No more cone? Psychology researchers offer better tool for visualizing hurricane danger

Improving upon the 'cone of uncertainty'

COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

IMAGE: A STILL IMAGE OF THE EXPERIMENTAL ZOOMIES. view more 

CREDIT: JESSICA WITT/COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY

When a hurricane threatens to make landfall, forecasters offer a barrage of informational tools to communicate the risk of it coming through coastal and inland communities, so residents can prepare for its impact. Chief among these tools is the "cone of uncertainty" - a visual depiction of the storm's potential path.

But is the cone doing its job? Studies show that people often misinterpret this popular weather graphic. They don't understand the information it's conveying: the likely path of a storm, and its likelihood to deviate from that path based on historical data. The graphic is cone-shaped because the farther we try to look into the future, the more uncertain the forecast. But because the cone draws a line around a specific area, many people assume that locations outside the cone will not be affected by the storm.

Researchers in Colorado State University's Department of Psychology are working on an easily understood, science-backed way to visually represent hurricane danger to the general public. They contend that the cone of uncertainty creates a false sense of security for people who live outside the boundary of the cone and that there are better ways to signal likely impacts.

The research team includes psychology professors Jessica Witt, who studies the human visual system, and Benjamin Clegg, who studies human factors in the design of new technologies. Together, they created experiments to test whether hurricane projections could be better understood by average viewers through dynamic graphics the researchers have christened "zoomies." Their results are detailed in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied.

Summarizing information

According to Witt, the human visual system excels at something called ensemble perception. When your eyes see a group of objects, your brain quickly extracts a summary of those objects. Looking at a patch of grass, your brain makes a snap judgement about its average greenness. When you look at a tree, your brain automatically estimates the average size of the leaves.

The cone of uncertainty is what researchers call a summary statistic. The average, projected track of the hurricane goes up the middle, and that track is surrounded by varying degrees of uncertainty.

When the cone gets bigger, people think that means the storm will be getting worse or increasing in severity. But the cone's size is only communicating increasing uncertainty around the forecast. The cone also lends itself to what researchers call a containment heuristic.

"People like categories, and to be able to put things in these binary buckets - [at] risk, not at risk," Witt said. "The cone basically encourages that. It has this well-defined boundary, and people treat things within a boundary as qualitatively different than what's outside the boundary."

Clegg points to Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans and surrounding areas in 2005. "It's a good example of a storm that shifted its path just before landfall, heading outside the previously forecast cone of uncertainty," Clegg said. People who lived outside earlier forecast cone boundaries might have assumed they weren't at great risk, he said.

The researchers wondered if instead of the summary statistic of the cone, a better graphic would take advantage of what the visual system is already good at - synthesizing and summarizing. "Rather than visualize the summary, let's give them raw data, and let the visual system do the summary instead," Witt said.

'Zoomies'

Their new and improved graphic is more like a track ensemble, or a spaghetti plot. But track ensembles also have their issues. If a town is located on a track, then people perceive it to be at higher risk than one located off a track, even if the latter one is located closer to the storm's center.

So Witt and Clegg came up with the idea of "zoomies," which are sets of dots that each represent a different projected hurricane path and move accordingly. "The idea is that by getting rid of the defined boundary, we do not have this yes-or-no binary risk distinction, but rather a more gradual, more probabilistic understanding of risk," Witt said.

View an example gif of zoomies: https://col.st/TbdQ1

Lots of zoomies following paths close to the most likely path convey the higher risk there. But even a few zoomies showing more extreme deviations illustrate that there is still some risk for those areas, the researchers said.

Their hypothesis was borne out in a series of experiments with CSU students who, the researchers noted in their paper, are typically not very experienced with hurricanes. In the experiment, they tasked participants with deciding whether to evacuate a town on a map, based on seeing either a traditional cone of uncertainty or the experimental zoomies.

The cone of uncertainty had a distinct containment effect: Study participants chose to evacuate the town located within the cone at high rates, and the town beyond the cone at low rates. The cutoff was sharp and happened over a very short geographical distance - defined by the boundary of the forecast cone.

When the participants assessed hurricane risk using the zoomies, however, researchers saw a gradual decrease in evacuation rates. As the town got further from the center of the projected path, evacuation rates decreased gradually - more in line with what should be done in real life.

"This showed that the participants understood there is risk beyond where the cone ends," Witt said. "There is risk in these peripheral areas."

The researchers repeated the experiments with university students in Florida - who are notably more experienced with actual hurricanes - with collaborators Amelia Warden, a CSU graduate student, and Lisa Blalock, a psychology faculty member at University of West Florida. The results were strikingly similar to the study conducted in Fort Collins. This parity indicates that the visual impression from the cone of uncertainty is so strong that it overcomes even prior knowledge of how hurricane forecasts work.

"It's hard to resist that visual impression," Witt said.

The experimental results with the Florida students are accepted as a conference paper at the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society meeting in October, where Witt and Clegg will present their findings.

The researchers think their findings could not only help decisionmakers and the public better prepare for hurricane landfalls, but also help improve trust in forecasting.

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Floating into summer with more buoyant, liquid-proof life jackets, swimsuits (video)

AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

NEWS RELEASE 14-JUL-2021

Research News

 

IMAGE: A NEW ONE-STEP METHOD CREATES A LIQUID-PROOF, MORE BUOYANT COTTON FABRIC FOR LIFE JACKETS. view more 

CREDIT: AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

Summertime is here, and that often means long, lazy days at the beach, water skiing and swimming. Life jackets and swimsuits are essential gear for these activities, but if not dried thoroughly, they can develop a gross, musty smell. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have developed a one-step method to create a buoyant cotton fabric for these applications that is also oil- and water-repellant. Watch a video of the fabric here.

Waterproof and oil-proof fabrics are in high demand for recreational water activities because of their low drag and self-cleaning properties. And while cotton is a popular fabric, it's hydrophilic, so most liquids and dirt can easily mess it up. To improve cotton's impermeability, previous researchers developed superamphiphobic coatings that were extremely water- and oil-repellant. But because they required multiple time-consuming steps to apply, these coatings were impractical for large-scale manufacturing. Others incorporated nanoparticles into their formulas, but there are concerns about these particles sloughing off and potentially harming the environment. Xiao Gong and Xinting Han wanted to develop a simple way to make a coating for cotton fabric so it would have superb liquid-repulsion properties and hold up in many challenging circumstances.

The researchers optimized a one-step process for a liquid-proof coating by mixing dopamine hydrochloride, 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane and 1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorodecyltriethoxysilane with a piece of cotton fabric for 24 hours. The three-part solution developed into a uniform, dark brown coating on the fabric. In tests, the treated cotton was impervious to many common liquids. The new solution also coated inner cotton fibers, making them liquid proof, too. In other tests, only strong acid and repeated washings reduced the material's water and oil resistance, respectively. Treated fabric soiled with fine sand was easy to clean with water, whereas water only wetted the control version. Finally, the material stayed afloat with up to 35 times its weight on it because of nanoscale air pockets that formed where the coating attached to the fabric, the researchers explain. They say their durable cotton fabric has great potential for applications where drag reduction and increased buoyancy are important, including swimsuits and life jackets.

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The authors acknowledge funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Opening Project of State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering (Sichuan University).

The abstract that accompanies this paper is freely available here.

For more of the latest research news, register for our upcoming meeting, ACS Fall 2021. Journalists and public information officers are encouraged to apply for complimentary press registration by emailing us at newsroom@acs.org.

The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS' mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world's scientific knowledge. ACS' main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.  

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Chinese health insurance achieves success decreasing diabetes medication usage, costs

Changes in direct medical cost and medications for diabetes in Beijing, China, from 2016 to 2018: Electronic insurance data analysis

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF FAMILY PHYSICIANS

Research News

Approximately 642 million people are expected to be diagnosed with diabetes by 2040, with Asians representing more than 55% of cases. Researchers conducted the first large-scale study since the implementation of medical insurance in China to evaluate the complexity and cost of drug therapy for Asian people with diabetes. They used available treatment records from Beijing's medical insurance bureau from 2016 to 2018 and looked at five outcomes, including: 1) quantity of outpatient medications, 2) number of co-morbidities diagnosed, 3) estimated annual cost of the outpatient drug regimen, 4) drug therapy strategies for diabetic patients and 5) the most commonly prescribed drug class in the patient cohort. They found that over three years, there was a gradual decrease of almost 9% decrease in the average quantity of diabetes medications. The mean usage of both anti-glycemic and non-antiglycemic drugs decreased by 3.6% and 12.8%, respectively. Researchers found an 18.39% decrease in estimated annual medication costs. The decrease in medical costs could be due to rational use of medications, leading to a decrease in the usage of medications over the three years. This is especially true for what the authors call the needless use of most types of insulin. This could have indirectly led to decreased costs. China's health insurance appears to have achieved "remarkable" success. The study authors advise that therapeutic drugs should be selected with caution according to the diet and lifestyle of each individual.

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Changes in Direct Medical Cost and Medications for Managing Diabetes in Beijing, China, from 2016 to 2018: Electronic Insurance Data Analysis

Lixin Guo, MD, et al

Department of Endocrinology, Beijing Hospital, National Center of Gerontology, Institute of Geriatric Medicine, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, PR China

https://www.annfammed.org/content/19/4/332

 

Primary care practice characteristics make little impact on unplanned hospital admissions

Primary care variation in rates of unplanned hospitalizations, functional ability, and quality of life of older people

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF FAMILY PHYSICIANS

Research News

Given the aging world population, there is international interest in helping older people live longer and healthier lives. Avoiding unplanned hospital admissions is an important aspect of care for older people. Palapar et al focused on the way primary care practice characteristics influence outcomes such as unplanned hospitalizations, function and well-being. They investigated the variability in older people's outcomes by primary care physician and practice characteristics in New Zealand and the Netherlands. Findings revealed that none of the physician or practice characteristics were significantly associated with rates of unplanned admissions in the New Zealand sample. In contrast, in the Netherlands sample, researchers found higher rates of admissions in large practices and practices staffed with a practice nurse who typically works in the primary care setting with general practitioners. Practice nurses are common in primary care practices in New Zealand but are relatively new and only in a portion of practices in the Netherlands, the authors note. It is unclear if these associations are causal or if the increase in hospitalizations represent higher or lower quality care. Considering these findings, the authors conclude that the central focus of international health policies on reducing hospital overuse should approach primary health care structural reform carefully.

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Primary Care Variation in Rates of Unplanned Hospitalizations, Functional Ability, and Quality of Life of Older People

Leah Palapar, MD, PhD, et al

Department of General Practice and Primary Health Care, School of Population Health, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

https://www.annfammed.org/content/19/4/318

 

Minority physicians experience more diversity, less burnout in family medicine practice

Lower likelihood of burnout among family physicians from underrepresented racial-ethnic groups

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF FAMILY PHYSICIANS

Research News

 

More than 40% of physicians in the United States reported at least one symptom of burnout, which is particularly high among family physicians. This study examined a nationally-representative sample of family physicians to determine whether physician race-ethnicity was associated with burnout among a nationally-representative sample of family physicians. Of the 3,0916 physicians studied, 450 (15%) were from racial-ethnic groups underrepresented in medicine (UIM), which include Blacks/African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, American Indians and Pacific Islanders who together comprise 30-35% of the general population yet account for only 12.4% of family physicians. The study findings support the researchers' hypothesis that UIMs were significantly less likely than their non-UIM counterparts to report emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. This may be attributed to practicing in more racially-diverse counties and being less likely to practice obstetrics, both of which partially mediated the protective effect of UIM status on depersonalization. The mediating effect of working in more racially and ethnically diverse counties is consistent with evidence of the beneficial effect of cultural diversity on health outcomes for minorities and better overall self-rated health among adults. Understanding the attributes of UIMs that may prevent burnout may also provide insights for developing a more resilient physician workforce.

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Community health workers identify health-related social needs in patients

Implementation of health-related social needs screening at Michigan health centers: A qualitative study

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF FAMILY PHYSICIANS

Research News

 

Community Health Workers Can Play a Role in Identifying Health-Related Social Needs in Patients

Addressing patients' health-related social needs, like housing and food security, is integral to patient care. Federally Qualified Health Centers are leaders in screening for and addressing patients' health-related social needs. However, screening practices vary. This variation is relatively unexplored, particularly with regards to organizational and state policy influences. Study authors conducted in-person, qualitative interviews at Michigan FQHCs to examine how screening approaches vary in the context of statewide social needs screening initiatives and structural factors. They identified four themes:

1) Statewide initiatives and local leadership drove variation in screening practices.

2) Community health workers played an integral role in identifying patients' needs and their roles often shifted from "screener" to "implementer."

3) Social needs screening data was variably integrated into electronic health records and infrequently used for population health management and

4) Sites experienced barriers to social needs screening that limited their perceived impact and sustainability.

FQHCs placed value on the role of community health workers, on sustainable initiatives and on funding to support continued social needs screening in primary care settings, according to the study. Determining the optimal approaches to screening is important to advancing community health.

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Implementation of Health-Related Social Needs Screening at Michigan Health Centers: A Qualitative Study Margaret Greenwood-Ericksen, MD, MSc, et al Department of Emergency Medicine, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico https://www.annfammed.org/content/19/4/310

Behavioral health integration helps practices address patients' socioeconomic needs

Applying lessons from behavioral health integration to social care integration in primary care

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF FAMILY PHYSICIANS

Research News

 

Lessons from Primary Care and Behavioral Health Integration Should Inform Health Care Practices to Identify and Address Patients' Social, Economic Needs

Although interest is accelerating around addressing patients' social and economic needs, effective and sustainable strategies for integrating social care practices into health care delivery have not yet been identified. This paper synthesizes learnings from primary care and behavioral health care integration and translates them into organizing principles with the goal of advancing social care integration practices to improve the health of patients and communities.

Applying Lessons From Behavioral Health Integration to Social Care Integration in Primary Care Theresa J. Hoeft, PhD, et al Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle https://www.annfammed.org/content/19/4/356

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Integration of social care into health care: Our collective path ahead

Researchers, policy makers, health care systems and payers all play a part in meeting patient social care needs

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF FAMILY PHYSICIANS

Research News

 

Drs. Alicia Cohen and Emilia De Marchis provide commentary on three articles in this issue of Annals of Family Medicine, specifically Greenwood-Ericksen et al's research on Michigan's Federally Qualified Health Centers; Hoeft et al's special report about translating lessons learned from behavioral health integration into the social care realm; and Fessler et al's narrative about how they as medical students stepped away from their medical clerkships to act as community volunteers for people experiencing homelessness during the COVID-19 pandemic. All three articles serve as a timely call to action, reminding those in health care that work remains to meet the needs of patients, particularly in screening for and intervening on identified social risks. The urgency of this work has only been heightened by the pandemic as patients face new or intensified socio-economic hardships. Cohen and De Marchis write that collaboration is needed among researchers, policy makers, payers and health care systems to assist in identifying evidence-based practices for social needs integration. This includes improved training and education for all clinical care team members about social risk and social care activities, best practice guidelines, evidence-based interventions, and sustainable funding streams. Social risk data can also more broadly aid advocacy and policy efforts to expand community-based resources, efforts to address health inequities, and population health-level interventions. Cohen and De Marchis note that greater flexibility in using Center for Medicare & Medicaid dollars and the new 2021 Evaluation and Management coding guidelines for social determinants may help with more consistent funding for social care activities. "The path ahead requires working together and sharing learnings to advance our common goal of achieving health equity and wellness--for patients and the health care workforce alike," they write.

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Building an Evidence Base for Integration of Social Care Into Health Care: Our Collective Path Ahead Alicia J. Cohen, MD, MSc, FAAFP, Center of Innovation in Long Term Services and Supports, VA Providence Healthcare System; Departments of Family Medicine and Health Services, Policy, and Practice, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Department of Family Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Emilia H. De Marchis, MD, MAS, Department of Family & Community Medicine, University of California, San Francisco https://www.annfammed.org/content/19/4/290

 

Scientists created several samples of glasses for protection against nuclear radiation

Bismuth borate glasses were shown outperformance while compared with the commercial ones

URAL FEDERAL UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: PHYSICISTS ENGINEERED SEVERAL SAMPLES OF GLASSES. ALL OF THEM CLARITY, BUT WITH DIFFERENT ADDITIVE. view more 

CREDIT: IMAGE: URFU / ANASTASIA FARAFONTOVA.

An international research team, including physics from Russia, has created new glasses for protection against X-ray and gamma radiation. Scientists could select new components that improved the characteristics of the samples and allowed to reduce the amount of lead in the glass composition. Physicists engineered several samples of glasses. One of the latest results - glasses based on barium fluoride - was described by the team in the Optic magazine. But the best results have bismuth borate glasses. Its radiation protection characteristics (mean-free-path, half-value layer) are better than commercial analogs. The features of these samples are described in the Scientific Reports.

"Gamma-ray is using in many fields like industrial (to detect defects in metal casting), medical (to treat malignant and cancerous tumors), agriculture (to control the degree of ripeness and extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables) and space applications, etc," says Karem Abdelazim Gaber Mahmud, co-author of the research articles, research engineer at the Ural Federal University (Russia), an employee of the Nuclear Material Authority (Egypt). "Gamma radiation has significant penetrating depths, so we are faced with the task of creating a material that could provide maximum protection and the necessary safety for workers."

Commercial radiation shielded glasses contain predominantly lead and phosphate. Due to its high density, lead is one of the most effective protection against gamma-ra?. But this is a heavy toxic metal. Lead glass can weigh up to several hundred kilograms. Therefore, scientists worldwide try to find the optimal composition, components that would help lighten the weight of the glass, reduce the thickness, and lower cost price. Another problem is that after exceeding a certain percentage of additive materials, the glasses lose their clarity, just as after absorbing a certain dose of radiation. Therefore, on the one hand, it is necessary to minimize the amount of lead in the glass composition, while maintaining the protective properties, and on the other hand, it is necessary to extend the shelf life of the end-product, its clarity. Scientists from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Malaysia, China, Egypt are working most actively in this direction.

"Scientists began to create protective glasses in the late 1940s, in the early 1950s, during the formation of nuclear power," says Oleg Tashlykov, research co-author, associate professor at Ural Federal University. "That time in England, America, Russia they were solving the problem of monitoring radiation-hazardous work. They came up with several options for glasses with different additives, but everywhere the basic components are lead and phosphate. The current trend is to choose such a composition to minimize the volume of lead, or better to replace it with another metal."

Note that the protective properties of glass researchers have experimentally tested at the Institute of Reactor Materials of the Russian state corporation "Rosatom" (Sverdlovsk region, Russia). The next step is further research of parameters, improvement, and optimization of the composition, commercialization of technology.

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When corals meet algae: First stages of symbiosis seen for the first time

First observations of coral cells and free-living algae physically interacting provide a deeper understanding of their symbiosis and improve conservation of reefs

FRONTIERS

 VIDEO: FIRST STAGE IN THE FORMATION OF THE MUTUALISM ( "SYMBIOSIS ") BETWEEN CELLS OF THE CORAL ACROPORA TENUIS (CNIDARIA: ACROPORIDAE) [TRANSPARENT] AND FREE-LIVING ALGAE OF ITS POTENTIAL "ZOOXANTHELLA " PARTNER, THE SINGLE-CELLED PHOTOSYNTHETIC... view more 

CREDIT: KAWAMURA, SEKIDA, NISHITSUJI, SHOGUCHI, HISATA, FUJIWARA, AND SATOH

The physical interactions between coral and algal cells as they combine to form a symbiotic relationship have been observed for the first time. Within minutes of being introduced, coral cells had started to engulf the algae, where they were either digested or moved to a protective 'bubble' within the cell. This new study, published in Frontiers in Marine Science, will form the basis of further research to understand what drives their symbiosis at a cellular and molecular level, including the eviction of algae, which is the cause of coral bleaching.

"We watched coral cells develop pseudopodia - temporary arm-like structures - that were used to engulf the algae as early as 5 minutes after the two cells were mixed," explains Professor Nori Satoh, co-lead author of the study and head of the Marine Genomics Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Japan. "Once inside the coral cell, some algae were moved to a vacuole, a protective membrane-bound bubble, while others were broken up and digested."

Eviction notice

Coral and algae have had a cooperative relationship for over 200 million years. Coral cells provide algae with shelter and the building blocks for photosynthesis. In return, the algae provide the coral with nutrients. When corals are stressed, the algae can be evicted, which turns the coral white. Linked to climate change and pollution, this coral bleaching can be devastating, with negative impacts on wildlife, tourism, fisheries, and coastal flood protection.

Experiments to understand the detailed mechanisms of algal symbiosis with stony reef-building corals have proved difficult in the past, but Satoh and Kawamura recently succeeded in growing stable cell cultures of Acropora tenuis, a coral species widespread across Asia. The researchers introduced dinoflagellate algae to these laboratory-cultured coral cells to understand what happens in the initial stages of coral and algal symbiosis.

"Our study was designed to understand at the single cell level what occurs in the process of symbiosis and what may cause this symbiosis to cease," says co-lead author Prof Kaz Kawamura from Kochi University, Japan.

Swallowed up

Several minutes after they were introduced, the corals cells started to move faster and actively incorporate the dinoflagellate algae within their cells.

"We were able to directly observe the interactions and symbiosis with video and confirmed what we saw by preserving the cells in plastic resin and taking semi-thin sections to show the engulfment of dinoflagellates inside the coral cells," explains Kamamura. "We also noted that the coral cells that had incorporated algae gradually became round and less mobile and that their symbiosis lasted for at least a month."

Future research will build on this study to help us understand how corals recognize, take up and maintain their algal endosymbionts.

"Our laboratory-based system of coral cells and algae may ultimately provide methods that we can use for the preservation and conservation of coral reefs," says Satoh.

Satoh adds, "We have already prepared comprehensive gene information of both the coral Acropora tenuis and dinoflagellate algae. This will be especially useful for future studies of cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in their symbiosis."

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Deep discounts: The nemesis of bargain hunters

ST. EDWARD'S UNIVERSITY

Research News

AUSTIN, Texas -- Researchers at St. Edward's University have found that frugal individuals are more likely than their spendthrift counterparts to give in to the allure of deep discounts, whether it is Tax-free weekend, Amazon Prime Day, a Groupon Deal or some other offer.

In order to reconcile making unplanned purchases that may be at odds with their highly disciplined approach to spending, frugal shoppers will categorize the purchase as a necessity versus a luxury, according to the research published recently in the Journal of Business Research.

"Essentially, frugal consumers convince themselves they "really" need the product to justify getting the deep discount and call it a "win" in the smart shopper category. It seems that deep discounts truly are the folly of frugal shoppers," said Sarah Mittal, an assistant professor of Marketing at St. Edward's University.

Mittal and her co-authors Sommer Kapitan, Jill M. Sundie and Daniel J. Beal (of the Auckland University of Technology, Washington and Lee University and Virginia Tech, respectively) conducted a set of three studies to better understand the process by which frugal consumers justify these impulsive responses to deep discounts.

"Frugality is a trait that balances spending restraint and exuberant exploitation of bargain opportunities," Mittal said. "With our studies, we set out to offer insight into the manner in which this balance is kept and the conditions under which it can be tilted toward increased expenditures."

According to the researchers, the buying tendencies of frugal shoppers is one of the less studied aspects of consumer behavior. And yet in times of recession or economic downturns, such as the downturn brought on by the ongoing pandemic, consumers tend to turn into more price-conscious and conservation minded consumers.

In the first qualitative study, focused on interviews with self-identified frugal consumers, the researchers found that these shoppers make a "clear distinction between necessities and luxuries" and that it is a guiding principle that helps frugal consumers determine when to spend money.

In a second experimental study, the researchers offered frugal shoppers a deeply discounted and minimally discounted offering, and found that frugal consumers (but not less frugal consumers) reported a higher need for a desirable product when it was deeply discounted (60% off), compared to when it was only minimally discounted (10% off).

Lastly, in a third longitudinal study designed to look more closely at the process of updating a perceived need, the researchers looked at how shoppers viewed their need for a more practical service -- a car wash -- and a less practical good -- a selfie stick -- before and after a discount offer.

They found that frugal individuals -- but not those low in frugality -- increased their perceptions of need for the car wash in response to a good deal and correspondingly increased their purchase intentions as well. But frugal consumers did not change their perceived need for any product just because it was a good deal.

"If a moderate need for a good/service already exists, deep discounts and good deals, then, tend to push product need from a "maybe I need that" to an "I really need that" perception for frugal consumers. This positive change in need then enhances purchase intentions," Mittal said.

What could these insights mean for marketers?

"Marketers who partake in deep discounting should stick to moderate- to high-need items," Mittal said. "What we found is that frugal individuals justify the splurge by adjusting up their perceived "need" for a product. The effect did not hold for low need items (e.g. a selfie stick or a banana holder --- too frivolous to justify even for the frugal). Marketers can also emphasize the practical utility of a product to help nudge frugals to buy the deal."

In the future, research could delve further into the consequences for frugal consumers of making such impulse purchases, such as having feelings of guilt, shame or pride after getting the "good deal," which could provide additional insights into psychological mechanisms that may help facilitate their overall spending restraint.

Key Findings

When confronted with an unexpected deep discount on an (at least moderately needed) offering, the necessity vs. luxury distinction that keeps frugal people in check is flexibly adjusted to justify a purchase.

Frugal individuals -- like their less frugal counterparts -- can be triggered to make unplanned or impulse purchases.

Spendthrifts are not motivated by deals in the same way. It's like a switch that goes off in frugal individuals ---it allows them to let go of restraint and convince themselves they are meeting frugal goals by getting a "good" deal for an item they would have "needed" anyway.

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Experts advocate for 'employment first, employment for all' for workers with disabilities

Inclusionary values are emphasized in this special issue of the Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, which presents contributions from the 2020 Conference of the Association of People Supporting Employment First (APSE)

IOS PRESS

Research News

Amsterdam, July 14, 2021 - The Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation (JVR) announces publication of an openly available special issue that provides free access to key presentations from the 2020 Virtual Conference of the Association of People Supporting Employment First (APSE). These contributions advocate for and help facilitate the full inclusion of people with disabilities in the workplace and community.

APSE Conferences are the only national conferences focused solely on the advancement of Employment First, Employment for All. They bring together more than 1,000 key influencers and stakeholders representing individuals with disabilities, communities, agencies, and services to network and discuss state-of-the-art strategies to ensure equitable employment for all citizens with disabilities receiving assistance from publicly funded systems.

"This special issue highlights just a few of the incredible topics covered during the 45 sessions comprising the 2020 event," explains Guest Editor Julie J. Christensen, MSW, PhD, Executive Director, APSE, Rockville, MD, USA. "It represents the resilience of a community that remains dedicated to making a contribution in research, practice, and policy. All three are integral and necessary to create lasting change, perhaps more now than ever as we continue to work for Employment First, Employment for All. I'm just incredibly excited to be focusing more attention on the resource that JVR provides to the APSE Community."

Highlights from the conference include coverage of:

• Importance of developing multicultural competency to ensure equity in rehabilitation services
• Moving beyond "what gets measured, gets done" to leveraging data to scale up and track outcomes and quality improvement
• Empowering coalitions of self-advocates to hold state laws accountable for Statewide Employment First efforts
• Importance of family input and taking the socioeconomic and cultural context of the family unit into consideration
• Need to update information tools to remain current with the times (such as using social media in talent recruitment)

Rehabilitation professionals are required to be competent in serving multiculturally diverse individuals in a manner that promotes empowerment and full engagement. Tammy Jorgensen Smith, PhD, CRC, University of South Florida, College of Behavioral and Community Sciences, Department of Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling, Tampa, Florida, USA, writes that "Multicultural competency is critical for accurate clinical assessment and diagnosis and for effectively serving a diverse population of clients." In her paper, Dr. Smith discusses diagnostic tools and ethical decision-making models that integrate multicultural considerations and recommendations for building multicultural competency.

Families bring their own set of values and assumptions based on their socioeconomic and cultural background. In the article "Good fences make good neighbors," Bethany Chase, DSW, Rutgers University, The Boggs Center on Developmental Disabilities, New Brunswick, NJ, USA, provides context for why parents/guardians may be distrustful of the employment process, as well as why employment specialists may struggle to build strong partnerships with them. She discusses how to implement practices that not only welcome the critical input of families, but also maintain healthy and well-defined boundaries that affirm the autonomy, professionalism, and competence of the worker.

"By setting proactive, positive, welcoming, and compassionate guidelines and boundaries, employment specialists can reap the benefits of an engaged family while continuing to affirm the professionalism, autonomy, and competence of the worker," Dr. Chase concludes.

The issue features a postschool follow-up study of the integrated vocational functioning of 50 workers with significant intellectual disabilities over a 35-year period - the longest follow-up of its kind - contributed by Lou Brown, PhD, Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and co-investigators.

Dr. Brown, widely regarded one of the most influential scholars and advocates for students with disabilities, passed away in May 2021. In a tribute honoring Dr. Brown JVR's Editor-in-Chief Paul Wehman writes, "Lou was a great man, an incredible pioneer, and an irreplaceable voice for persons with all disabilities, but especially those with the greatest challenges. When he wrote, he talked to the reader, he made the reader believe in what true inclusionary values were, and why all people with disabilities should be a normal part of our local communities."

The conference took place during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic and takes into account the dramatic shift in the workplace. "We struggled to adapt to a virtual-only environment at the start of the pandemic," notes Dr. Christensen. "In many states, the flow of funding was temporarily interrupted and resulted in layoffs of the Disability Students Program (DSP) workforce. Some industries have disappeared. Others have grown exponentially. We're going to need to adjust accordingly.

"On the positive side, 'Work from Home' is now normalized. While we don't want this 'new normal' to be interpreted as letting the business community off the hook for complying with the ADA and ensuring that workplaces are fully accessible, 'Work from Home' has opened up new opportunities for employment for people with disabilities," she concludes.

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