Suchergebnisse

Transportation planners, engineers, and researchers have long lamented the highly emotional public responses generated by changes to parking policies. We know that reducing the supply and increasing the price for parking—while intended to advance sustainability and other important community goals—seems to fuel an angry response, but this knowledge is often vague and anecdotal. This study combines qualitative coding of open-ended survey responses with quantitative analyses of sociodemographic and commute characteristics using descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression models to reveal a strong correlation between parking and anger among University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) campus users. Higher probabilities of anger are also positively associated with annual household incomes below $50,000, bus pass holders, and residential locations outside of the immediate UWM neighborhood. Qualitative themes from angry comments include frustrations about parking price, supply, and duration; questions about the motivations for university parking policies; and a sense of entitlement among campus users to free and inexpensive parking options. The study interprets these variables and themes together to provide insights into the complicated relationship between parking and anger and the importance of analyzing angry feedback to inform future policies.

Purpose. Examine the efficacy of a computer-tailored intervention (CTI) based on the transtheoretical model (TTM) for reducing depression, an increasingly important component of health promotion programs. Design. Pretest-posttest randomized trial. Setting. Participants were recruited and treated at home after being identified in two primary care clinics in Eastern Massachusetts and Chicago, Illinois. Subjects. A total of 350 adults experiencing at least mild symptoms of depression but not involved in or planning to seek treatment for depression. Intervention. A print manual and three CTI reports tailored to stage of change for using effective methods to prevent or reduce depression, other TTM variables, level of depression, and behavior. Measures. Pre-post changes and reliable and clinically significant change on the Beck Depression scale II and pre-post changes on the 20-item Medical Outcomes Study Short Form survey–based measure of physical functioning at 9 months' follow-up. Analysis. t-tests and χ2 tests. Complete-case analysis and two intention-to-treat analyses—assumption of no change and multiple imputation (MI)—are reported. Exploratory analyses examined whether the effects of the intervention on depression were moderated by five subject characteristics: baseline level of depression, baseline level of physical functioning, baseline stage of change for preventing or managing depression, age, and education. Results. Complete-case and intention-to-treat analyses showed that the intervention group experienced significantly greater improvements in depression (d = .220–.355); results for physical functioning were weaker (d = .150–.309) and did not reach statistical significance in the MI analysis. The effects of the intervention on reliable and clinically significant change in depression were largest among participants who were experiencing moderate depression (d = .363–.519) or severe depression (d = .603–.718) or who were in the precontemplation or contemplation stage (d = .573–.856) at baseline.