Browsing by Author "Albright, Jordan"
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- Access to Autism Spectrum Disorder Services for Rural Appalachian CitizensScarpa, Angela; Jensen, Laura S.; Gracanin, Denis; Ramey, Sharon L.; Dahiya, Angela V.; Ingram, L. Maria; Albright, Jordan; Gatto, Alyssa J.; Scott, Jen Pollard; Ruble, Lisa (2020-01)Background: Low-resource rural communities face significant challenges regarding availability and adequacy of evidence-based services. Purposes: With respect to accessing evidence-based services for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), this brief report summarizes needs of rural citizens in the South-Central Appalachian region, an area notable for persistent health disparities. Methods: A mixed-methods approach was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data during focus groups with 33 service providers and 15 caregivers of children with ASD in rural southwest Virginia. Results: Results supported the barriers of availability and affordability of ASD services in this region, especially relating to the need for more ASD-trained providers, better coordination and navigation of services, and addition of programs to assist with family financial and emotional stressors. Results also suggested cultural attitudes related to autonomy and trust towards outside professionals that may prevent families from engaging in treatment. Implications: Relevant policy recommendations are discussed related to provider incentives, insurance coverage, and telehealth. Integration of autism services into already existing systems and multicultural sensitivity of providers are also implicated.
- A latent class analysis of professional development opportunities for special education teachers in rural school districts: Implications for preventing attritionAlbright, Jordan (Virginia Tech, 2022-06-22)Although every state in the United States is experiencing a shortage of special education teachers, projections indicate that rural communities are disproportionally impacted (Levin et al., 2015). Despite professional development being widely identified in the literature as a possible method for improving teacher quality and readiness in rural schools, and thereby preventing teacher attrition, few studies have empirically examined the relationship between special education professional development experiences and attrition in rural schools. This project will test the hypothesis that early-career professional development opportunities for rural special educators are related to job satisfaction and attrition. Data for this study came from the 2017-2018 National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS). Extraction of data from the NTPS data set isolated early career special education teachers working in rural communities. A latent class analysis (LCA) was used to identify a teacher typology concerning early career professional development, resulting in a two-class model, 'Greater Access to Professional Development' (Latent Class 1) and 'Less Access to Professional Development' (Latent Class 2). These two classes had similar access to a variety of professional development opportunities; however, those in the Greater Access to Professional Development class had greater access overall. Additional analyses examined whether LCA groups differed on measures of job satisfaction and attrition and found that teachers with greater access to professional development experiences report higher levels of job satisfaction than teachers with less access to professional development opportunities. Implications for these findings are described in detail.
- Peer Support as a Mediator between Bullying Victimization and DepressionDu, Chenguang; DeGuisto, Kara; Albright, Jordan; Alrehaili, Sara (Canadian Center of Science and Education, 2018-02-21)Bullying has been one of the most common forms of school violence in the world. Many studies have shown that victims of bullying suffer from serious psychological issues. In the current study, the relationships between three variables: bullied victim, peer support, and depression symptom were assessed, using published data from the 2009–2010 Health Behavior in School-Aged Children Survey (N = 12,642). The data was collected from 314 public, Catholic, and other private schools in the United States that enrolled students from grades 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 or their equivalent in 50 states and the District of Columbia. The results indicated: (1) bullied victim was positively associated with depression symptom, with higher victimization score reporting higher depression symptoms; (2) bullied victim was negatively associated with peer support, with higher victimization score reporting lower peer support; (3) peer support was negatively related to depression symptoms; and (4) peer support partially mediates the relationship between victimization and depression symptoms among bullied students. This empirical study underscores the important role of peer support in mitigating the negative effects of bullying on the victim’s depression symptoms, which also provide empirical support for intervention programs based on the peer support system.
- Rural trends in diagnosis and services for autism spectrum disorderAntezana, Ligia; Scarpa, Angela; Valdespino, Andrew; Albright, Jordan; Richey, John A. (Frontier, 2017-04-20)Rural communities face significant challenges regarding the adequate availability of diagnostic-, treatment-, and support-services for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Specifically, a variety of factors, including geographic distance between families and service providers, low reliance on health care professionals, and cultural characteristics, contribute to the diminished availability and utilization of services. Together, these factors lead to risks for delayed ASD screening and diagnosis, yielding lower educational and functional outcomes. The purpose of this review is to outline the specific diagnosis and treatment barriers that affect individuals with ASD and their families in rural settings. Telehealth feasibility and efficacy research is also reviewed, suggesting that telecommunication services may offer an inroad for addressing the specific service barriers faced by rural communities. Together, the current review identifies specific needs for both research and support services that address the specific access barriers characteristic of rural settings.
- Social attention during object engagement: toward a cross-species measure of preferential social orientingWeichselbaum, Claire; Hendrix, Nicole; Albright, Jordan; Dougherty, Joseph D.; Botteron, Kelly N.; Constantino, John N.; Marrus, Natasha (2022-12-14)Background A central challenge in preclinical research investigating the biology of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is the translation of ASD-related social phenotypes across humans and animal models. Social orienting, an observable, evolutionarily conserved behavior, represents a promising cross-species ASD phenotype given that disrupted social orienting is an early-emerging ASD feature with evidence for predicting familial recurrence. Here, we adapt a competing-stimulus social orienting task from domesticated dogs to naturalistic play behavior in human toddlers and test whether this approach indexes decreased social orienting in ASD. Methods Play behavior was coded from the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) in two samples of toddlers, each with and without ASD. Sample 1 (n = 16) consisted of community-ascertained research participants, while Sample 2 involved a prospective study of infants at a high or low familial liability for ASD (n = 67). Coding quantified the child’s looks towards the experimenter and caregiver, a social stimulus, while playing with high-interest toys, a non-social stimulus. A competing-stimulus measure of “Social Attention During Object Engagement” (SADOE) was calculated by dividing the number of social looks by total time spent playing with toys. SADOE was compared based on ASD diagnosis and differing familial liability for ASD. Results In both samples, toddlers with ASD exhibited significantly lower SADOE compared to toddlers without ASD, with large effect sizes (Hedges’ g ≥ 0.92) driven by a lower frequency of child-initiated spontaneous looks. Among toddlers at high familial likelihood of ASD, toddlers with ASD showed lower SADOE than toddlers without ASD, while SADOE did not differ based on presence or absence of familial ASD risk alone. SADOE correlated negatively with ADOS social affect calibrated severity scores and positively with the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales social subscale. In a binary logistic regression model, SADOE alone correctly classified 74.1% of cases, which rose to 85.2% when combined with cognitive development. Conclusions This work suggests that a brief behavioral measure pitting a high-interest nonsocial stimulus against the innate draw of social partners can serve as a feasible cross-species measure of social orienting, with implications for genetically informative behavioral phenotyping of social deficits in ASD and other neurodevelopmental disorders.