keepin it REAL was noted as an effective program in a research report by the National Drop-out
Prevention Center. kiR can be useful for schools and administrators looking for programs that promote student academic success and school engagement. The full report can be accessed here.
Michelle Miller-Day provided a workshop on coding videotaped interaction along with assistance in developing a sexual pressure resistance skills simulation game at the University of Central Florida Nov. 7-10, 2011. The game is an interactive computer simulation based on the keepin’ it REAL curriculum and focusing on the skills involved in resisting peer pressure.
Michelle Miller-Day, Jonathan Pettigrew, Dana Naughton, Laura Bodenshatz, and Dennis Scanlon were presenters for a symposium on team-based qualitative research. The symposium was sponsored by the Penn State Qualitative Interest Group (QUIG).
Michelle Miller-Day taught a doctoral qualitative research methods course in Bangkok, Thailand at the National Institute for Development Administration June-July, 2011.
Michelle Miller-Day recently stretched her acting muscles in a production of “Nightfall”—a collection of works by Edgar Allen Poe—in Altoona, PA with the Things Unseen Theatre Company.
Michael Hecht presented a seminar on Qualitative Social Science Grant
Writing for the Graduate College on November 9, 2011. The presentation
gave an overview of grant writing, emphasizing the special challenges
encountered by those using qualitative methods.
Michael Hecht participated in a joint meeting of the UK Arts and
Humanities Research Council, NEH, NIH and the Welcome Trust to discuss"Culture, Health, and Well Being". The meeting, held in London on
October 24, 2011, helped set the agenda for collaborative research in
Medical Humanities research.
Michael Hecht was one of the featured speakers at the meeting, "Brand
Positioning: What Are You Promising Your Target Audience?" The meeting
was meant to establish an agenda for branded health communication
research and was sponsored by the Office of Behavioral and Social
Sciences Research (OBSSR) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
kiR researchers developed an important, innovative way of measuring health messages. Their work was published in Communication Methods and Measures and was the most downloaded article just a month and a half after its release. The article can be viewed here.
The keepin' it REAL research team presented several papers and posters at the recent Society of Prevention Research annual meeting. Click on the titles to view posters. If you're interested in the papers, please contact our program coordinator at jup183@psu.edu.
The Rural Identity Scale: A New Approach for
Understanding Rural Adolescent Substance Use
Janice Krieger, HyeJeong Choi, John Graham, Michael
Hecht, Michelle Miller-Day
Reconceptualizing efficacy: Response efficacy and drug
resistant self-efficacy in adolescent substance use
Michael Hecht, HyeJeong Choi, John Graham, Janice Krieger,
Andrew Porter
Random Assignment of Schools to Groups in the
Drug Resistance Strategies Rural Project: Some New
Methodological Twists
John Graham, Jonathan Pettigrew, Michael Hecht, Michelle
Miller-Day, Janice Krieger
Transitions in resistance skill profiles
Suellen Hopfer, Jeong Kyu Lee, Michael Hecht, Xianming
Tan
Papers
How implementation qualities predict attitudinal
and behavioral outcomes in school-based substance
prevention program
YoungJu Shin, Michelle Miller-Day, Jonathan Pettigrew,
Michael Hecht
Qualitative approach to implementer typologies: How
teachers and students interact in implementation of
school based prevention intervention
YoungJu Shin, Michelle Miller-Day, Jonathan Pettigrew,
Michael Hecht
keepin' it REAL birth announcement: Annabelle Skye Green was born on 7/28/2010 to DRS team member Suellen Hopfer and Michael Green. Congratulations!
keepin' it REAL wins 2010 Penn State Award for Community Engagement and Scholarship
keepin’ it REAL, a program led by Penn State Department of Communication Arts and Sciences faculty Dr. Michael Hecht, Distinguished Professor, and Dr. Michelle Miller-Day, associate professor, is the winner of the 2010 Penn State Award for Community Engagement and Scholarship. The keepin’ it REAL program teaches middle school youth to assess risks, understand the consequences of their behaviors, learn decision-making processes and communication skills through kids’ own voices. keepin’ it REAL has been proven effective and is being distributed nationally and internationally through different partnerships, including D.A.R.E America.
The award recognizes the project as an example of outstanding outreach and engagement research activities that involve collaboration between and among university and community partners. Established in 2006 with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the awards program seeks to identify land-grant colleges and universities that have redesigned their learning, discovery, and engagement functions to become even more productively involved with their communities.
Read the full story here: http://live.psu.edu/story/47161/nw63
keepin' it REAL Ranked Among Top 3 Most Cost-Effective Prevention Programs in a Study by SAMSA
At the recent Society for Prevention Research a cost effectiveness study was reported evaluating prevention programs. kiR (the original curriculum; the one we now call "classic") was ranked among the top 3 overall with a cost benefit ratio of 28 ($28 in benefits for every $1 spent). Read the full announcement here.
D.A.R.E. has adopted keepin' it REAL (kiR) as the NEW D.A.R.E. junior high/middle school curriculum
D.A.R.E. America and The Pennsylvania State University have joined forces for D.A.R.E.’s delivery of “kiR.” “kiR” is designated as a model substance abuse prevention education program on the SAMSHA National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP). Read the full announcement here.
keepin' it REAL was chosen as one of the 15 stellar community-university partnerships in Penn State's application for the Carnegie Community Engagement
Penn State is one of less than 200 institutions of higher education in the United States that have received the prestigious Classification in Community Engagement from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
As defined by Carnegie, community engagement describes the collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity.
In order to achieve this classification, Penn State submitted extensive documentation that provided details of exemplary institutionalized practices of community engagement. Through a rigorous selection process, the keepin’ it REAL project was chosen as one of the 15 stellar community-university partnerships detailed in Penn State’s application.
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