Applying Instructional Design Strategies and Behavior Theory to Household Disaster Preparedness Training.

CONTEXT: Interventions and media campaigns promoting household disaster preparedness have produced mixed results in affecting behaviors. In large part, this is due to the limited application of instructional design strategies and behavior theory, such as the Transtheoretical Model (TTM). This study describes the development and evaluation of Ready CDC, an intervention designed to increase household disaster preparedness among the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) workforce. OBJECTIVES: (1) Describe the instructional design strategies employed in the development of Ready CDC and (2) evaluate the intervention's impact on behavior change and factors influencing stage progression for household disaster preparedness behavior. DESIGN: Ready CDC was adapted from the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA's) Ready campaign. Offered to CDC staff September 2013-November 2015, it consisted of a preassessment of preparedness attitudes and behaviors, an in-person training, behavioral reinforcement communications, and a 3-month follow-up postassessment. RESULTS: Ready CDC employed well-accepted design strategies, including presenting stimulus material and enhancing transfer of desired behavior. Excluding those in the TTM "maintenance" stage at baseline, this study determined 44% of 208 participants progressed at least 1 stage for developing a written disaster plan. Moreover, assessment of progression by stage found among participants in the "precontemplation" (n = 16), "contemplation" (n = 15), and "preparation" (n = 125) stages at baseline for assembling an emergency kit, 25%, 27%, and 43% moved beyond the "preparation" stage, respectively. Factors influencing stage movement included knowledge, attitudes, and community resiliency but varied depending on baseline stage of change. CONCLUSIONS: Employing instructional strategies and behavioral theories in preparedness interventions optimizes the potential for individuals to adopt preparedness behaviors. Study findings suggest that stage movement toward household preparedness was not spurious but rather associated with the intervention. Therefore, Ready CDC was successful in moving staff along the continuous process of adopting household disaster preparedness behaviors, thus providing a model for future interventions. The TTM suggests factors such as knowledge, beliefs, and self-efficacy will differ by stage and may differentially predict progression towards behavior adoption. Thus, tailoring interventions based on an individual's stage of change optimizes the potential for individuals to adopt desired behaviors.

The effect of horizontal versus vertical task presentation on children's performance in coordinate tasks.

Empirical work on children's ability to understand spatial coordinates has focused on the factors that increase children's proficiency. When interpreting performance, it should be considered that presenting a coordinate task on a horizontal surface might constrain the responses that children make because some target positions are further away from the child than others. Vertical task presentation removes this constraint. Children aged 3 to 9 years were presented with an interpretative coordinate task administered on a touchscreen, presented in an egocentric-vertical position or egocentric-horizontal position. The results show that for 5- to 7-year-old children vertical presentation led to far more correct responses than horizontal presentation. Analysis of the children's errors suggests that this may be due to the fact that vertical presentation suppresses children's bias towards responding in relation to one rather than both coordinates. Taken together these findings contribute to understanding why children's performance in xy coordination tasks is highly contextually sensitive.

Breakdown of spatial parallel coding in children's drawing.

When drawing real scenes or copying simple geometric figures young children are highly sensitive to parallel cues and use them effectively. However, this sensitivity can break down in surprisingly simple tasks such as copying a single line where robust directional errors occur despite the presence of parallel cues. Before we can conclude that this directional bias is a limiting case it needs to be shown that any given parallel cues are indeed being processed. We achieved this by using a texture-defined contour where parallel cues are integral to the stimulus and thus cannot be ignored. Here we report that even when prolific parallel cues must have been processed, young children make robust directional errors when copying single lines. This finding demonstrates a major constraint on young children's spatial parallel coding.

Children's colour choices for completing drawings of affectively characterised topics.

BACKGROUND: This study was designed to explore whether or not children systematically use particular colours when completing drawings of affectively characterised topics. METHOD: Three hundred and thirty 4-11-year-old children were subdivided into three conditions, colouring in a drawing of a man, a dog, or a tree, respectively. The children completed two test sessions in counterbalanced order. In one session, children rated and ranked ten colours in order of preference. In the other session, children completed three colouring tasks in which they had to colour in three identical figures but which had been given different affective characterisations: a neutrally characterised figure, a figure characterised as nasty, and a figure characterised as nice. RESULTS: It was found that, in all age groups and for all topics, the children used their more preferred colours for the nice figures, their least preferred colours for the nasty figures, and colours rated intermediately for the neutral figures. It was also found that, in all age groups and for all topics, black tended to be the most frequently chosen colour for colouring in the drawings of the negatively characterised figures. By contrast, primary colours were predominantly selected for the neutral figure, while a wide range of mainly primary and secondary colours were chosen for colouring in the nice figure. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that children are able to alter systematically their use of colour during picture completion tasks in response to differential affective topic characterisations, and that even very young children are able to use colours symbolically.