HIV Insight: technology

Friday, December 18, 2015

Queer in STEM: Workplace Experiences Reported in a National Survey of LGBTQA Individuals in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Careers

A survey of individuals working in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, queer, or asexual (LGTBQA) was administered online in 2013.

Participants completed a 58-item questionnaire to report their professional areas of expertise, levels of education, geographic location, and gender and sexual identities and rated their work and social communities as welcoming or hostile to queer identities.

An analysis of 1,427 responses to this survey provided the first broad portrait of this population, and it revealed trends related to workplace practices that can inform efforts to improve queer inclusivity in STEM workplaces.

Below: Histograms of participants’ openness ratings in (A) personal contexts, (B) to colleagues, and (C) to students. Note that only participants working in degree-granting institutions (academics) are included in panel C

Below: Box-and-whisker plots of participants’ openness ratings for personal contexts (white boxes), to colleagues (black boxes), and to students (gray boxes), broken down by participants’ fields of STEM expertise

Below: Across major STEM fields of expertise, the relationship between proportion of employed scientists and engineers who are women and participants’ median (±95% confidence interval) rating of openness to colleagues. A regression across all points is nonsignificant with p = .31 (solid line). However, a regression excluding data from psychology, in which professional standards may prevent openness independent of workplace climate, is significant with p = 0.02 (dashed line).

Below: Box-and-whisker plots of participants’ openness ratings for colleagues (top row) and for students (bottom row), in relation to their descriptions of the safety (A, B), welcoming climate (C, D) and their employers’ support for LGBTQ needs (E, F).

Full article at: http://goo.gl/c1rvxw

By: Jeremy B. Yoder PhD^a & Allison Mattheis PhD^b^*

^a Department of Plant Biology, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
^b Division of Applied and Advanced Studies in Education, California State University, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA

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Sunday, September 6, 2015

An Interactive Website to Reduce Sexual Risk Behavior: Process Evaluation of TeensTalkHealth

Below: Mechanisms of behavior change with respect to condom use and other health behaviors.

BACKGROUND:

Different theoretical frameworks support the use of interactive websites to promote sexual health. Although several Web-based interventions have been developed to address sexual risk taking among young people, no evaluated interventions have attempted to foster behavior change through moderated interaction among a virtual network of adolescents (who remain anonymous to one another) and health professionals.

OBJECTIVE:

The objective was to conduct a summative process evaluation of TeensTalkHealth, an interactive sexual health website designed to promote condom use and other healthy decision making in the context of romantic and sexual relationships.

METHODS:

Evaluation data were obtained from 147 adolescents who participated in a feasibility and acceptability study. Video vignettes, teen-friendly articles, and other content served as conversation catalysts between adolescents and health educators on message boards.

RESULTS:

Adolescents' perceptions that the website encouraged condom use across a variety of relationship situations were very high. Almost 60% (54/92, 59%) of intervention participants completed two-thirds or more of requested tasks across the 4-month intervention. Adolescents reported high levels of comfort, perceived privacy, ease of website access and use, and perceived credibility of health educators. Potential strategies to enhance engagement and completion of intervention tasks during future implementations of TeensTalkHealth are discussed, including tailoring of content, periodic website chats with health educators and anonymous peers, and greater incorporation of features from popular social networking websites.