Gallaudet Research Institute

First Wednesday Research Seminar Series

The GRI's First Wednesday Research Seminar Series provides an opportunity for the Gallaudet University academic community and visiting scholars to share insights from current research.

The lectures are held from 12:00 noon until 1:00 p.m. usually on the first Wednesday of the month in the Student Academic Center (SAC) and are open to the public. Sometimes, the lectures come on the second Wednesday morning, depending on circumstances. Sign language and voice-over interpreters are provided.

The GRI will provide technical assistance to presenters. If you are interested in doing a presentation on your research or related topic, contact Senda Benaissa, senda.benaissa@gallaudet.edu.

The Gallaudet Research Institute oversees Gallaudet Priority Research Fund which is designed to support research projects at Gallaudet (by faculty, students, and staff) that address areas that have been determined to be of high priority to the University (http://gri.gallaudet.edu/priorities.php). If you are interested in applying to the Gallaudet Research Priority Research Fund for financial support for your project, please contact us. Detailed information and an application form can be found at http://gri.gallaudet.edu/Funding/.

Click on the date above each presentation to add it to your .

GRI Research Lectures: 2009-2010

September 9, 2009
One Laptop per Child: Redesigning Education Access for the 21st Century

Samuel Klein, Community Content Director
One Laptop per Child

Samuel Klein will speak on the progress of the worldwide effort towards delivering low-cost exploratory computation to millions of children worldwide.

Empowering learning through Information Accessibility is his focus. Samuel will also describe One Laptop per Child's brand new XO-1.5 laptop, and may have a prototype to show.

Please join us if you want to talk about redesigning Education Access throughout the world for the 21st Century.

October 7, 2009
Plant exudates or the sticky stuff that many plants ooze

Jorge A. Santiago-Blay
Biology Department, Gallaudet University

resin
Pinus coulteri
U.S. National Arboretum

resin ("latex")
Euphorbia tirucalli
U.S. Botanical Gardens

gum
Prunus x yedoensis
Tidal Pool, Washington, DC

Fossilized plant resin, or amber, is unique in having exquisitely preserved organisms and some features of their ecology as far back as the Lower Cretaceous (approximately 130-120 millions of years ago). Resins, complex mixtures of carbon-rich molecules generally insoluble in water, have been produced by plants, including the extinct Medullosales, as early as the Carboniferous (approximately 300 Ma). Of all existing plant exudates, including resins, latexes, gums, kinos, and others distributed in scores of vascular plant families and genera, it appears that only resins have survived deep geologic time. Research on these resins and other plant exudates is important because it allows us to understand paleoenvironments and paleoclimates entombed in amber during different intervals in Earth's history, and reconstruct these amberiferous forests. During this presentation, participants will see numerous examples of plant exudates as well as fakes. Also, we will discuss some of the many uses that plant exudates, such as resins, have had throughout history. An update on the most recent finds on plant exudates will also be provided.

November 4, 2009
Measuring the Prevalence of Intimate Partner Violence in a Sample of Deaf Female Undergraduates

Melissa Anderson, Clinical Psychology Doctoral Student
Department of Psychology, Gallaudet University
Irene W. Leigh, Professor
Department of Psychology, Gallaudet University

It has been documented that roughly 25% of all Deaf women are victims of intimate partner violence (ADWAS, 1997). This figure is similar to the annual prevalence rates between 16% and 30% in the hearing community. While the percentage of intimate partner violence may be similar in Deaf and hearing women, Deaf women may be less likely to report abuse because of lack of information about intimate partner violence and lack of accessible resources and services (ADWAS, 2000). Subsequently, battering of Deaf people is probably one of the most underreported crimes in America (ADWAS, 1997). Therefore, it is necessary to have effective measures to identify instances of intimate partner violence with Deaf individuals.

The Revised Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS2) is currently the most widely used measure for identifying cases of intimate partner violence within the hearing population, with scales measuring Physical Assault, Psychological Aggression, Negotiation, Physical Injury, and Sexual Coercion. The CTS2 has been used successfully with individuals from various countries and cultural backgrounds (Straus, 2004). However, the CTS2 had yet to be used with Deaf individuals.

To ensure that the CTS2 is an appropriate measure to assess intimate partner violence within the Deaf community, it was necessary to analyze if it is reliable and valid when used with Deaf individuals. The goal of the present study was to investigate the internal consistency reliability and the factor structure of the CTS2 within a sample of Deaf female college students. Participants for this study were 100 Deaf and hard-of-hearing female undergraduates currently attending Gallaudet University, located in Washington, DC. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 25, with a mean of 20.65 years. 51% identified as European American; 13% Hispanic; 8% as African American; 7% as Asian American; 2% as Native American; and 19% as Other.

Psychometric analyses indicated that the five scales of the CTS2 demonstrated good internal consistency within this sample of Deaf female undergraduates, with 7 of the 10 subscales exhibiting Cronbach's alpha values above .70. The Negotiation, Psychological Aggression, and Physical Assault scales proved reliable when measuring both Perpetration and Victimization. Additionally, the Injury Victimization subscale showed evidence of reliability.

While the majority of scales showed evidence of reliability within this sample, three scales did not: Injury Perpetration, Sexual Coercion Perpetration, and Sexual Coercion Victimization. The low level of internal consistency in the subscales is likely due to the minimal variance in participant responses for many of the items on these scales. Indeed, for items measuring Injury Perpetration and Sexual Coercion Perpetration, very few participants reported perpetrating these behaviors. Moreover, on a few items from these scales, no participants reported ever perpetrating the queried behavior. It is likely that this lack of response variance accounts for low levels of internal consistency for the Injury Perpetration and Sexual Coercion Perpetration subscales, indicating a need for a sample with more diverse experiences for future research. However, for the Sexual Coercion Victimization subscale, variance in participant responses did not seem to be an issue, with over half of the sample reporting its occurrence at least once in the past year. Rather, one particular item seems to be responsible for low internal consistency of the subscale -- the item querying coercion of condomless sex. In both the Sexual Coercion Victimization and Perpetration subscales, responses to this item inflate the mean of the Sexual Coercion scale. Relative to other Sexual Coercion items, many participants report perpetrating and experiencing this behavior. Therefore, the discrepancy between making one's partner (or being made to) have sex without a condom and the remainder of the items on the Sexual Coercion subscales seems to be causing low internal consistency.

Although three subscales of the CTS2 did not evidence reliability and the factor structure was not validated for Perpetration items, descriptive statistics from the Victimization of Negotiation, Psychological Aggression, Physical Assault, and Injury can still be reliably interpreted. When comparing the prevalence of victimization to hearing female undergraduates, it appears that the current sample of Deaf female undergraduates was roughly two times as likely to have experienced victimization in the past year. This increased prevalence was significant for experiences of Physical Assault, Psychological Aggression, and Sexual Coercion.

While twice the percentage of Deaf undergraduates experienced victimization in the past year, results indicated that the experience of all victims was similar, with similar mean frequencies of victimization for both hearing and Deaf undergraduates in the areas of Physical Assault and Sexual Coercion. However, the frequency of Psychological Aggression was significantly higher in Deaf victims, indicating that for Deaf undergraduate victims Psychological Aggression was experienced more frequently.

Feburary 3, 2010
Revision Processes Used by Deaf Middle School Students: A Grounded Theory

Christina Yuknis, Instructor
Department of Education, Gallaudet University

The purpose of this dissertation study is to understand the processes used by deaf children in middle school to convey meaning through the construction of texts, specifically through analysis of the revision process, by using a grounded theory methodology. Since few studies have examined revision by children who are deaf, this study will add to the knowledge base and eventually lead to improved pedagogy and educational outcomes for children who are deaf. Texts written by students, videotaped interviews of teachers and students, and classroom observations were the data sources for this study.

March 3, 2010
(TBA)

Charles Reilly, Research Scientist
Gallaudet Research Institute, Gallaudet University
Samuel Weber, Instructor
Family & Child Studies, Gallaudet University
Hilary Cote, Graduate Student
Hearing, Speech & Language, Gallaudet University
Beth Bowman, Graduate Student
Social Work, Gallaudet University

April 7, 2010
Developing tests for the assessment of sign language skills

Raylene Paludneviciene, Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology, Gallaudet University

There is a great demand for tests that assess sign language skills, unfortunately existing tests for the assessment of American Sign Language (ASL) skills are not available for professional use. This presentation will highlight the challenges of developing tests to measure competency in ASL as well as barriers to the distribution of existing tests of ASL. The Depiction Comprehension Test (DCT) is a measure of a specific skill in ASL which is currently under development. Examples from the development of the DCT will be presented, along with existing tests of ASL such as the ASL Sentence Reproduction Test (ASL-SRT).