Multiple peer group self-identification and adolescent tobacco use.

Associations between peer group self-identification and smoking were examined among 2,698 ethnically diverse middle school students in Los Angeles who self-identified with groups such as Rockers, Skaters, and Gamers. The sample was 47.1% male, 54.7% Latino, 25.4% Asian, 10.8% White, 9.1% Other ethnicity, and 59.3% children of immigrant parents. Multiple group self-identification was common: 84% identified with two or more groups and 65% identified with three or more groups. Logistic regression analyses indicated that as students endorsed more high-risk groups, the greater their risk of tobacco use. A classification tree analysis identified risk groups based on interactions among ethnicity, gender, and group self-identification. Psychographic targeting based on group self-identification could be useful to design more relevant smoking prevention messages for adolescents who identify with high-risk peer groups.

Evaluating an interdisciplinary undergraduate training program in health promotion research.

BACKGROUND: The University of California at Irvine Interdisciplinary Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (ID-SURE) program had three objectives: (1) designing an interdisciplinary health promotion training curriculum for undergraduate research fellows; (2) developing measures for evaluating and assessing program-related educational processes and products; and (3) comparing these educational process and product measures between groups of students who did or did not receive the training. METHODS: A total of 101 students participated in the ID-SURE program during 2005, 2006, and 2007. A longitudinal research design was employed whereby students' interdisciplinary attitudes and behaviors were assessed at the beginning and end of the training program. The interdisciplinary and intellectual qualities of students' academic and research products were assessed at the conclusion of the training activities. In addition, ID-SURE participants' interdisciplinary attitudes, behaviors, and research products were compared to those of 70 participants in another fellowship program that did not have an interdisciplinary training component. RESULTS: Exposing undergraduate research fellows to the interdisciplinary curriculum led to increased participation in, and positive attitudes about, interdisciplinary classroom and laboratory activities. Products, such as the integrative and interdisciplinary quality of student research projects, showed no differences when compared to those of undergraduates who were not exposed to the interdisciplinary curriculum. However, undergraduates exposed to the training engaged in more interdisciplinary behaviors at the end of the program than students who were not trained in interdisciplinary research techniques. CONCLUSIONS: The findings from this study offer evidence for the efficacy of the ID-SURE program for training undergraduate students in transdisciplinary concepts, methods, and skills that are needed for effective scientific collaboration. Additionally, this study makes two important contributions to the development and evaluation of interdisciplinary health research training programs: (1) It presents and evaluates a novel curriculum for training undergraduate students in interdisciplinary theories, concepts, and methods of health promotion that can be replicated in other settings and contexts; (2) It provides and tests the reliability of new measures for evaluating interdisciplinary collaborative processes and develops objective criteria for rating the integrative and intellectual quality of students' research products.

In vivo studies of transdisciplinary scientific collaboration Lessons learned and implications for active living research.

The past 2 decades have witnessed a surge of interest and investment in transdisciplinary research teams and centers. Only recently, however, have efforts been made to evaluate the collaborative processes and scientific and public policy outcomes of these endeavors. This paper offers a conceptual framework for understanding and evaluating transdisciplinary research, and describes a large-scale national initiative, the National Institutes of Health Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Centers (TTURCs) program, undertaken to promote cross-disciplinary scientific collaboration in the field of tobacco use science and prevention. A 5-year evaluation of collaborative processes and outcomes observed across multiple TTURC centers conducted during 1999 to 2004 is described. The findings highlight key contextual circumstances faced by participating centers (i.e., the breadth of disciplines and departments represented by each center, the extent to which members had worked together on prior projects, spatial proximity among researchers' offices, and frequency of their face-to-face interaction) that influenced their readiness for collaboration and prompted them to follow different pathways toward transdisciplinary integration. Implications of these findings for developing and evaluating future transdisciplinary research initiatives in the field of active living research are discussed.

Transdisciplinary collaboration as a basis for enhancing the science and prevention of Substance use and "Abuse".

Transdisciplinary scientific collaborations (TDSCs) have the potential to strengthen substance use and misuse research and prevention. Despite its growing prominence as a mode for scientific research, research on TDSC remains in a nascent form and its value to the field of substance use and misuse merits further exploration. The overarching purpose of this article is to examine the potential contributions of transdisciplinary science to research and prevention using conceptualizations, methods, and evidence from a case study of two university-based research centers. The article provides (a) a discussion of the societal context and historical developments that have prompted increasing interest in TDSC; (b) a definition and conceptualization of TDSC; (c) a methodological approach for studying TDSC; (d) initial findings from the case study that reflect instances of transdisciplinary intellectual integration and it examines implications of these methods and findings for future research and policy development relevant to substance use and misuse.

Evaluating transdisciplinary science.

The past two decades have seen a growing interest and investment in transdisciplinary research teams and centers. The Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Centers (TTURCs) exemplify large-scale scientific collaborations undertaken for the explicit purpose of promoting novel conceptual and methodological integrations bridging two or more fields. Until recently, few efforts have been made to evaluate the collaborative processes, and the scientific and public policy outcomes, of such centers. This manuscript offers a conceptual framework for understanding and evaluating transdisciplinary science and describes two ongoing evaluation studies covering the initial phase of the TTURC initiative. The methods and measures used by these studies are described, and early evaluative findings from the first 4 years of the initiative are presented. These data reveal progress toward intellectual integration within and between several of the TTURCs, and cumulative changes in the collaborative behaviors and values of participants over the course of the initiative. The data also suggest that different centers may follow alternative pathways toward transdisciplinary integration and highlight certain environmental, organizational, and institutional factors that influence each center's readiness for collaboration. Methodological challenges posed by the complexities of evaluating large-scale scientific collaborations (including those that specifically aspire toward transdisciplinary integrations spanning multiple fields) are discussed. Finally, new directions for future evaluative studies of transdisciplinary scientific collaboration, both within and beyond the field of tobacco science, are described.