Not Bad for Everyday Life

I’ve got a song stuck in my head, one that’s unlikely to hit the Top 40 anytime soon: “Not Bad for Having Three Kids,” as sung by the Ta-Tas on Bob’s Burgers. I started watching the show a few weeks ago partly because it seemed to be popular on Hulu, and partly because the lead voice also did Coach McGuirk on Home Movies (*hilarious* show during its first season). One stanza to “Not Bad for Having Three Kids” goes,

            This is down here, but it should be up there.

            This is kind of loose, and I think it might tear.

                        This is lumpy (and it’s dumpy).

This is saggy (and it’s flabby).

            When I bend down I pee a little bit,

            But it’s not bad, not bad for having three kids.

"I still got my sexy parts. Well, I got two out of five..."

Catchy, eh? The point of this entry is that I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out why a ditty like that sticks in my head today when it would make me cringe when I was younger. Sort of like vegetables: I couldn’t stand the stuff as a kid, and I can’t get enough now. Why?

I think there are two reasons. The first is that I simply appreciate anything musical much more now that I’m older. My failed efforts in recent years to learn to play the piano have reminded me how much time and effort it takes to learn skills like that in the first place, and I appreciate that people have sacrificed their time to help keep my life interesting. The more important reason, though, is the way it gives light to a sensitive topic in the most absurd way possible. You know what I really don’t like about being an adult? How everything seems to be off limits to talk about. Hygiene. Sex. Health. Looks. I told some co-workers that it was ludicrous how large my pregnant wife was getting. They nearly fainted. The net effect, I think, is that nearly everyone thinks they are freaks in some way, that we feel alone with everyday ‘struggles’ that are actually incredibly common.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not advocating that we start an Adam Sandler revolution or anything like that. I do think that we need to be less squeamish about talking about our quirks, though. A lot of people get worked up over nothing. A guy I knew hated his wife because she cut back with the bedroom stuff after they got married. I wonder if he would have had the same feelings if he knew that happened more often than not. I’d bet money that you do something you consider weird when you poop. I’d also bet you read or watch something regularly you wouldn't dream of telling your best friend. I’m here to let you know you’re not alone.

There’s a more important topic here – what it means to be an adult – that I’ll save for another day. Instead, I’ll simply close by thanking the folks at 20th Century Fox for broadcasting how accidental squirting is a common consequence of having kids.

Kurt-ronicling For Posterity

2014. A new year. As in the past, I have made the requisite number of doomed resolutions. To lose weight. To send Christmas cards earlier. To finally finish Ulysses. It didn’t take a lot of time: I just copied and pasted most from my last list (not 2013, but 2010). The terrible truth is that I’m not half the pessimist I claim to be. This is the year I’ll keep the promises I made to myself.

A new resolution, though, is to be faithful to my blog. Part of the reason is self-indulgence: I’m very American in my beliefs that I think differently than others, that I’ve had experiences that are hard to appreciate, and that I have important lessons to share with the world. There’s a second motive, too: I’m hoping it will help me clarify my own thinking about the world and how I fit into it. Good writing is concise, and being concise means distilling complex thoughts down to their essence. Too often when I’m talking, I feel like I’ve made the tough stuff sound tough. It’s time to make them sound simple.

And there’s a third motive: to leave a record of my evolution behind for my kids. My dad passed away last year, and one the issues I’ve grappled with is how poorly I understood him. I know the chronology, how he grew up in northern Minnesota, made his way to Minneapolis and Chicago and Santa Monica before returning to Minnesota. I rarely knew what was going on in his head, though. He seemed to hate being a father, yet never missed my soccer games. He ran all the people he loved out of his life while lamenting his loneliness. I remember seeing him weep after my mom passed away, and I still wonder whether he was crying for her or himself.

But I feel like I know him a little better now because I found his journals after cleaning out the house. They chronicle his thoughts starting when he was just about my age now. They aren’t lengthy, but they’ve given me a much deeper appreciation of what he endured in his life (so many moments where all he had was the money in his pocket!). Maybe I can achieve the same for my own kids, once they hit their 30s, and wonder what the hell their old man was thinking when he ____. Here’s to trying!

Hope you're as excited after I go nuts, Emmett!

I will miss you, Election 2012

It’s Election Day! I have mixed feelings about the fact that campaigning is about to end. I am generally not a fan of reality TV, but have found the ups and downs of the candidates to be fascinating theater if for all the wrong reasons. My favorite parts:

1. The Republican shooting stars. Michelle Bachman, Rick Perry, Hermain Cain and Newt Gingrich each shot up out of seemingly nowhere, produced a “wow” that seemed to capture the energy of the Republican base, and then faded into nothingness. The speed of both their ascents and their declines were true reflections of the Kardashian/Twitter age. My Flip camera was in vogue longer than most of those candidates.
2. Romney’s dash to the center. I really liked Bob Dole before he betrayed a lifetime of reasonable stances to win the Republican primary, and then ran for president as a parody of himself. Ditto on McCain. Romney had the courage to pull a fast one on the conservative base, though, and run his post-primary campaign as ‘Moderate Mitt.’ If he’s elected, who will you get? I don’t know, but it’s the kind of move that made me love professional wrestling; and it’s the kind of move that made me love this election.
3. The “everyone else is crazy” mentality. I had one friend assert that we should test people before allowing them to vote, and five minutes later told me he was going to sell his votes to the highest bidder because he didn’t care. I have another friend who couldn’t believe how ill-informed Republicans are despite having seen no debates or researched any candidates’ positions, including her own. On the plus side, only one person has told me that he’s moving to Canada if the ‘other guy’ wins.
4. Running against the opponent. If you were a space alien who landed on earth, the only way you’d know Obama was president was by listening to Romney’s ads. I understand running as the Anti-Bush, but running as the Anti-Romney? Is Obama ashamed of his accomplishments? The funny thing is that this strategy might just work! 

Emmett wants you to vote for this guy.

Quite a bit has made me depressed, too. The biggest downers:

1. “Hope and Change.” For a guy who won a presidential election on ideology rather than experience or policies, Obama seems unbelievably unwilling to rise above partisan politics, and disinclined to address important but unpopular issues (wars, tax reform, entitlement reform, budgets). Certainly, I’m angry about what feels like a Republican tendency to prioritize stymieing Obama over doing what’s best for the country, but I’m sadder that Obama gave up on changing the culture of Washington so readily.
2. Battleground states and the “47%.” You get to be president if you win Ohio, apparently, but that would also make you president of Montana, Massachusetts, Kansas and California. Candidates are concentrating so hard on the analytics of winning elections that they’re ignoring the analytics of running the country. Even if that 47% of the country wasn’t going to vote for Mitt, shouldn’t he feel like they’d be his people, too? 
3. Fighting voter fraud. Only around half of Americans will vote in this election. Yet, some people want to pare that figure back even further? It’s incredible to me that the Republican Party seems to spend more time keeping certain people from voting than trying to win them over.

I suppose like any protracted event, I’ve developed a fondness for the election precisely for its ups and downs. I don’t really have strong feelings for either presidential candidate, so I’ve focused more on the process than any particular guy or gal (in large part, it’s because local and congressional politics feel more important this year. Sorry for ignoring all of that stuff! Maybe in another posting). The stakes are high, particularly given the challenges facing our country. I have faith that either Obama and Romney can tackle them, though. May the best man win!

And if you’ve lingered on my posting for this long and are interested in who I voted for, the answer is Gary Johnson. Although I feel compelled to write about the major candidates and parties, I feel no obligations to vote for them. This is a topic for another day!

Thankful 

It's been a long time since I last posted, I know. Blogging got me no closer to the finish line, though. I swore to myself that I wouldn't post until I defended my dissertation. That day has come.

Not surprisingly, I am trying to wrap my head around what happened. What I did well. What I didn't. I need a lot more time to process my experiences with my dissertation and my time as a doctoral student. It felt much harder than it should have been, but there's no arguing that my track record and my trajectory are enviable. Did I have it hard? Too easy? Was it exactly how it should have been? Can you even use the term, "should have been?"

I'll start safely and simply say that I am eternally grateful to everyone who stood by me despite the disincentives. My friends in Minnesota helped my parents get by even though it meant being berated by my insane father. I have been intolerable with my wife at times, and my success means she has to give up her very nice job. My committee has the hope of a publication if I stitch together all of the findings well. The cost: an incredible loss of time, and no recognition on their merit reviews (which determines promotion). The only person who clearly wins in the end is me. I thank everyone who has helped me over the years as I've tried to earn the PhD. I hope I can return the favor someday.

No need for the stiff arm - daddy should be more tolerable going forward!

Efficacy expectations

I just sent an email to class titled, "Taping Lecture on Lecture." The nonsense of the statement reminded me of one of the most aggravating aspects of social science research: the lack of standardized language.

The last week in HBHE 600 was devoted to social cognitive theory, a model of learning that focuses on the role of self efficacy and outcome expectations and their dynamic interactions with environmental factors to shape behaviors. I remember being introduced to this theory in 2004, and struggling. More than most of the other theories we covered, SCT was one that I read about... and read more about... and kept reading because it has many moving parts and some of them just didn't sink in for. Part of the struggle was just the usual investment you have to make if you want to master anything. A lot of my person confusion, however, stemmed from imprecise language.

Some terms can mean too things

More specifically, the term "efficacy expectations" was used in class to refer to one's self efficacy to be able to perform a specific behavior in a specific situation. Simple, eh? Except a minority of academics used the term to refer to outcome expectations, as in "efficacy expectations were that medications would not lower blood pressure." Enough people, in fact, that I tried to convince myself that efficacy expectations were distinct from both self efficacy and outcome expectations. I think my confusion was forgivable: a lot of health behavior theories (e.g., Protection Motivation Theory, the Extended Parallel Process Model) include perceived response efficacy as key constructs, and it's a small step to morph that into the term, "efficacy expectation."

I raise this issue for two reasons. The first is simply to tell those of you who have tripped over the same confusion about lingo that I sympathize. I've seen other students with the exact same misunderstandings that I had, and I hope this posting helps to reduce that confusion.

The second issue is larger comment about social science more generally: I often wonder how the science advances without standardized language. My undergraduate education was as a biochemist, and you could generally make sense of any article you read, whether it be by someone in Canton, China or Canton, Ohio, because the metrics were standardized. In the social sciences, what does someone really mean when they say, "efficacy expectations?" Or "fear?" Or "perceived risk?" We have a gist-level understanding of what these terms represent, but the operationalization of them from situation to situation is often wildly different.

On the plus side, it's this lack of precision that makes social science interesting and challenging. The experienced practitioner knows enough not to get hung up on the minor differences between "fear" and "worry" when crafting an intervention, but is savvy enough to operationalize and label them appropriately during assessment and publication.

Totato, totahto, and health behavior theories

It's the end of September, and we've just finished a lecture on the Theory of Reasoned Action and the Theory of Planned Behavior. It's time to pause and reflect on what we've covered to date.

Unless you're coming in with some training in psychology, you're probably thinking what I thought when I took this class long ago: are we just giving different names to the same things? What is the difference between perceived behavioral control and self-efficacy? Is an attitude really different from a belief? It's something I still struggle with from time to time.

Let's start with perceived behavioral control and self-efficacy. For the purposes of developing an intervention, assume they're the same (in fact, Fishbein or Azjen or maybe both asserted at a conference at some point that they were the same). From my perspective, though, self-efficacy is a part of perceived behavioral control. Self-efficacy is one's confidence in his/her ability to perform a specific behavior in a specific situation. Perceived behavioral control includes that in its definition, but also includes aspects like access and confidentiality (think enabling factors). Consider an outcome like intention to get the flu vaccine. You might have all the confidence in the world about your ability to handle the pain and ague associated with the shot. If you work and the shot’s only available during working hours, though, you might not have any intention to get it because you perceive that getting the vaccine is not under your control.

The differences between attitudes and perceived benefits/barriers is a little (but not much) cleaner. Attitudes are generally object-evaluation associations (or more relevantly, behavior-evaluation associations) that boil down to "good" or "bad." You say "swimming" and I think "yuck." You say "eating french fries" and I think "yum!" Perceived beliefs and barriers, on the other hand, have more of a this-is-what-the-behavior-achieves feel. Swimming makes me feel nauseous (perceived barrier), or eating french fries improves my mood (perceived benefit). What's the difference? An evaluation of the outcome. If I was bizarre, I might like to feel nauseous or might not want my mood improved.

An explanation that probably works better for class is to think of these theories as languages. When you're talking Health Belief Model, you say "perceived threat, perceived benefits, perceived barriers, and self-efficacy." When you're talking Theory of Planned Behavior, you say "attitudes about behavior, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and behavioral intention." You also operationalize your variables differently (extremely important nuances from an evaluation perspective), but I'll let y'all internalize those differences from your notes.

Hope that helps!

Health Believing on a Sunday Night

Alas, another weekend is just about at an end. I thought I'd use the end of the week to reflect on what we covered in HBHE 600 last week, namely the Health Belief Model.

(everyone's favorite depiction of the Health Belief Model, even though self efficacy is missing...)

The Health Belief Model is the first of many theories of health behavior that we cover in class. The guts of it are pretty straightforward: if I perceive a threat to my health, and I perceive benefits to a preventive behavior and don't perceive barriers, I'm likely to make the behavior change (and if you're using a more updated version of HBM, you also need to have confidence in your ability to do the behavior). It's a popular theory to use: freak people out, tell them what they can do to avoid the problem, and maximize their confidence to do the behavior and minimize their barriers to action and they're more likely to take preventive action. The seasoned practitioner might be nuanced about targeting a threat (e.g., if you want to get teenagers to brush their teeth, how much do you highlight the threat of cavities and how much do you hype the threat of bad breath?), highlighting the right benefits (the benefit that motivates me is the idea that my hygienist will finally praise my brushing), targeting the most important perceived barriers (I'm ashamed to admit that I often think that brushing my teeth takes too much time) and building confidence in the right skills. On the face of it all, it's seems simple to implement.

Or so it seems. We often default to HBM constructs because they're well proven correlates of behavior, even if the relationships between constructs may be more complicated that the base model depicts (e.g., benefits and barriers matter more when threat perceptions are high... except when threat perceptions are super high and people often prefer to avoid the topic altogether). But how do you change something like the perceived benefits of a behavior? Preaching benefits oftentimes gets people to go in exactly the wrong direction. Take my dad, for example. If you tell him that going to the eye doctor will slow the progression of his vision loss, he's going to tell you "the (add a few expletives here) eye doctor never helps!" You've got to bait the guy in a way that makes him think about the benefits himself. Something like:

Me - "How's your vision, dad?"

Dad - "Terrible."

Me - "Sorry to hear. Maybe there's something we can do?"

Dad - "Well, I suppose we could go see Dr. Bob."

My dad's the exception and not the rule on many things, but reactance is a common reaction to threats to personal freedom. We can actually cause people to perceive fewer benefits to preventive behaviors exactly by trying too hard to change them.

From a public health perspective, I don't think we should get too hung up on this issue and suddenly start creating reverse-psychology PSAs. There are lessons to be learned from the literature on motivational interviewing and "rolling with resistance," though, that might help if we found ways to implement those strategies at a population level...