Historically, cultural competence included providing a list of traits or characteristics germane to ethnic and racial groups. Although it is important to understand cultural groups broadly rather than merely reducing information to a cultural list, health care professionals need to know how individual patients experience their illness or injury. The purposes of this paper are to provide health care professionals an example of how to elicit cultural information from the patient’s perspective using the outline for cultural formulation and cultural formulation interview, to discuss the need to be aware of the social determinants of health in order to help patients or clients beyond cultural needs, and to suggest advocacy through a social-justice lens.
Browse
Alan L. Smith
In observing others and participating in social exchanges, people learn about aspects of physical activity, become inspired or discouraged to be active, and are afforded physical activity and other choices that are pursued with varying degrees of effort and persistence. With respect to children and adolescents, peers are uniquely situated social agents that we could more intensively study and leverage to the benefit of understanding and promoting physical activity. The author presents a case for expanding peer-focused physical activity research. He overviews how peers can both facilitate and undermine physical activity motivation (i.e., through desire for affiliation, social comparison, and social rejection) and how peers express structure (i.e., flocking) in ways that may offer paths to successful physical activity promotion. He then presents knowledge gaps and critical conceptual and methodological considerations that must be addressed to advance scientific understanding and peer-focused physical-activity-promotion efforts.
Cheryl M. Glazebrook
This article explores the idea of integration as a common theme for the next decade of motor control and learning research. Theoretical advances coupled with advances in understanding individual differences and brain-imaging techniques will facilitate novel perspectives through an integrated understanding of sensory, cognitive, and emotional processing for motor control and learning. Through the support of fundamental research, discoveries that cannot be predicted today will create new insights into how motor control and learning can inform education, health care, and sport. An integrated approach is critical for designs of novel products and procedures, as many new designs are not subject to large-scale trials. To achieve the most effective integration with the public and wider scientific community, researchers should explore novel methods for sharing our findings efficiently, ethically, and effectively.
Gregory J. Welk
A major challenge in public health research on physical activity is in reconciling the commonly observed differences between estimates provided by monitor-based methods and report-based methods. Calibration methods are widely used in measurement research to rescale or convert an estimate so that it matches a more robust criterion value. Accelerometry-based activity monitors are routinely calibrated against more robust estimates of indirect calorimetry, but surprisingly little research is done to calibrate report-based estimates. The purpose of the paper was to document the utility of calibration methods for harmonizing estimates from report-based measures to correspond with data from monitor-based methods. While there are also limitations associated with monitor-based methods, this procedure provides a systematic way to promote harmonization of estimates obtained from these different methods. This enables the more feasible report-based measures to provide more accurate group-level estimates of physical activity for different research applications.
Sharon E. Taverno Ross
The U.S. Latino population is growing rapidly, and Latino preschool children have the highest rates of obesity compared with their other racial/ethnic counterparts. Physical activity is associated with improved health outcomes in young children, and Latino preschool children’s physical activity is strongly correlated with parental physical activity levels. Physical activity interventions, especially those with a parent component, are particularly well suited for Latino preschool children and may help address this disparity. The author reviewed seven intervention studies and three protocol studies that targeted Latino preschool children and included a parent intervention component and physical activity as outcome variables. An interpretation of the findings of these studies, as well as critical questions for research and policy, are discussed.
Duane Knudson
Peer evaluation of scholarly publications and faculty research agendas is an important responsibility of kinesiology faculty and administrators. These expert disciplinary judgments can be supplemented by the careful use of relevant publication- and scholar-specific bibliometric data. This paper summarizes the misuse of journal-level bibliometrics and the research on more relevant publication- or scholar-specific bibliometrics. Recommendations and examples are presented for use of publication- and scholar-specific metrics as supplementary data for peer evaluation of research in kinesiology. Faculty who are knowledgeable about the meaning and limitations of bibliometrics may effectively use these tools to support judgments and check for potential bias in peer evaluations of research for appointment, tenure, promotion, and awards.
A. Mark Williams and Bradley Fawver
The authors review some of the most innovative and impactful developments in the field of motor behavior over the last 10–15 years, using citation reports from some of the most prominent journals in the field, as well as relying on subjective opinion from leading academic experts to identify notable contributions to knowledge generation in this broad and increasingly dynamic field of research. They delimit the scope of this task by focusing their efforts on three specific theme areas of study, notably, perceptual–cognitive expertise, motor learning, and motor control. In looking back over the last decade or so, they attempt to provide some direction by highlighting avenues for future research. Their hope is that over the next few decades these research theme areas will have even greater influence and translational impact on quality of life in many aspects of society, including sport and various clinical domains.