Reframing Adolescent Development: Identifying Communications Challenges and Opportunities.

Understanding Americans' deeply held and widely shared assumptions about adolescents and their development can reveal key opportunities and challenges for developmental science communicators. Twenty-nine in-depth interviews were conducted with adolescents and adults about adolescence. We analyzed the cultural models the public use to make meaning about what adolescence is, what development involves, what adolescents need, and how adolescents can be supported. The analysis revealed several cultural models that may impede public engagement around youth issues. These dominant ways of thinking include a strong focus on the vulnerability of adolescence and a narrow understanding of how environments affect adolescent development. The findings have important implications for communicators seeking to expand and deepen public thinking about adolescence.

Story to Change Culture on Early Childhood in Australia.

The goal of the article is to support the early childhood sector's efforts to increase the salience of early childhood as a social issue and change policy and practice to better support young children and their families. Cultural models shape how people think about social issues and support solutions. Changing how issues are framed-how they are presented, positioned and focused-can help shift these models and facilitate culture change. Using mixed methods research, we identified cultural models that members of the Australian public use to think about early childhood and compared these mindsets to concepts that the sector seeks to advance. This revealed a set of gaps in understanding that make it difficult for the sector to advance its agenda. We then designed and tested framing strategies to address these challenges and improve the salience of early childhood as a social issue, increase understanding of key concepts and build support for policies, programs and interventions. Findings point to strategies that advocates, service providers and funders can use to communicate more effectively about the importance of the early years.

Comparing characteristics of epilepsy treatment providers on the Kenyan coast: implications for treatment-seeking and intervention.

INTRODUCTION: Existing studies have identified demographic and resource-related barriers to treatment-seeking and have focused on treatment seekers in exploring and modeling decision-making. While the treatment-seeking literature acknowledges the role of the characteristics of treatment providers, few studies have adopted an explicit focus on these determinants, nor have they approached the study of treatment-seeking with an in-depth ethnographic focus on the providers themselves. The following article analyzes the structural aspects of treatment provision as one influence on how families in Kilifi, Kenya seek care for a child with chronic epilepsy. While not a comprehensive decision model, the study examines the ways in which treatment-seeking may be facilitated or deterred by the characteristics of available treatment options. METHODS: Ethnographic methods were applied, including interviews, participant observations and surveys, to examine factors that may affect the choice of families on the coast of Kenya between traditional healing and biomedical care for epilepsy. RESULTS: Traditional healers were found to have a profound influence in the treatment of epilepsy in Kilifi. Their treatments differ from those available at health facilities in the following key dimensions: explanations of causation, communication styles, social roles, referral practices, location and systems of payment. CONCLUSIONS: The article identified key differences between biomedical and traditional treatments that may help to explain the existence of the biomedical treatment gap in Kilifi. This study suggests that comparing data on treatment providers reveals barriers to obtaining biomedical care, thereby offering an important tool in intervention design research.

Mapping cultural models and translating expert explanations of child development with simplifying models.

How do people reason about issues related to child and youth development? Are the patterns of reasoning in the lay public significantly different from the way experts reason about the issue? What can the anthropological theory of cultural models bring to efforts to improve the public's understanding of child and youth development? In this article, the author explains the methods by which cultural models--the conceptual structures that shape how people perceive and understand their social worlds--are identified and how this mapping process serves as an essential step in closing the gaps between expert and lay understandings of social problems and, ultimately, informing communications strategies.

From focus groups to peer discourse sessions: the evolution of a method to capture language, meaning, and negotiation.

In this article, the authors describe a unique approach to conducting and analyzing focus groups, described as peer discourse analysis. The primary objective of this analysis is to examine the shape and form of the discourses and negotiations that develop organically among peers in discussions of social issues. Peer discourse analysis has both descriptive and prescriptive utility, as it is also used to experiment with frames that might improve people's understanding of complex social problems.

Reframing Aging: Effect of a Short-Term Framing Intervention on Implicit Measures of Age Bias.

OBJECTIVES: Evidence suggests that agist biases may operate implicitly (i.e., automatically and unconsciously) to affect discriminatory attitudes and behaviors toward older adults. However, few studies have tested the malleability of implicit age bias. The present study tests the effect of a framing intervention on implicit age bias in a nationally representative sample of American adults. METHOD: Participants (N = 767) were randomly assigned to read 1 of 3 framed messages, to an unframed message about aging, or to a control message unrelated to aging. Framed messages emphasized (a) the contributions of older adults to society; (b) aging as a process of accumulating wisdom and energy; and (c) mechanisms through which prejudice against older adults operates. Participants subsequently completed an aging implicit association test (IAT) to assess implicit bias. RESULTS: Relative to the control condition, participants in the 3 framed message conditions displayed lower implicit age bias. No differences were observed between participants in the control condition and those who read the unframed message. DISCUSSION: Findings indicate that reframing messages about aging can decrease implicit bias against older adults. This study highlights ways for communicators to promote a positive understanding of the aging process, thereby mitigating sources of implicit prejudice.

Seeing Context through Metaphor: Using Communications Research to Bring a Social Determinants Perspective to Public Thinking about Child Abuse and Neglect.

Human beings think in metaphor and reason through analogy. The metaphors through which we think influence how we understand and feel about social issues as well as the actions that we see as appropriate and important. Metaphors can be used to increase understanding of how issues work and increase the salience of a given issue, build support for programs and policies necessary to address the issue, and instigate demand for change and civic action. In this paper, we use a mixed methods research design, including brief qualitative interviews, experimental surveys, and focus groups, to test the ability of different metaphors to influence public understanding of the social determinants of child abuse and neglect in the UK. We find one metaphor in particular that improves people's understanding of the social causes of child maltreatment and increases support for structural solutions. This metaphor can be used to build support for preventative public health solutions.

Beyond Hat in Hand: Science Advocacy Is Foundational for Policy Decisions.

Beyond those to whom neuroscientists typically communicate exciting discoveries-that is, those who can provide more funding for researchers-there are important audiences that are positioned to use neuroscience findings to affect policy and improve societal outcomes. Showing the utility of research that policymakers, service providers, and the public can use to make decisions will enhance views of the value of scientific research. The ingredients of successful communications between neuroscientists and other stakeholders are different from those that characterize effective communications between scientists. Here, we discuss our experiences in the communication of the science of early childhood and brain development and our recommendations to help neuroscientists better communicate the benefits of their research to those who make practice and policy decisions.

Using metaphor to translate the science of resilience and developmental outcomes.

Developmental scientists have used a variety of linguistic devices to communicate the science of resilience, but their effectiveness at improving understanding and expanding support for evidence-based social policies has not been empirically tested. We describe the process of developing, testing, and refining an Explanatory Metaphor to communicate the science of resilience to the public and policymakers. We argue that public understanding is key to bridging the research-to-practice divide and that communications is a social science endeavor in its own right that requires careful empirical research.