Psychology – Â鶹ĘÓƵ Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:37:44 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 /wp-content/uploads/2019/04/cropped-favicon_logo-32x32.jpg Psychology – Â鶹ĘÓƵ 32 32 Designing Stormwater Management and Water Quality Surveys /projects/designing-stormwater-management-and-water-quality-surveys-2/ /projects/designing-stormwater-management-and-water-quality-surveys-2/#respond Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:37:44 +0000 https://portal.epicn.org/case-stories/designing-stormwater-management-and-water-quality-surveys/ Read More... from Designing Stormwater Management and Water Quality Surveys

]]> The Mississippi Watershed Management Organization (MWMO) would like to better understand attitudes and perceptions about stormwater management practices and water quality of the Mississippi River in general. Students in Psychological Testing will design, create, and gather evidence of the validity of a new survey that addresses a specific question related to these general topics. Students will be provided with example survey topics; they may choose from these topics or seek to create their own topic within the MWMO’s general issues of interest. This is an optional project topic for their lab work to create a survey and assess its validity.

Project Overview Poster
Partner Outcomes
Discovering people’s attitudes about issues like water quality, stormwater management and the environment generally is a persistent need and challenge for the MWMO. The surveys designed by these students offer a blueprint for future research into these areas. The MWMO is looking at doing a survey in the near future about business owners’ attitudes about stormwater BMPs, and will design this and other future surveys with the students’ insights in mind. MWMO may also use the surveys about environmental attitudes with some of their outreach groups in an effort to gauge the attitudes of audiences like Master Water Stewards, grant recipients and other key audiences.

]]> The City of Big Lake has several parks with aging playground equipment that needs to be repaired or refreshed as well as new parks that are being developed. The City is interested in exploring alternative designs for these parks by asking the question — is there a way to create a better park experience? Students will create design ideas for a natural playground for the City of Big Lake’s River Oaks Park in collaboration with preschoolers at the University of St. Thomas Child Development Center.

]]> The borough of State College seeks to reduce its GHG emissions by 10% of 2007 levels by 2021, and would like to receive guidance on messaging that will change residents’ behavior, promoting overall energy conservation. The borough will utilize student findings in its print and social media.

]]> Reading to children can benefit their development because exposing them to books appears to have the most impact on their early language, literacy, and cognitive development. There is evidence to support that “children who xperience shared-book reading… also demonstrated improvements in word reading” (Pillinger & Wood, 2014). The Read to me Project is great at helping pave the way for a bright future for those participating. It also bases itself on reading together with family and allowing the children to benefit from each other and grow a closer bond together. Since the RtMP is based in Monterey County where the majority of the population is Latino/a, it would be strongly beneficial for them to incorporate English and Spanish books.

Read the final student report delivered to the local gov/community partner.

Sustainable City Years Program Contact Info

University Faculty Contact
Jennifer Dyer-Seymour
Psychology
Professor, Department of Psychology
jdyer-seymour@csumb.edu

Local Government / Community Contact
Gary Petersen

]]> /projects/read-to-me-in-english-and-spanish-2/feed/ 0 Green Power /projects/green-power-2/ /projects/green-power-2/#respond Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:36:29 +0000 https://portal.epicn.org/case-stories/green-power/ Read More... from Green Power

]]> past SCC project in spring 2014 determined residents’ interest in purchasing green power. The project will add to this past research by testing the effectiveness of different messages that will determine how signing up would be improved. Possibly options could be educating residents about the relevance of choosing an energy provider and providing assistance to sign up.

]]> Litter at transit stops adversely affects environmental quality and contributes to negative perceptions of transit stops and transit riding. Metro Transit would like transit stops to be a comfortable waiting space for transit riders. Students will develop a behavior change campaign for selected transit stops in the Twin Cities to deter littering and promote comfortable waiting spaces.

]]> In Monterey County, the Read to Me Project’s main goal is to help English language learners accomplish English reading literacy (Read to Me Project, 2017). Fourth, fifth, and sixthborrow age appropriate books from their teachers and read to their younger siblings, cousins, or neighbors. The young children identified by the school-aged child is named “little one” to be inclusive of all relationships the children may have to each other. For the purposes of the project, little ones could be as young as 8 months of age up to Pre-K. In the classroom, the school-aged children receive instruction on the importance of early literacy and the benefits of reading to their little ones. In the 2015-2016 school year, this program was launched in 70 classrooms and this current year, 2016-2017, it was implemented in 96 classrooms.

Read the final student report delivered to the local gov/community partner.

Sustainable City Years Program Contact Info

University Faculty Contact
Jennifer Dyer-Seymour
Psychology
Professor, Department of Psychology
jdyer-seymour@csumb.edu

Local Government / Community Contact
Gary Petersen

]]> /projects/effectiveness-of-read-to-me-project-2/feed/ 0 Fostering Sustainable Behaviors for City Empolyees /projects/fostering-sustainable-behaviors-for-city-empolyees-2/ /projects/fostering-sustainable-behaviors-for-city-empolyees-2/#respond Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:35:44 +0000 https://portal.epicn.org/case-stories/fostering-sustainable-behaviors-for-city-empolyees/ Read More... from Fostering Sustainable Behaviors for City Empolyees

]]> Elk River seeks to encourage sustainable behaviors for city employees as part of the City’s overall sustainability strategy and goals. In 2015, Elk River city staff participated in the Class 5 Energy Efficiency Behavior Based Challenge. The challenge involved no cost projects to increase energy efficiency in city buildings through behavior change of city employees. This program involved the use of newsletters, challenges, print material, and other low or no cost techniques. The program was very successful with a 4% reduction of energy usage across city buildings over a year. Employees responded to the program well and continue to implement best management practices. Elk River would like to broaden this approach to encourage additional sustainable behaviors of city employees. Elk River will collaborate with students in Psychology and Work to adapt and refine this challenge to create approaches for sustainable behaviors around water conservation, waste reduction, purchasing practices, and transportation choices.

Project Overview Poster
Final report
City Outcomes
The Environmental Division is excited to use this project to promote sustainable behavior changes with city staff.
The City also shared students’ research and tools with the Great Plains Institute, who will use it to create Minnesota community campaign projects.

]]> Within the United States, obesity accounts for over 300,000 deaths a year and prevalence rates have been increasing over the past decade (Maddock, 2004). For example, more than 22 percent of Latino children are considered Obese compared to 14 percent of Caucasian children. The reasons for this disparity is not clear. Recent work suggests that the amount of time spent eating plays an important role in a child’s future with obesity (Berge, 2014). The present study investigated the possible differences in time spent eating. In line with Latinos having high national obesity rates, it was hypothesized that the Spanish­speaking families would spend less time eating than the English­speaking families. For the present study families were observed in McDonald’s restaurants in Pacific Grove, CA and Salinas, CA. This was a direct observation study in which there was no contact between the families and the observers. Observers sat at such a distance to be undetected but yet were able to discern the language spoken by the family. Results revealed that as hypothesized English­speaking families spent more time eating than the Spanish­speaking families. More research in the future can help with education for those families with higher obesity rates in the hopes of reducing the obesity endemic.

Read the final student report delivered to the local gov/community partner.

Sustainable City Years Program Contact Info

University Faculty Contact
Jennifer Dyer-Seymour
Psychology
Professor, Department of Psychology
jdyer-seymour@csumb.edu

Local Government / Community Contact
Gary Petersen

]]> /projects/time-spent-eating-and-its-effects-on-obesity/feed/ 0 Technology Use During Dinner time /projects/technology-use-during-dinner-time/ /projects/technology-use-during-dinner-time/#respond Thu, 26 Oct 2023 23:25:32 +0000 https://portal.epicn.org/case-stories/technology-use-during-dinner-time/ Read More... from Technology Use During Dinner time

]]> Family meal time has changed with the emergence of technology. In order to study this, Radesky, et al. (2014) observed families at public restaurants. To describe technology use and parent­child interaction, the present study replicated this method. After receiving IRB approval, we observed 109 families at dinner time. Fifty­three percent of 161 caregivers did not use a device, and 17% of our caregivers were coded as highly absorbed with a device. These results suggest that device use is nuanced and it may be most useful to examine when and how the device being used.

Read the final student report delivered to the local gov/community partner.

Sustainable City Years Program Contact Info

University Faculty Contact
Jennifer Dyer-Seymour
Psychology
Professor, Department of Psychology
jdyer-seymour@csumb.edu

Local Government / Community Contact
Gary Petersen

]]> /projects/technology-use-during-dinner-time/feed/ 0