable of winning games in familiar home conditions.
Off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin's debut match haul of 9-128 was the standout performance in a five-wicket victory in the first game in New Delhi and the more experienced Pragyan Ojha took seven wickets with his left-arm spin.
India is playing the three-match series with one of its most inexperienced bowling attacks in recent years, with regular pace spearhead Zaheer Khan out with an injury and seasoned off-spinner Harbhajan Singh shunted out by selectors.
Pace bowler Umesh Yadav was …
A team of observers from Commonwealth countries including Sierra Leone and Kenya are watching Britain's polling stations in the organization's first election-monitoring trip to a developed country.
The 11 observers from the Royal Commonwealth Society are in Britain to watch how Thursday's national election is conducted and suggest how it can be improved.
The charity's director, Danny Sriskandarajah, says Britain has been sending election observers all around the world and there was no reason for election monitoring to be a "one-way street."
He said his team is concerned about party funding, voter apathy and flaws in Britain's electoral system.
The Commonwealth, headed by Queen Elizabeth II, is a loose grouping of 54 countries aimed at promoting democracy.
Jack E. Brewer Sr., 81, a City of Chicago employee for 62-plusyears, died Friday at Michael Reese Hospital. He lived on the SouthSide.
He was administrative assistant to the chief bridge engineerwith the city's Public Works Department, Bureau of Engineering,Division of Bridges and Viaducts.
He started as a messenger clerk with the bureau and had remainedwith the bureau all his career.
"He definitely has the record" for uninterrupted employmentamong current personnel in the Department of Public Works, said Mr.Brewer's grandson, Mike Brewer, who is a toll attendant for PublicWorks on the Chicago Skyway.
Another grandson, Steven Brewer, is an auditor in the citycomptroller's office. Mr. Brewer's son Jack Jr. is a tax examinerfor the Zoning Department.
Municipal records show that Mr. Brewer started with the city onSept. 15, 1924. "He was administrative assistant to the chief bridgeengineer for as long as I can remember, for many, many years," saidKurt Tennenwald, assistant chief bridge engineer.
"He was the heart and soul of the bridge division, whether itwas in an official capacity, keeping all the records and documentsflowing, or whenever there was anyone with a personal problem. Hewould straighten it out. He knew the ins and outs. He was highlyrespected."
Mr. Brewer was a member of the Holy Name Society at St.Anselm's, St. Columbanus and St. Dorothy's churches. He was born inMemphis, Tenn., and was a 1921 graduate of Wendell Philips HighSchool.
Surviving are his wife, Doris; two sons, Jack Jr. and Charles;six grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and onegreat-great-grandchild.
Visitation will be from 4 to 9 p.m. today at the House of Branchfuneral home, 7918 S. King, and from 10 a.m. tomorrow until thecortege moves to St. Columbanus Church, 331 E. 71st, where friendsmay call from 7 p.m. until mass at 8 p.m. Burial will be at 10 a.m.Friday in Lincoln Cemetery, Worth.
Shortly after taking the lead, British skipper Mike Golding was forced to abandon his latest bid to win the Vendee Globe round-the-world yacht race when his yacht lost its mast in strong winds early Tuesday morning.
Golding, who was also dismasted in the 2001 Vendee, is the 11th of the 30 competitors who started the race to be forced out.
"I was just out on deck when a squall came through with winds of 55 knots," Golding said on the race Web site. "It basically went from being a near gale to a hurricane, and the mast didn't like it. I am gutted. But there is not much I can do about it."
Golding said he had been sailing under a changed sail configuration when the sudden rise in wind speed forced his yacht, Ecover 3, over on her side.
"I was just getting into my jacket when the boat rounded up and then heeled right over," he said. "I heard a bang and immediately went back below deck and waited until the noise had stopped. The whole rig is down. There is not even a stump left."
Golding, competing in his third Vendee, had just secured a 30-mile lead over Paprec-Virbac 2, skippered by Jean-Pierre Dick of France, who had himself been forced to slow down after striking an object in the water that damaged his rudder on Monday.
Golding is now about 940 miles southwest of Perth, Australia, and will have to use what remains of his yacht's spars and rigging to manufacture a jury rig _ a makeshift mast _ to enable him to sail to a safe port.
"My options now are controlled by what I can set up as a jury and unfortunately I don't have much left," Golding said. "I managed to save the boom but have lost all my sails other than storm staysail, but this will probably fit and then I will have to work out how to fly something off the back of that."
The Vendee, a single-handed race for men and women without any stopovers, set off from Les Sables d'Olonne on Nov. 9 into strong winds and rough seas.
Thirty Open 60 race boats _ high-tech carbon-fiber yachts built to be fast yet tough _ began the race, but more than a third of the fleet has now been forced to retire due to damage.
The race takes the fleet around the three great capes _ the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Leeuwin and Cape Horn _ marking the southern tips of Africa, Australia and America.
Michel Desjoyeaux of France on Foncia is the new race leader, followed by compatriot Roland Joudain on Veolia Environnement, just 5 miles behind at the last race check-in.
Vodafone Group PLC, the world's biggest mobile phone company by sales, said Tuesday that full-year profit fell 53.5 percent as the company posted heavy impairment charges on operation in Spain, Turkey and Ghana.
The writedowns of 5.9 billion pounds (US$9.1 billion) helped push net profit down to 3.1 billion pounds compared to 6.8 billion pounds a year earlier.
Revenue rose 16 percent to 41 billion pounds, boosted by the decline of the British pound.
"In Europe and central Europe, operating conditions will be challenging in the 2010 financial year," the company said. Forecasts by the International Monetary Fund "indicate a GDP decline of 4 percent in 2009 across the Vodafone footprint within Europe and Central Europe and that unemployment could increase significantly."
Vodafone said full-year revenue was up in all regions: 32 percent in Asia Pacific and Middle East, 14 percent in Europe and 11 percent in Africa and central Europe.
For the year ending March 31, Vodafone said its adjusted net profit was 9.06 billion pounds ($14 billion) compared to 6.6 billion pounds a year earlier.
The depreciation of the pound inflated revenues from the euro zone, where Vodafone earns most of its profit, but it also inflated operating costs there. Every 1 percent change in the euro-pound exchange rate translates to a 70-million-pound change in operating profit, Vodafone said.
Adjusted operating proft (before tax) was 11.8 billion pounds, up 17 percent, but Vodafone said it expected that figure to be no higher in the current year, and perhaps as low as 11 billion pounds.
The company's shares were down 0.3 percent at 127.1 pence on the London Stock Exchange.
___
On the Net: http://www.vodafone.com/hub_page.html
Dean Cycon says he received the E-mail early last spring.
It was from the committee coordinating the commencement-speech portion of graduation ceremonies at Hampshire College in Amherst, and took the form of an invitation to deliver that address. Cycon, president of Orange, Mass.-based Dean's Beans Organic Coffee, which has made a name for itself in the fair-trade arena, quickly checked his calendar and committed to what would be, for him, a first.
"I looked at it as a great opportunity to deliver an important message to a group that certainly needs to hear it," he said of his commencement speech, dominated by talk about corporate responsibility and social activism. "And I jumped at it."
Cycon usually doesn't write out his speeches, preferring to talk off-the-cuff - "I like the passion and authenticity of speaking extemporaneously" - but because this one had to be delivered simultaneously by someone using sign language to reach deaf audience members, he had no choice. Even the perfunctory opening joke had to be scripted.
"I told them that the last time I spoke before a crowd of that size (2,000 or so people) it was in Papua New Guinea, and half of those in attendance were naked," he told BusinessWest. "So naturally, I was a little nervous."
Cycon isn't nervous much at all these days when he's behind the microphone, and that's primarily because he's getting lots of practice. He's spoken at a number of colleges, including, just this year, Georgetown, Brown, Michigan State, and Williams, and will visit more campuses this fall. He's also addressed a number of business and civic groups, and recently gave a short but important address before the Human Rights Working Group, part of the United Nations Global Compact, which met this past spring at the Harvard Business School; the group invited Cycon to give a presentation on the subject of how businesses are addressing human rights issues in their supply chains.
"In the audience were representatives of GE, Coca-Cola, BP, Schwepps, and other multi-national companies from around the world," he said, "and little Dean's Beans was giving the presentation."
Cycon's in-demand status results from the fact that he's much more than a successful entrepreneur, having grown Dean's Beans into a roughly $3 million venture with more than a dozen employees. He's also what would be considered an activist, author, bit actor - he had a tiny role in the third installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy - and, in a term he contrived himself, a "javatrekker."
Actually, that word is part of the title of his book, Javatrekker: Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee. In it, Cycon takes the reader along with him as he journeys to remote coffee-farming communities in South America, Central America, Africa, and Asia to better understand the issues and challenges facing those in this industry.
And by remote, he means remote.
"In some cases, I was the first American to show up in these places ever, or at least in 60 years, since the end of World War II," he said, listing some stops in Papua New Guinea as a an example and adding that many of the coffee-growing groups he encounters do not speak the official language of the country in question - be it Guatemala, Kenya, or Sumatra - but their own indigenous tongue.
Cycon tries to pick up and then put to use at least a few words from each language he encounters as a sign of respect to the people he has encountered in his travels, which, by his estimates, have added up to hundreds of thousands of miles.
Actually, this respect comes in a number of far more important ways, he said, listing projects that include a clean-water supply system in Ethiopia that succeeded in eradicating childhood dysentery, and the opening of a cafe/roastery in Nicaragua that supports a prosthetics clinic established to help victims of land mines.
Such work helps make Cycon comfortable, or more comfortable, with the thought that he is effecting positive change, at a time when many in corporate America are talking a good game when it comes to 'going green' and corporate responsibility, but are not walking the walk as much as they could or should.
He sums up his decidedly different approach to business, and especially the coffee business, this way: "I'm a social activist who became a business person, not a business person who woke up one day and realized that he had a greater obligation to his community. It's not an add-on for me."
Better Latte Than Never
Cycon told BusinessWest that his book, which recently garnered a gold medal for best travel book from the Independent Publishers Assoc., is getting good reviews, and sales have been steady - nearly 10,000 copies to date - with royalties (about $5,000 so far) going back to the farmers he encountered in those travels.
But it is causing some minor headaches for booksellers.
"That's because they don't know where to put it," said Cycon. "That was the problem for the publisher; they didn't know if this was a business book, a travel book, a social change book ... they didn't know how to pigeonhole it. You can go into some bookstores and find it on the food shelf or the travel shelf or the business essays shelf."
Asked on which rack he would put Javatrekker, Cycon thought for a minute, as if to substantiate the dilemma, before saying that virtually any of the options he listed would work fine, and then speaking like any author trying to spur sales. "Maybe they should put it on all of them."
Summing up the tome, which takes the reader to 10 countries on four continents and features a storytelling style that makes it quite readable, Cycon said it could be described this way: "socially responsible business meets adventure travel."
And while that works for the book, it also sums up Cycon's first 55 years on this planet, during which he's visited 45 countries. Actually, another passage from his commencement address does it better.
"I said that people graduating from college should be less concerned about getting a job than with finding out who they are so they can work toward long-term satisfaction with their employment, especially if they're interested in making a difference in the world," he said. "It wasn't until I was 40 that I found the proper vehicle for my life's work."
That would be Dean's Beans, which he created after navigating a winding career path that took him in a number of directions.
It started with international corporate law.
Cycon told BusinessWest that he handled a number of licensing and distribution agreements for several companies with overseas operations, while also undertaking some environmental-law work, which he described as a "passion."
Eventually, Cycon left law and had a series of fellowships, including a two-year stint at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and an extended stay in New Zealand as a senior Fulbright Scholar. He was teaching part-time at the University of Rhode Island and UMass, while also practicing some law, when a chance encounter took his career in a new direction.
"I was giving a lecture at URI on the 'real causes of deforestation in Brazil,'" he explained, "and was approached by a professor after the talk. He said he had a friend in Providence who owns a coffee shop, buys Brazilian coffee, knows how poor the farmers are, and wants to make a difference. Will you meet with him and talk to him?"
Cycon did, and this discussion eventually led to those three individuals forming what Cycon describes as the first nonprofit development organization for the coffee world. Called Coffee Kids, the initiative raised funds from the coffee industry and then distributed them for development projects such as water supply quality, education, and alternative income generation.
Now in its 20th year, Coffee Kids is still addressing quality-of-life issues, but Cycon moved on to take his work with coffee growers to a new, much higher level.
"After doing Coffee Kids for a number of years, I came to realize that the charitable approach was a noble thing, but it was not going to bring change to the coffee industry," he said. "Companies didn't have to change their business practices, which were what kept people in a chronic state of underdevelopment.
"I thought, 'what would it look like if a company actually paid a fair price for the coffee and engaged directly in the lives of the people it bought from through development work?'" he continued. "So I created Dean's Beans to model how that might look; could I do this and still be profitable? If I could, then no coffee company had an excuse to do things differently.
"Looking back over the past 15 years," he concluded, "I'd say we've had a major impact on how the coffee industry does business, from Starbucks on down."
Expert in His Field
As a lawyer, Cycon was already somewhat of an entrepreneur, and his work in corporate law provided a basic understanding of most issues and challenges that come with getting an enterprise off the ground. Meanwhile, his experiences with Coffee Kids afforded him some general knowledge of the coffee business itself. This combination, plus a healthy dose of self-confidence, provided all the impetus needed to launch Dean's Beans, which he did with a small roaster, eight bags of coffee, and realistic expectations.
"I'm a risk-taker, and I love a challenge," he said of his decision to go into business for himself, "and this was both a risk and a challenge."
From the start, Cycon has been conservative with regard to growth and how to manage it. He recently told the Boston Business Journal, "growth is the outcome of a good business; it's not the goal," and he has operated with that mindset.
Indeed, when Whole Foods Market Inc., his biggest account with 80 stores, wanted to put Dean's Beans in all its stores (more than 270 of them in North America and the United Kingdom), and when Trader Joe's later wanted to do the same, he turned them both down - and for different reasons.
"With Whole Foods, I didn't want to grow that quickly - it would have tripled our business overnight and changed the complete company culture," he explained. "As for Trader Joe's, well, I just didn't like them, and because I am an entrepreneur and I mind my own business, I can make those decisions; we didn't need the business, and I didn't like their business ethic."
Since he started Dean's Beans, Cycon has been socially responsible with most all of his decisions.
Indeed, when asked why he chose to move his fledgling operation to remote Orange after initially setting up shop in a barn off his home in nearby New Salem, he said the community had one of the highest, if not the highest, unemployment rates in the state, and needed an infusion of jobs.
As for the eventual site of his 6,000-square-foot operations center and beanery, this was the location sought by a company as a home for a hazardous-waste-reprocessing center. Cycon was a member of a state board that turned down that proposal in the late '80s. He told BusinessWest that his decision to locate on that very site was his way of "repaying the town."
"Interestingly, I bought the same piece of land that this company was going to be located on, and put an organic food-processing facility on it instead."
Growth has been steady in recent years - averaging about 20% per year, by Cycon's estimates -- and those numbers might be better, were it not for the company's commitment to paying fair-trade prices, but Cycon firmly believes that the success of Dean's Beans results from the fact that it does pay fair-trade prices.
Explaining how that concept works and why it's so important to farmers, Cycon said fair trade essentially establishes a floor for coffee prices, or a minimum price that rests above production costs.
"The world coffee-market price fluctuates because this is a speculative commodity," Cycon explained. "There was a period, from 1997 to 2006, when the world market price crashed, so farmers under free trade were receiving less than the cost of production, and that resulted in more than a million farmers losing their land and becoming economic refugees.
"Fair trade offers a floor price so that, even when the international commodity price goes down quite low, we fair-traders agree that we will never pay less than a minimum, which for me, in the case of organics, is $1.60 a pound," he continued, adding that the going price was about 36 cents when the market crashed.
Quantifying the impact of paying fair-trade prices, Cycon used the example of some Ethiopian coffee for which he paid $2.40 per pound and Starbucks $1.80, by his recollection. When asked what that 60 cents means, he called upon some other numbers to provide perspective.
"In rural Ethiopia, a teacher earns $300 a year ... so it doesn't take many of these additional 60 cents to pay for a teacher," he explained. "And in Guatamala, it costs $50 a year to keep a kid in school - so all this adds up."
Blending In
While Cycon keeps careful track of his company's numbers and is involved with most of the decisions regarding operations, sales, and especially succession planning, he admits that he doesn't handle coffee-roasting anymore; he leaves that to his staff.
In recent years, he has devoted increasingly larger amounts of his time to "this stuff," as he put it, as the conversation shifted to issues such as fair trade, the environment, corporate responsibility, and compelling other business owners to operate as he does.
His efforts in this regard take a number of forms, from his many speaking engagements to his book, to his ongoing travels to coffee-producing areas to understand the issues facing such constituencies and, when possible, effect change that will improve quality of life.
As he talked with BusinessWest, Cycon was preparing for his latest excursion, this one to Guatemala. Accompanying him will be his wife, Annette, and one of her colleagues, as well as his 17-year-old daughter, Sarah, and two other seniors at Amherst High School.
All the participants have specific goals for what they want to accomplish, said Cycon, who paused to check his E-mail and found an update from Sarah that outlined planned workshops that will work with young women on issues of self-esteem and self-respect.
Another trip is planned for this fall, to the African nation of Rwanda, where Cycon and others will conduct programs for men aimed at overcoming gender violence. A pilot program was undertaken in that country last year, he explained, and it proved so beneficial that farmers asked for a return visit and a full-blown initiative.
"All of these are well-thought-out so that we make maximum use of our time and resources," he said, adding that he acts essentially as a committee of one when it comes to deciding which places to visit and projects to undertake, although there is work ongoing to "institutionalize" the process.
Cycon told BusinessWest that such projects help illustrate how his company goes well behind simply paying fair-trade prices for coffee.
"The heart and soul of Dean's Beans is our relationship with the farmers and the environment in the Third World," he explained. "Rather than just paying the farmer a good price for his product and feeling that this is the end of the equation and that we have no further responsibility, we see the chronic state of underdevelopment of farming communities as one of the reasons why the price is what it is.
"Their quality of life is reflected in the price," he continued. "When we buy the coffee, we're buying not only the bean, but also the system that controls their lives, so we take a little responsibility for it. We're not out to change everything in their lives, but we try to address some of the quality-of-life issues that they have."
While carrying out such projects, Cycon also fills his calendar with speaking engagements. This summer will be quiet, but there at least eight appearances planned for the fall, many at college campuses. The subject matter varies with each address, but the general themes are corporate responsibility and awareness of environmental concerns, he added, stressing that he preaches sincere actions in these regards, not what he called "marketing efforts."
"I think every business in the country needs to look hard at the what the values they claim to hold are, and how those values manifest themselves in the working world," he explained. "Often, I think there's a real disconnect between the values of an owner or a board of directors and what goes on in their name. All businesses have to make a connection between who they are and how they operate."
This was the gist of Cycon's message before the Human Rights Working Group, one he believes resonated with listeners.
"I was approached by pretty much every company after the presentation," he told BusinessWest. "They said, 'we're great at making products and distributing them around the world, but we don't know how to deal with the communities we source our product from ... you seem to have figured that out.' So I've been invited to have a lot of conversations with these companies."
In general, Cycon says he's seeing what he considers to be real progress with regard to the issues he addresses in his speeches and E-mails.
"There's a shift ... companies are really taking a serious look at the need to integrate 'green' and socially responsible practices into their business," he said, adding that he is one of many working to get the message across. "I'm not the only one doing this; there are thousands and thousands of people with this message, and I think we're collectively being heard."
Good to the Last Drop
On the shelf atop his desk at Dean's Beans headquarters sits a framed photo and handwritten message from Keira Knightley, the fetching co-star of the Pirates of the Caribbean series.
There are a few other photos as well, and they help commemorate Cycon's small role in the third movie. "I was the 'puking pirate of Tortuga,'" he proclaimed with a dose of pride, adding that his character earned that unofficial name (it's in the credits) because in his one and only scene he is throwing up behind Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow.
He said it took about eight takes to get things right, meaning considerable practice spitting out a combination of water and pi�a colada mix.
When asked if there was more acting in his future, Cycon shook his head. He acknowledged that the experience was fun - "and who said social activism can't be fun?" - but that he plans to "quit while I'm ahead."
"Besides, I have more important things to do."
Like more javatrekking.
The gunman who killed hip hop icon Jam Master Jay has never been identified, but he has what could be a telltale characteristic _ a tattooed neck, according to a witness.
Randy Allen noted the mystery gunman's tattoo in a story Sunday in the Daily News, marking what the newspaper called his first extensive interview about one of the hip hop world's legendary unsolved slayings.
Jay, whose real name was Jason Mizell, was shot dead in his Queens studio on Oct. 30, 2002. Despite a lengthy investigation and substantial reward, the case has been stymied by uncooperative witnesses, investigators say.
Allen, Mizell's business partner, told the Daily News he had cooperated completely with investigators and was furious that others had not. "This is a case that can be solved," he said.
Allen's name has surfaced repeatedly in the case, as has that of his sister, Lydia High. Reports from four years ago indicated police placed her in protective custody. Recently, her attorney said he had not heard from her in more than a year.
Allen told the newspaper he was in the 24/7 studio's control room at the time of the shooting, while his sister was near the studio entrance.
Allen said she told him that after two gunmen ordered her to get down on the floor, she saw a man with a tattoo on his neck approach Mizell and fire. A first round injured another person; the second was blasted into Mizell's head from point-blank range.
Working with rappers Joe "Run" Simmons and Darryl "DMC" McDaniels, Mizell manned the turntables on such 1980s rap classics as "King of Rock," "It's Tricky" and a top-40 remake of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way."
This article reports on the feasibility of using interactive voice response (IVR) technology to obtain daily reports of attitudes toward alcohol and tobacco use among children 9-13 years of age. Two studies were conducted. The first was an investigation of the use of IVR technology to obtain daily data from a sample of primary school children over a period of 8 weeks. The second was an extension of the research to a large sample of primary and secondary school children in urban and rural areas who provided daily data over a 4-week period. Retention and compliance rates comparable to those obtained with adults were evident in both studies, supporting the feasibility of this technology with children. The results are discussed in relation to the benefits of this methodology for health research, particularly for studies of sensitive topics conducted with children and adolescents.
There has been a marked increase in the number of daily process or "experience sampling" studies in the field of health research (Leigh, 2000; Tennen, Affleck, Armeli, & Carney, 2000). These studies have addressed issues such as alcohol and drug use (Searles, Helzer, & Walter, 2000; Searles, Perrine, Mundt, & Helzer, 1995), eating habits (Bardone, Krahn, Goodman, & Searles, 2000), chronic pain and mood (Feldman, Downey, & Schaffer-Neitz, 1999), and sexual behaviors (Gillmore et al., 2001). Recent developments in computer technology have resulted in increased use of automated data collection methods, such as providing participants with palm-top personal computers for data entry, and computerassisted interviewing. The latter method includes online surveys (Kiesler & Sproull, 1986), computer-assisted self-interviewing (CASI; Turner et al., 1998), and computerautomated telephone interviewing using interactive voice response (IVR) technology (Bardone et al., 2000; Mundt, Perrine, Searles, & Walter, 1995). Online surveys and CASI require access to a personal computer, whereas telephone interviewing using IVR requires only access to a telephone. The advantages of IVR technology in facilitating reliable daily data collection point to its potential value in health research with children. However, according to a recent review of the use of IVR in 54 studies published between 1989 and 2000, there have been no applications of IVR involving children (Corkrey & Parkinson, 2002b). The aim of the present research was to evaluate the feasibility of using IVR technology in investigations of children's daily attitudes toward alcohol and tobacco use.
One-off methods of data collection, such as completion of a questionnaire or interview, usually involve retrospective estimates from participants of the typical occurrence of an event or experience. These methods may be less appropriate for research questions relating to events or experiences that could be affected by recall biases or errors. In particular, such problems are more likely to happen when events or experiences occur infrequently or are to be recalled by individuals who may be more vulnerable to recall biases and errors, such as children, whose cognitive abilities are still developing.
Methods of daily data collection can be interval contingent (e.g., having participants complete self-reports on a regular basis, as by having a daily diary), signal contingent (e.g., prompting participants to report data on multiple occasions, as in response to an electronic paging device), or event contingent (e.g., having participants complete reports when a target event occurs (Stone, Kessler, & Haythornthwaite, 1991; Wheeler & Reis, 1991). There are also a number of different modes of data collection within the daily process approach. Traditional modes include diaries, checklists, and telephone interviews (Leigh, 2000). Naturally, these methods involve a considerable amount of time and effort for training interviewers, conducting interviews, and performing data entry. More recently, modes of data collection combining telephone input with computer-assisted prompting and recording have offered several advantages. For example, participants perceive reporting to a computer as providing greater confidentiality and privacy than either pen-and-paper or live interviewing methods (Booth-Kewley, Edwards, & Rosenfeld, 1992; Mundtetal., 1995; Turner et al., 1998). This perception may partly explain why data obtained using computer-assisted methods usually include fewer incomplete or skipped items than do diary methods (Morrison, Leigh, & Gillmore, 1999; Turner et al., 1998). Moreover, with computer-automated systems, any missing data can be automatically flagged and quickly followed up either by an automated system feature (e.g., a reminder prompt to fill in the data missed on the previous day before proceeding to a current day's survey), or by a reminder call from a research assistant. Other advantages are that survey administration is completely standardized and that data entry, maintenance, and storage are automatic (Mundt et al., 1995; Turner et al., 1998). It has also been suggested that computer-assisted methods may result in more accurate reporting of socially undesirable behaviors, such as drug use and sexual risk-taking (Kobak et al., 1997; Tourangeau & Smith, 1996; Turner et al., 1998), although the evidence to support this claim is still limited (cf. Knapp & Kirk, 2003; Leigh, 2000). One important disadvantage of traditional daily diaries is that they can be completed in a single sitting for data covering several days-for instance, as many as 70% of the participants in some studies have admitted to faking compliance (e.g., Litt, Cooney, & Morse, 1998). In contrast, compliance via IVR cannot be faked, because the date and time of data entry are recorded by the system.
Telephone interviewing using IVR technology has particular benefits in comparison with other forms of computer-assisted data collection, primarily because of its ease of access for participants. Because access to a telephone is all that is required, completion of a report is relatively convenient and flexible for the participant (Mundt et al., 1995), and individuals from geographically dispersed and remote areas can readily participate, thereby increasing the representativeness of samples. Moreover, as noted by Turner et al. (1998), the verbal nature of administering survey questions via telephone allows for the inclusion of participants who have low levels of reading ability, including children. Finally, because interview questions presented via IVR cannot be overheard and responses are provided by unobtrusively pressing the keys of a touch-tone telephone, children are likely to perceive a high level of confidentiality; hence, their answers should be less liable to response bias.
Daily Designs Using Computer-Assisted Methods With Children
There are no published studies reporting the use of IVR technology with children (Corkrey & Parkinson, 2002b), and indeed, the use of computer-assisted daily designs with children is relatively rare. For instance, Sadeh, Raviv, and Gruber (2000) monitored children's sleep patterns using activity monitors ("actigraphs") and daily reports for a brief period of 5 nights. The activity monitor was a wristwatch-type device that did not require any input from the child, and thus was not affected by compliance problems once a participant had agreed to wear it. However, the daily self-report measures in that study were of the traditional pen-and-paper type, and compliance rates for these were not reported. Others have conducted research using the experience sampling method with children and adolescents 9-15 years of age (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1987; Larson, 1989). These studies involved a data collection period of 1 week in which participants completed self-report forms in response to pager signals. Larson (1989) reported good compliance, with 80% complete self-reports obtained in response to the pager signals (with pager malfunction contributing to some of the nonresponses). The validity of the data was supported by a high level of consistency with collateral reports from parents. However, as discussed earlier, in some contexts this method may be vulnerable to faked compliance.
In sum, the use of computer-assisted methods in daily designs with children is still in its infancy, and to the extent that daily designs have been used, they have tended to be limited to brief periods of 1 week or less. In contrast, for many health-related attitudes and behaviors, (e.g., those concerning substance use, dietary patterns, and medication compliance), it is often desirable to obtain an accurate estimate of the behavior and associated events over an extended period of time, such as several weeks or months. Although extended daily sampling periods have been applied successfully with adults, the feasibility of obtaining reliable daily data from children over long time intervals has not been established.
The Present Studies
Several methodological issues associated with daily data collection over extended periods of time are particularly pertinent if applied to samples involving children. One issue is the potential for measurement reactivity-that is, the possibility that the process of daily self-monitoring changes the behavior under investigation. Indeed, this potential is a key assumption of cognitive-behavioral therapies that incorporate self-monitoring programs, and it is a possible threat to the validity of daily reports. However, there have been few empirical investigations of reactivity, and those that do exist have produced mixed results. In her review of daily design studies of alcohol use, Leigh (2000) reported that some studies have shown an increase in measurement reactivity but that others have not.
Researchers who have compared mean rates of the behaviors under investigation at the beginning of the study with those at the end have reported few significant differences (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1987; Larson, 1989). Affleck, Zautra, Tennen, and Armeli (1999) argued that reactivity effects' are less likely to occur if several events or experiences are under investigation and participants are unable to review their daily recordings. Nonetheless, measurement reactivity remains an important issue for research in which potentially harmful behaviors such as substance use are the object of study. Especially with respect to children, the daily monitoring of substance-related attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors might raise concern among parents that their children's daily exposure to such topics might increase their intention (and hence, their risk) of engaging in these behaviors. Accordingly, one important goal of the present investigation was to examine whether children who report daily their attitudes toward alcohol and tobacco use would show an increase in their intention to use these substances after a monitoring interval of several weeks.
In addition to examining the issue of reactivity, we evaluated the feasibility of the use of IVR technology with this special population with respect to retention and compliance rates. Leigh (2000) noted that many studies using daily reports of alcohol-related behaviors in adults have not reported attrition rates. Where drop-out rates have been reported, they averaged from 10% to 20%. Retention rates in the few IVR studies assessing daily alcoholrelated behaviors in adults were generally high, with rates of 97% after 28 days (Perrine, Mundt, Searles, & Lester, 1995), 95% after 84 days (Bardone et al., 2000), and 93% after 112 days (Searles et al, 1995), but a drop to 60% after 366 days (Searles et al., 2000). It must be noted that the sample size in these studies was fairly small, varying between 30 and 55 participants. Also, the financial rewards offered for regular participation were considerable, ranging from U.S.$162 to $4,313. Whether reliable participation can be maintained over long periods without providing such large incentives is not known. Hence, a second goal of the present studies was to investigate whether good retention rates using IVR could be achieved with more modest incentives and with a large, less selective sample. The third goal was to examine whether the excellent rates of compliance (82% to 99%) with the demanding daily reporting regimen of IVR studies previously obtained with adults could be replicated with children.
In sum, this article describes an investigation of the use of IVR technology to obtain daily reports of attitudes toward alcohol and tobacco use from children aged 9-13 years. Two studies are described: an investigation with a sample of primary school children (n = 74) who participated over a period of 8 weeks, and an extension of this research to a larger, more representative sample of primary and secondary students (n = 605) who participated over a period of 4 weeks. The latter study was part of a longitudinal investigation of factors influencing the adoption of alcohol and tobacco use among urban and rural youth, the substantive results of which will be reported elsewhere. This article is primarily concerned with the methodological considerations of the implementation of IVR technology with children. Specifically, we addressed the following questions: (1) Can children be recruited to participate in studies involving such high demands on their commitment in terms of time and effort, and are there systematic differences between consenters and nonconsenters? (2) Will the retention and compliance rates for children be comparable to those obtained with adults using the same methodology, and are there systematic differences between completers and noncompleters? (3) Do children exposed to daily queslions about alcohol and tobacco use show increased intention to use these substances at the end of the survey interval? and (4) What incentives, training, and ongoing help are appropriate and necessary for this age group to obtain mastery of the technology and to maintain motivation for providing reliable and valid information over an extended period of time?
STUDY 1
Method
Participants. Children (53% girls) were recruited from two state-government schools in the metropolitan area of a large Australian city; the schools were situated in a low- to middle-class and a middle-class socioeconomic area, respectively. Of 153 parents contacted by letter, 74 (48.4%) gave consent for their children to participate. The mean ages of the children, who were in Grades 5, 6, and 7, were 9.9 (SD = 0.43), 10.9 (SD = 0.41), and 11.9 (SD = 0.35) years, respectively.
Apparatus. IVR technology combines telephone service with computer-administered questionnaires. Our system has the capacity to process 11 phone calls simultaneously, with one additional line dedicated to handling "line busy" conditions. The system is interfaced with local area network stations for data maintenance, backup, and analysis. The participants called a toll-free number and, after providing participant and password identification, followed a simple script to answer questions by pressing numbers on the keypad of a touch-tone telephone.
Measures. Daily self-report questions covered seven domains with respect to the use of alcohol, tobacco, and a control substance (cola): ( 1 ) exposure, which assessed the relative influence of others who used any of these substances; (2) desire to approach/desire to avoid, which assessed independently the desires to consume and to avoid a particular substance, thereby providing a measure of ambivalence; (3) intention or subjective probability of consuming a particular substance in the near future; (4) resistance/efficacy, which assessed how difficult it would be to say "no" if someone offered a particular substance the next day; (5) prevention, which assessed the relative influence of others in promoting abstinence or moderation; (6) active prevention, which assessed the participants' own actions to influence others toward abstinence or moderation; and (7) active exposure, which assessed the participants' own actions to influence others toward adoption or increase of use of a particular substance.
For most questions, the participants responded by pressing a number on the telephone keypad. Questions pertaining to exposure, prevention, active prevention, and active exposure were in a yes/no format ( 1 = yes, 2 = no). Questions from the desire to approach/ avoid, intention, and resistance sections used a nine-point rating scale indicating, for example, how much the participant wanted to consume a cola drink ( 1 = not at all, 9 - very much). Some questions were open-ended and required a recorded response.
Each section began with instructions concerning the question content and type of response required. Each question within a section had a common stem, so that as they became more practiced, the participants could respond before listening to the entire question. In addition, the participants could press the star (*) key to skip the instructions and advance to the specific question. The participants could change their response to the preceding question by using the hash (#) key. At the end of the survey, the participants were provided with an opportunity to redo the survey if they were not happy with their answers. To enhance the interactive nature of the survey, the children were also given the opportunity to leave a joke in the message option as part of their daily call, with the best ones being selected and rerecorded by the system manager to be played on the following day. In addition, to personalize the routine for the children, at the time of their first login, they assigned themselves a secret code name that they recorded, which was subsequently used by the automated system to address them during calls (e.g., "Welcome Superman") after they had entered a secret PIN.
Procedure. Participation in the project consisted of two components: First, the participants attended a questionnaire and training session approximately 2 h in duration. During this session, the participants completed a set of questionnaires and received instruction on the IVR protocol, as well as a detailed explanation of how the point system rewarded regular participation (see the Compensation schedule subsection below). This session was conducted in groups of 11 to 20 students and took place in a classroom.
For the second component, the participants followed the IVR protocol and recorded their responses daily for a period of 8 weeks (56 days). This component was completed by participants in their own time and usually took place in their homes, or in some cases from a telephone at their school or a public telephone. The telephone survey period began the day after the initial questionnaire and training session. In addition to the initial training, ongoing assistance was available through a message feature of the survey, as well as through a separate telephone help line by means of which the project manager could be contacted. Any participants who missed 2 consecutive days were contacted by research staff to remind them to call in.
Compensation schedule. The study contained a reward system by means of which the participants earned points for each daily survey completed, plus seven bonus points for each perfect week. If participants missed no more than 2 days during a 4-week period, the forfeited bonus points for those weeks containing missed days were restored. An additional 16 bonus points could be earned for reporting on a total of at least 50 out of the 56 days. All points were credited to an electronic "bank account," and participants could hear their current tally at the end of the survey every time they called. At the end of the study period, the participants received vouchers to exchange their accumulated points at a local department store for items of their choice, up to a maximum value of AU$20 (approximately U.S.$12). In addition, a movie ticket was provided at the halfway point of the 8-week data collection period.
Results
Recruitment and consent. Nearly 50% of parents gave consent for their children to participate. For ethical reasons, data on differences between consenters and nonconsenters were limited to a brief, voluntary questionnaire sent to all parents after consent forms from those parents who had given consent had been received. Completed questionnaires were received from 35 consenting and 24 nonconsenting parents.
Comparisons between consenters and nonconsenters were based on information about reasons for agreeing or not agreeing to give parental consent. The percentages of parents endorsing specified reasons are presented in Table 1. The most frequently endorsed reason for giving consent was that parents thought the topic of the research was important. Similarly, none of the parents who declined consent indicated that they refused consent because they felt the topic was not important. Instead, consenters and nonconsenters appeared to differ in the degree to which they wanted their children to be exposed to the topics of alcohol and cigarette use-nonconsenters did not want their children to be exposed to the topics. In addition, on the basis of responses to an open-ended question asking for any "other" reasons for consenting or not consenting, consenters agreed to participate because they valued community involvement and liked to provide a participatory role model for their children, whereas nonconsenters were concerned that exposure to the topics could encourage substance use and that participation would require too much time and effort.
Retention and compliance. The retention rate was high, with no attrition after the first week, 3% attrition after 4 weeks, and 8% attrition after 8 weeks. Thus, 92% of the sample completed the entire study period. Likewise, children's compliance rates were consistently high over the 8-week study period, with an average compliance rate of 91.4%. Compliance rates were equally high across all grade levels-91.5%, 90.1%, and 92.8% for Grades 5, 6, and 7, respectively.
Changes in attitudes toward alcohol and cigarette use during survey period. Daily responses regarding (1) the children's desires to drink alcohol or to smoke, (2) their desires to avoid drinking alcohol or smoking, (3) the likelihood that they would drink alcohol or smoke the next day, and (4) the children's efficacy (i.e., how difficult it would be to say "no" if they were offered alcohol or cigarettes the next day) were averaged across the first 14 days of the study period and compared with responses from days 29 to 42.1 Figure 1A shows that after daily, extended exposure to alcohol- and smoking-related questions, children did not report greater inclinations to take up alcohol use or smoking. The only significant differences between early and late periods of participation were that during the late period, children reported less chance of drinking either alcohol or a cola drink than they had reported during the early period.
Summary of Study 1
The feasibility of using IVR methodology with a preadolescent sample was clearly demonstrated. The attrition rate was low, and the compliance rates were very high. These results are particularly impressive given the 2-month duration of the survey period. Moreover, daily exposure to alcohol- and smoking-related survey questions during this period did not increase children's self-reported inclination to take up alcohol use or smoking. Two limitations of our first study were that the sample was relatively small and consisted only of primary school students. To test the reliability of the children's response patterns obtained via IVR technology, we aimed in Study 2 to replicate the results from Study 1, using a larger and more representative sample of children and young adolescents.
STUDY 2
Method
Participants. Children (56% girls) were recruited from stategovernment schools following procedures similar to those in Study 1. The consent rate was 33%, resulting in a sample of 662 participants from 12 primary and 5 secondary schools. Fourteen schools were located in the metropolitan area, whereas 2 primary schools and 1 secondary school were located in rural areas. The mean ages of the children, who were from Grades 5, 6, 7, and 8, were 10.27 (SD = 0.58), 11.02 (SD = 0.42), 12.08 (SD = 0.41), and 13.07 (SD = 0.39) years, respectively.
Apparatus and Procedure. The apparatus and procedure were the same as in Study 1, except that the length of the telephone survey period was 4 rather than 8 weeks.
Measures. Daily self-report questions were identical to those used in Study 1. In addition, baseline questionnaires included an assessment of personal experience with alcohol and cigarette use. Frequency of drinking was assessed with an 8-point scale ranging from never to almost every day. Quantity of drinking was assessed with a 5-point scale using descriptors appropriate for this age group ( 1 = just a little, enough to get a taste; 2 = more than a little, but not enough to feel "tipsy"; 3 = enough to feel "tipsy," but not enough to feel drunk; 4 = enough to feel drunk, but not enough to get sick or pass out; 5 = enough to get sick or pass out). Experience with smoking was assessed with three yes/no questions asking whether the children had smoked in the last week, month, and year, respectively.
Results
Retention and compliance. Of the 662 children who began the study, 605 (91.4%) were retained for the duration of the daily IVR survey component. Of the 57 noncompleters, 6 (10.5%) were unable to participate because they did not have a touch-tone telephone at home or their telephone did not have the facility to make outgoing calls. The majority of the remaining 51 noncompleters reported that they found the project requirements too demanding or difficult. On average, noncompleters made only 3.98 daily calls, and 14 never called the survey at all. The proportion of boys was higher among the noncompleters (54%) than among the completers (44%). There was no significant difference in age between noncompleters (M = 11.79 years, SD = 1.22) and completers (M = 11.67 years, SD = 1.11) [/(654) = 0.81, n.s.], although a slightly higher percentage of the noncompleters (33%) were high school students (Grade 8) than were found among the completers (24%).
Questionnaire data were available for all 57 noncompleters. These were compared with the data from a random sample of 57 completers stratified for gender and grade. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) with frequency and quantity of alcohol consumption as the dependent variables showed no significant differences between completers and noncompleters [F(2,107) = 1.77]. As expected, reported frequency and quantity of alcohol consumption were very low. The mean frequencies were 2.40 (SD = 1.29) for completers and 2.84 (SD = 1.63) for noncompleters [univariate F(1,108) = 3.36, n.s.], which represent scores between once or twice in my life and 3 or 4 times in my life. The mean quantities were 0.95 (SD = 0.29) for completers and 1.20 (SD = 0.91) for noncompleters [univariate F(I5IOS) = 2.48, n.s.], which represent scores of just a little, enough to get a taste. Similarly, fewer than 2% of completers and fewer than 6% of noncompleters reported tobacco use in the previous week. Although reported tobacco use in the past year was slightly higher among noncompleters ( 17%) than among completers (7%), this difference was not significant [χ^sup 2^(1) = 1.66, n.s.].
A total of 15,256 daily responses were obtained from the 605 participants who completed the telephone survey component. The average number of daily surveys completed per participant was 25.22 (SD = 4.82) out of 28 days, yielding an overall compliance rate of 90%. Over half (54%) of the participants provided data for each of the 28 days, and 85% provided data for at least three fourths of the study period. Compliance was higher among girls (93.50%) than boys (85.62%). Compliance declined throughout the 4 weeks of the survey period-compliance rates were 96.39%, 92.59%, 88.15%, and 83.12% in Weeks 1,2, 3, and 4, respectively. There were no differences in compliance across the school grade levels. The average duration of the telephone survey calls was 5 min (M = 301.72 sec, SD = 187.46).
Changes in attitudes toward alcohol and cigarette use during survey period. Similarly to Study 1, daily responses were averaged across the first 7 days of the study period and were compared with responses from Week 4 (Days 22-28). Figure 1B shows that the pattern of responses for the first and last weeks closely replicates the pattern found in Study 1. Responses for the last week did not differ markedly from responses during the first week. The few significant decreases observed were very small, were likely due to the large sample size, and in any event, were not consistent with greater self-reported inclinations to take up alcohol use or smoking.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
Results demonstrated that IVR technology can be reliably applied to daily process studies in health research with children. The retention and compliance rates were very high and are comparable to those obtained in research using this technology with adults. Importantly, there was no evidence that involvement in a longitudinal study with daily data collection had any adverse effects on children's general disinclination to engage in the potentially harmful behaviors under investigation (i.e., alcohol or cigarette use).
Recruitment and Consent
Despite the 8-week daily commitment required in Study 1, almost half of the contacted children participated. This consent rate is comparable to that for adolescents and young adults (32% to 57%) in a similar study requiring only a 4-week daily commitment (Morrison et al., 1999). One of the primary reasons parents gave for refusing consent was that involvement in the study was too much of a commitment of time and effort. This concern may account for the lower (33%) consent rate in Study 2, which involved not only committing to an intensive data collection period of 4 weeks' duration but also to a 3-year longitudinal project, with the intense 4-week daily data collection periods repeated in each year. Nonetheless, one third of contacted participants could be recruited, resulting in a large sample from a diverse range of metropolitan and rural schools.
Another reason parents gave for refusing consent was that they did not want their children to be exposed to the topics of alcohol and cigarette use. This objection highlights the difficulty of recruiting younger children to participate in research concerning sensitive health-related topics such as substance use. It was therefore encouraging that results from both studies indicated that participants did not report increased intention to use these substances after extended periods of daily exposure to the topics. If parents are made aware of this information during recruitment, it may be possible to achieve higher consent rates.
Retention and Compliance
Retention rates were high in both studies (92% and 91%) and were only slightly lower than those (93% to 97%) achieved in similar IVR studies with adults (e.g., Bardone et al., 2000; Perrine et al., 1995; Searles et al., 1995), even though the monetary incentives offered to the children (i.e., a maximum value of about U.S.$15) were very modest in comparison with financial rewards offered to the adults in the previous studies (e.g., up to U.S.$500 for a 4-week period; Perrine et al., 1995).
Analysis of attrition in Study 2 indicated that the majority of the participants who did not complete the telephone survey component found it too difficult to incorporate the survey into their daily routine. A systematic comparison of the noncompleters with a random sample of completers stratified for grade and gender revealed no significant differences with respect to self-reported frequency and quantity of alcohol consumption or proportion of individuals reporting past cigarette use. In sum, there was little evidence to suggest that noncompleters were systematically different from completers.
Compliance rates averaged just over 90%. In Study 1, compliance remained relatively constant across the 8-week period, whereas in the much larger sample of Study 2, it declined to about 83% during the last week of the daily calling period. These rates for 9- to 13-year-olds are within the same range as those (82% to 93%) achieved with adults in similar studies (e.g., Bardone et al., 2000; Searles et al., 1995). Moreover, 54% of the 605 completers in Study 2 were "perfect callers"-that is, they completed the telephone survey every day of the 4-week period. This percentage compares favorably with the rate of 14% perfect callers reported by Bardone et al. (2000) for a sample of university students.
The excellent compliance rates obtained in both studies suggest that the application of IVR technology is not only feasible in health research with children but offers unique features that appear to be particularly appealing to children. First, because of this method's flexible and convenient access from anywhere that children have access to a telephone, reliable participation is not dependent on the motivation and ability of adult family members or school personnel to facilitate the children's frequent availability for data collection. Second, the verbal presentation of questions is likely to be easy to process by children whose reading levels may vary considerably. Likewise, writing skills are not a limiting factor, because children respond by operating the touch-tone pad of the telephone, or by speaking directly into the phone if openended responses are of interest to the investigator. Clearly, today's children are likely to be savvy users of modern telecommunication tools, such as mobile phones and Web-based applications, and hence it is perhaps not surprising that the children in our studies complied at such high rates and with such ease with the IVR protocol.
Several other features of the IVR protocol are likely to have contributed to good compliance. In addition to ageappropriate training in the use of the technology, we provided ongoing support through a message feature as part of the telephone survey and a separate help line for contacting the project manager. This support was mainly used during the first few days of the survey period, until the participants had become familiar with the routine. As in IVR studies with adults, financial incentives were provided, albeit at substantially lower amounts. It was evident that hearing the current tally of bonus points after each daily survey functioned as token reinforcement in itself. That is, participants expressed enthusiasm at observing their tally increase, and they did not hesitate to call the help line at an early point during Study 2, when a temporary program glitch failed to provide accurate feedback on the current tally of bonus points. Clearly, the regular reinforcement via this automated feature, combined with the children's capacity to actively initiate interactions with the system and the research team, helped to maintain participants' motivation. At the same time, the ability of research staff to use automated messages that could easily be entered into the system on an ad hoc basis allowed for prompt responses to queries or concerns that were relevant to the entire sample. This ability greatly reduced the demand on staff resources in comparison with responding to every participant contact individually.
Limitations
The benefits of using IVR technology in research need to be weighed against the costs of software development and equipment (Leigh, 2000). The relatively high investment in cost and time associated with the initial setup of a custom-designed system appears to be one reason why the full potential of IVR applications for health-related research has yet to be realized. However, as the technology matures, the custom-designed, highly featured products currently in use are likely to evolve into lower cost products that will utilize modularized standard components interfaced with user-friendly desktop applications. Moreover, the costs of establishing IVR systems are partly offset by considerable savings in staff time for data collection and processing (Corkrey & Parkinson, 2002a).
Another limitation concerns the costs of incentives. The financial rewards offered in previous daily IVR studies with adults were substantial, limiting those studies to relatively small sample sizes. In contrast, the modest incentives offered in the present studies were sufficient to maintain high retention and compliance rates while extending the feasibility of this innovative technology for use with large samples. Whether this result would generalize to adult samples is a question for future research (cf. Searles et al., 2000).
Finally, the present studies did not include a control group that did not engage in daily reporting or that used an alternative mode of reporting (e.g., diaries). Hence, our conclusions regarding the feasibility of IVR research with children are based on replication of our findings across two independent and diverse samples and on comparison of our results with published data from comparable studies with adults.
Conclusion
The present studies were the first systematic evaluation of the feasibility of applying IVR technology to daily process research with children. Results demonstrated that children as young as 9 years readily embraced this new technology and reliably engaged in the daily data collection routine. Attrition over extended study periods as long as 8 weeks was low, and compliance with the daily response requirements was excellent. These results compare favorably with findings from similar studies using adult samples. Unlike in previous research with adults, the financial incentives offered in the present studies were modest, suggesting that investigations of larger samples are feasible with children and adolescents. In conclusion, there is no reason for further neglect of children in the application of computer-assisted methods to daily process designs. The advantages of this technology are well established, and the extended scope it affords in investigations of everyday processes affecting the health of our children opens promising avenues for further research.
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(Manuscript received June 12, 2003; revision accepted for publication June 22, 2004.)
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[Author Affiliation]
WERNER G. K. STRITZKE, JUSTINE DANDY, KEVIN DURKIN, and STEPHEN HOUGHTON
University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia
[Author Affiliation]
This research was supported by Western Australian Health Promotion Foundation (Healthway) Grants 7688 and 9354. We thank all staff and students at the participating schools. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to W. G. K. Stritzke, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley 6009, Australia (e-mail: werner@psy.uwa.edu.au).
Note-This article was accepted by the previous editor, Jonathan Vaughan.
Hungarians voted Sunday in referendums on three of Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany's economic reform measures. The center-right opposition was expected to win, but analysts say the government's stability is not threatened.
Voters in the binding referendum will decide whether to repeal co-payments for doctor's visits and hospital stays, and tuition fees in higher education.
Hungarians will make a straightforward "yes" or "no" decision on each of the three issues. To be valid, the winning votes must have the support at least a quarter of registered voters.
Polls opened at 6 a.m. (0500 GMT) and 46.3 percent of eligible voters had cast ballots by 5:30 p.m (1200 GMT), authorities said.
A turnout rate above 40 percent was predicted by pollsters to result in a likely victory for the "yes" votes and a defeat for the government. There are slightly more than 8 million eligible voters in Hungary.
Police closed off a large area around parliament for three days starting on Sunday morning in an effort to prevent anti-government protests that could turn violent.
Gyurcsany has tried to steer attention away from the vote. He did not mention the referendum in his "State of the Nation" speech in parliament a few weeks ago and instead has announced plans for tax cuts in 2009 and other measures meant to persuade citizens that the worst effects of the government's austerity measures are over.
Hungary has been plagued by the European Union's highest budget deficit for the past few years _ nearly 10 percent of GDP in 2006 and slightly below 6 percent expected this year. Government steps to balance the budget have resulted in higher taxes and massive layoffs in the public sector, as well as high inflation and unemployment and very low growth.
Fidesz, the main opposition party, has tried to turn the vote into a poll on the government's overall record and hopes that a relatively high turnout _ near 40 percent _ will increase pressure on the coalition parties to replace Gyurcsany.
The prime minister's approval rating stands at just 19 percent according to the latest Gallup poll and he has struggled to keep his position since weeks of protests and riots broke out in September 2006 after it was revealed that Gyurcsany lied about the true state of the economy to win the April 2006 elections.
Despite popular discontent with the reforms, especially with the decision to allow for-profit firms to buy stakes in the state-controlled health insurance companies, analysts said Sunday's referendum was too long after the 2006 riots and too soon before the scheduled 2010 parliamentary elections to have a significant impact.
"It's highly unlikely that the referendum will sweep Gyurcsany away," said political analyst Zoltan Kiszelly. "Fidesz will continue to demand his resignation, while Gyurcsany will continue to proclaim a bright future. It's a dialogue between the deaf."
The prime minister and his coalition partners, the Alliance of Free Democrats, said the referendum was an attempt to block Hungary's modernization and a symbolic return to the state-controlled economy of the communist era.
"This vote is about to what degree demagoguery and populism can be victorious in Hungary," said Free Democrat Balint Magyar, a former education minister.
For Fidesz leader and former prime minister Viktor Orban, who has been defeated in the past two parliamentary elections, Sunday's challenge is to turn Fidesz's huge lead in the opinion polls over the Socialists _ 70 percent against 21 percent, according to Gallup _ into actual votes.
"Orban's opposition within Fidesz could strengthen if the referendum shows him unable to attract the undecided voters" and those in the middle of the political spectrum, Kiszelly said.
Ambassador Clayton K. Yeutter was sworn in as special U.S. traderepresentative on July 1, 1985. As such, he was responsible for thedevelopment and execution of American trade policy.
Before joining President Reagan's Cabinet, Yeutter was presidentand chief executive officer of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, theworld's second largest futures market. He joined the Merc in 1978.The Merc trades billions of dollars of contracts daily inagricultural and financial instruments.
In the early '70s, Yeutter served in a series of sub-Cabinetposts during the Nixon and Ford administrations. He was assistantsecretary of agriculture for marketing and consumer services,assistant secretary for international affairs and commodity programsand deputy special trade representative during the Tokyo Round ofMultilateral Trade Negotiations in the Ford administration.
Yeutter has a law degree, as well as a doctorate in agriculturaleconomics. He and his wife, Jeanne, have four children and dividetheir time between residences in Virginia and Lincoln, Neb. Forseveral years, Yeutter has produced corn and cattle on his 2,500-acrefarm in Nebraska.
A stalled wildfire roared back to life Wednesday as gusting winds swooped down from mountains behind the city, pushing flames toward neighborhoods below and sending a plume of smoke out to sea.
The fire, last reported at nearly 200 acres, became active on all sides and spot fires developed around the perimeter, said city fire Capt. Mike dePonce.
"We were projecting 50 mph down-canyon gusts, and that's exactly what we're getting now," he said.
The flames erupted Tuesday and quickly spread through brush at elevations above the city, which still bears the scars of a November blaze that burned more than 200 homes in Santa Barbara and neighboring Montecito.
As many as 2,000 homes were threatened and more than half were under mandatory evacuation orders since late Tuesday afternoon. Sixteen schools and child care centers were closed.
Calm winds early Wednesday had reduced the fire to wispy plumes, but Santa Barbara County Fire Chief Tom Franklin had warned about forecast winds and urged evacuees not to return. He said those in unevacuated neighborhoods near the fire should be prepared to leave at a moment's notice.
The fire was in brush that last burned 50 years ago and there was no containment, Franklin said.
"We have a lot of open line out there and a lot of work to do," he said.
Helicopters and planes dumped water and fire retardant while ground crews attacked the flames head-on, concentrating on its southern flank to protect neighborhoods there.
Santa Barbara rises rapidly from the Pacific coastline on the south to the foothills of the rugged Santa Ynez Mountains to the north. It is sometimes subject to "sundowners" _ strong winds that blow downslope through passes and canyons of the mountain range and offshore.
Elsewhere, a fire in rural southeastern Arizona had destroyed three houses near Sierra Vista and injured one person. The fire had charred about 1,500 acres near Fort Huachuca. Containment was estimated at 25 percent early Wednesday.
