“Florida leads the nation in bicyclists killed in traffic crashes, even outpacing California, which has about twice its population,” said Dan Connaughton, a professor in UF’s department of Tourism, Recreation and Sport Management and the program’s director. “Other than the motor vehicle, there is no other commercial product that leaves more children injured than bicycles.”

Statistics from the Florida Department of Transportation show that 118 bicyclists were killed and 4,380 were injured in the state in 2008, he said.

About 90 percent of children’s deaths on bicycles occur when they dart into traffic from a driveway or when they cycle through a stop sign, Connaughton said. The vast majority of bicycle fatalities result from head injuries, with some studies estimating that the simple act of properly wearing a bicycle helmet reduces the risk of head injury by up to 85 percent, he said.

The mission of the Florida Traffic and Bicycle Safety Education Program is to reduce injuries and fatalities by teaching children the lifelong skills needed to be competent, as well as predictable, cyclists and pedestrians.

Connaughton received a three-year contract from the Florida Department of Transportation’s Safety Office to administer statewide workshops to “teach the teachers” bicycle and traffic safety tips they can pass on to their students. Using curriculums specifically designed for elementary, middle and high schools, Connaughton works with certified cycling instructors around the state in delivering the free workshops. Workshops are currently scheduled in Alachua County on Thursday, with others to be held in Pinellas and Lee counties later this fall.

For younger children, the curriculum covers such basics as safely crossing streets, traffic signals and related laws, and school bus safety, said Connaughton, who is an expert in sport safety and risk management. The curriculum also addresses traffic and bicycle laws, helmet importance and correct use, how to perform a bicycle safety inspection, how to navigate a bicycle while sharing the road, and other traffic and bicycle safety skills, he said.

“We feel it’s extremely important to educate our youth at a young age,” he said. “Our hope is that as they become more knowledgeable and experienced pedestrians and bicyclists, that some of these skills will translate into them becoming safer motor vehicle drivers.”

According to the National Safety Council, the total cost of bicycle injuries and deaths is almost $5.4 billion a year, Connaughton said.

“Besides saving lives, this program has a tremendous impact on the state’s economy,” Connaughton said. “By cutting down on the number of cars on the road, we reduce traffic congestion as well as our dependence on fuel and the environmental costs associated with it. And with the rise in obesity, getting young people to be more active eliminates a substantial number of health problems and the costs that go with them.”

The program works with Safe Routes to School programs throughout Florida to encourage more children to walk or bike safely to school and ties in with the goals of the Florida Department of Transportation’s Pedestrian/Bicycle Program, he said.

Bicycle use has increased in the United States as more people recognize the importance of physical activity and as rising gas prices make it a popular commuting alternative, Connaughton said. “Along with the greening of America, there are more people on bicycles than ever before,” he said.

The success of American Lance Armstrong in winning the Tour de France seven years in a row also has created an interest in bicycling, particularly the sport of racing, he said.

The program and its instructors also train law enforcement personnel and recreation leaders to teach bicycle safety in their local communities. Future plans call for developing a university curriculum to educate college students about traffic and bicycle safety in Florida, he said.

The program estimates that each trained teacher passes the information on to 100 children per year. The training workshops cover outside on-bike skill practice and classroom instruction with curriculum overviews, including interactive videos and activity worksheets.

School districts interested in hosting traffic and bicycle safety training workshops can contact the program at 352-392-4042, ext. 1370. More information about the Florida Traffic and Bicycle Safety Education Program can be found at: http://www.hhp.ufl.edu/safety/index.html.

Often, parents of children with OCD will help their children complete rituals related to their obsessions and compulsions, such as excessive bathing or checking things like door locks, according to findings recently published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. These accommodations can be anything that makes the symptoms of OCD less impairing, from reassuring a child that his hands are clean and his baby brother is OK to even doing his homework for him or buying objects that make the child feel safe.

“Parents do that because that is what a parent whose child doesn’t have OCD would do,” said Lisa Merlo, a UF assistant professor of psychiatry and the lead author of the study. “If your child is upset, you try to comfort them. But what we know is, for patients with OCD, if they get an accommodation, that reinforces the OCD to them.

“It’s validating the OCD in the kid’s mind, and that’s what you don’t want to do.”

About one in 200 children and teenagers in the United States have OCD, according to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

The study included 49 children between 6 and 18 with OCD and their families who came to UF for a type of treatment called cognitive-behavioral therapy. This form of therapy involves exposing children to their fears and teaching them better ways to respond and cope. During the sessions, therapists teach parents how they should deal with their child’s OCD, too.

Prior to the start of the 14-session therapy, the researchers gauged how severe each child’s condition was and compared it to how many accommodating behaviors parents reported. They found that the more severe the child’s OCD, the more the child’s family seemed to accommodate OCD behaviors.

“You would think if parents are helping, the kids would be less impaired,” Merlo said. “But what we are seeing is that it snowballs and makes it worse and worse.”

After the treatment, researchers noticed a significant decrease in how often families were assisting children with OCD behaviors and rituals. Children whose families had the biggest decrease in these accommodations also had the biggest improvement in their OCD symptoms, Merlo said.

What researchers don’t yet know is if a family’s “help” causes a child’s OCD to worsen or if the severity of the disease causes parents to try to do more to help their children.

Some children, including many who come to UF’s clinic, have symptoms so severe it prevents them from playing with friends or even going to school, Merlo said. In these instances, parents often feel they have to do whatever they can to help their children function, from doing their homework for them to buying specific items they feel like they need.

“If a kid is struggling a lot, parents feel like they have to do a lot to get through the day,” Merlo said. “But if the child is not experiencing the natural consequences of the OCD symptoms, then they don’t have any motivation to stop.”

This phenomenon isn’t exclusive to children and parents, said Jonathan S. Abramowitz, an associate professor and associate chairman of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“We see it with adults’ spouses and partners, too. In trying to be helpful to the person with OCD, they end up making the problem worse.”

Although therapists have noticed this phenomenon anecdotally, there has so far been little research evidence to prove it. UF’s study will help therapists and scientists address the problem, he said.

“It is very nice to have research data to back up these clinical observations,” he said.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Playground bullies may meet their match from where they least expect — in the ranks of kids who are anti-bullies — and most of them are girls, a new University of Florida study finds.

“Boys may be more likely to bully, but girls are more likely to defend those being bullied,” said Jim Porter, who did the research for his doctoral dissertation in counselor education at UF. “While a lot of attention has been devoted to bully prevention programs, very little recognition is given to kids who jump in and try to stop the bullying or comfort the victim.”

These playground defenders merit attention because research shows that a majority of school shootings are committed by students who have been bullied, and victims of bullying are at risk for dropping out of school, suffering from depression and bullying others, Porter said. Thirty percent of students in sixth- through 10th-grade report some experience with bullying, either as a victim or perpetrator, he said.

Schools overlook good Samaritans as they are putting a growing number of bully prevention programs in place, in some cases relying on peer mediation where students resolve the disputes themselves, with mixed results, Porter said.

“What is missing in these programs is they don’t incorporate children who are already known to help victims,” he said. “Understanding kids who defend against bullying may reveal a new avenue toward preventing school-related violence.”

Porter surveyed 168 females and 101 males about how they believed their mother, father, best friends and favorite teachers would expect them to respond if they encountered another student being bullied. The offensive behavior included hitting, shoving, name-calling, teasing and ostracizing. Participants attended four middle schools in North Central Florida and were between the ages of 10 and 15.

Peer pressure can be a good thing, the study found. Students said teachers and parents were more likely than best friends to expect them to try to stop a bully, but they were more likely to actually intervene if the message came from a best friend. And more girls than boys reported feeling pressure from friends to come to a victim’s aid, Porter said.

Eighty-five percent of girls surveyed said their best friend would expect them to defend or help a bullying victim, compared with only 66 percent of boys, Porter said. In contrast to this 19 percentage gap, there was only a 1 to 3 percentage point difference in expectations for boys and girls’ behavior by teachers, mothers and fathers, he said.

Being female or having more feminine traits as measured by a gender identity scale also increased the likelihood that a student would defend a bully, the survey findings showed.

“Gender stereotypes that girls are more nurturing and boys are more aggressive definitely play out in how we expect boys and girls to behave,” he said. “Somehow we communicate these expectations to kids and it can affect their behavior.”

Schools may be the ideal place to try to help change those ideas, said Porter, who is now a counselor at Alachua Integrative Medicine in Alachua. “The news sometimes suggests that violence makes schools a hazardous place to be, but schools also are where we can learn how to get along with others and become adults,” he said.

Giving a role in bully prevention programs to bystanders who step in to defend the victims on the playground and in the classroom fits in with the recent trend in educational psychology toward positive reinforcement, Porter said.

“There was a time when people were more likely to think of punishing bad behavior,” he said. “Now there is a push toward finding and rewarding good behavior.”

Porter said he has always been interested in the subject of bullying because he was often beat up as a “new kid” moving from one community to another. “I never understood but always wanted to discover why some students were able to jump in and help others,” he said.

Focusing on defenders illustrates dramatic changes in public attitudes, he said.

“There was a time when bullying was not researched because it was considered normal childhood behavior,” he said. “It was thought of as being part of growing up, this learning to determine a pecking order, and making people stronger and weeding out the weak.”

Bullying expert Drew Nesdale, a psychologist at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, said this research suggests that a little recognized and under-used source of help might be found in the victims’ peers. “Interestingly, the fact that children who help might be responding to the expectations of others is consistent with research that has identified the powerful effect of the norms or expectations of others on their behavior.”

When families go through transitions such as children leaving home to live with grandparents or a mother’s boyfriends moving in or out of the house, boys are more likely to find trouble by running with the wrong crowd, said Marvin Krohn, a professor in UF’s department of criminology, law and society, who led the study.

“The major implication is that we can no longer focus on whether a family is single parent or dual parent in today’s world, particularly in disadvantaged neighborhoods where there are a lot of changes in the family that take place in a fairly short period of time,” he said.

Understanding the long-term effects of family upheaval is important in increasing sensitivity among school officials and others who work with youth, Krohn said. School psychologists and counselors who are aware of the relationship between family transitions and behavioral problems can take steps to ease the emotional adjustment, he said.

“Schools and social agencies need to be aware not only about the structure of a kid’s family, but the fact that it might change several times and those changes in and of themselves can have a pretty important effect on behavior,” he said.

Krohn, whose study is published in the current issue of the Journal of Youth Adolescence, said boys are more vulnerable to family transitions for a couple of reasons. The study was co-authored with Alan J. Lizotte, criminal justice professor at the University at Albany, and Gina Penly Hall, a graduate student in criminal justice at the University of Albany.

“While girls may respond to what goes on in the family by being depressed or showing signs of stress, boys are much more likely to externalize their displeasure with what goes on in the family by acting up,” Krohn said. “They react to the turmoil by seeking out friends who are
engaged in delinquent behavior, which increases the probability they will commit delinquent acts themselves.”

What’s more, he said, boys are not as attached as girls are to their mothers, who usually have the primary child-rearing responsibilities.

“When there’s a family transition, the mother is most likely to stay with the children, and girls have closer relationships with their mothers than boys do,” he said.

The findings are based on a study of 646 students enrolled in inner-city schools in Rochester, N.Y.; 73 percent were boys and 26 percent girls. The students were part of the long-term Rochester Youth Development Study, which began in 1988. Starting in seventh- and eighth-grades, participants were interviewed every six months until the age of 22 and then interviewed yearly until age 30. The UF study used data only from their teenage years. Parents or caretakers were also questioned.

Researchers used a 32-item delinquency scale measuring behaviors that ranged from minor property crimes, such as vandalism, to serious property and violent crimes, including burglary, robbery and assault. Respondents also answered a drug survey that examined use of substances ranging from marijuana to heroin, crack cocaine and other hard drugs.

“Often we find that a child who has experienced family transitions starts acting out in school, doesn’t do their homework and starts conducting themselves in a way that manifests itself into other behavioral problems,” Krohn said. “In our study, they started hanging out with the wrong kinds of kids.”

Within the first 2 1/2 years of the study, some of the boys and girls experienced as many as four transitions within their family, he said.

Besides creating trauma and stress, family disruptions have unforeseen economic consequences, Krohn said. The financial situation may deteriorate for the mother and children, particularly in situations where the father figure moves out of the house, he said.

“Dr. Krohn’s study highlights the fact that adolescent years are years of high vulnerability to delinquency and related problem behaviors particularly for boys,” said Deborah Capaldi, senior scientist at the Oregon Social Learning Center. “Parents are often focused on their own relationship problems during these times, and are less focused on their children. Stepfathers and grandparents often do not have as much authority with adolescents as the biological father.”

But a pilot program in Florida that has redefined when children can receive palliative care could help change this, UF researchers say.

“One barrier has been the way the reimbursement system works,” said Caprice Knapp, an assistant research professor of epidemiology and health policy research in the College of Medicine and the lead author of three studies recently published on pediatric palliative care in Florida. “Traditionally, for hospice reimbursement, if your child has a terminal illness, you can access hospice care but a physician must certify that the child is within the last six months of life.

“Even though hospice services are beneficial and families who end up using them are happy with them, parents might perceive this as giving up hope due to the six-month rule.”

Florida was one of four states selected to receive $3.2 million to develop a new model for pediatric palliative care and was the first to implement its program in 2005. Called “Partners in Care: Together for Kids,” this program allows children on Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program to receive palliative care from the time they are diagnosed with a life-threatening condition, regardless of prognosis.

“Care for children at the end of life costs a lot of money,” Knapp said. “But if we move them into this new model of care, we might be able to save money and improve their quality of life.”

Prior to the program, between 7 and 11 percent of children who died in Florida received hospice services at the end of life, according to a study the researchers published in March in the Journal of Palliative Medicine. By contrast, about 30 percent of adults with cancer receive hospice care at the end of life, Knapp said.

Minority children were even less likely to receive hospice services. According to the study, white children incurred about $800 more in hospice expenses than minority children.

Between 2005 and 2008, enrollment in the program, which is available in seven cities across Florida, increased from 80 patients to 468. Of those families, 85 percent reported they were pleased with the program, according to an article published in the Journal of Palliative Medicine in November.

Although the word “hospice” tends to trigger thoughts of older patients in their last days of life, palliative care actually ranges from managing a patient’s symptoms to offering psychological services to patients and their families.

“Children who have palliative care often live better,” said Dr. Sarah Friebert, director of the A Palette of Care Program and the Haslinger Division of Pediatric Palliative Care at Akron Children’s Hospital in Ohio. “Their families are more well-adjusted. Their symptoms are more controlled. They are able to enjoy the good times they have. Palliative care can really help make that better.”

Because Florida’s new program allows children and families to obtain pediatric palliative care anytime after their diagnosis, more families can now receive services, Knapp said.

Depending on the outcomes of the program, private insurance companies might eventually choose to adopt similar policies, Knapp added.

“Florida is the only state where the rule has been changed across-the-board,” Knapp said. “It’s about the big picture, though. We’re making small strides toward comprehensive pediatric palliative care coverage, but this is the first time this has ever been done by a state.”

Children who participated in one of two group programs — family-based or parent-only — were less overweight compared with children in a control group. The findings appear in the December issue of Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

The UF study is the first to assess the effectiveness of a child weight-management program in a real-world, community-based setting for families in rural areas.

“Given the scope and seriousness of obesity in America and the limited access to services for children in rural settings, there is a pressing need for programs that help rural families adopt healthy dietary habits and increase physical activity,” said David Janicke, lead investigator and an assistant professor in the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions’ department of clinical and health psychology.

More than 16 percent of rural children are obese compared with 14 percent of urban children. Factors contributing to the disparity include greater rates of poverty in rural areas and geographical barriers that limit access to medical care, healthy foods and facilities for physical activity.

The study involved 93 children and their parents from four rural counties in Florida. The children were between the ages of 8 and 14 and had a body mass index, or BMI, above the 85th percentile for age and sex, based on growth charts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Children with BMI scores above the 85th percentile are considered overweight or obese. Families were randomly assigned to one of three four-month treatment groups: family-based, parent-only or a control group made up of families on the treatment wait list.

On average, children in the weight-management programs experienced greater decreases in BMI scores compared with children in the control group six months after treatment. Compared with their pre-treatment levels, children in weight-management groups were 4 percent less overweight, and children in the control group were about 3 percent more overweight at the end of the six-month period.

Although the weight changes may appear modest, they are in line with the researchers’ goal of helping children make gradual changes to their diet and lifestyles. In addition, the children’s weight loss approached the amount necessary for improvements in lipid and blood sugar levels, according to previous research.

“When working with children it’s important to introduce lifestyle changes slowly and make it fun, otherwise they may become resistant,” Janicke said. “Making big changes in their diets could lead to unhealthy habits like skipping meals, eating disorders or weight gain.”

The weight control programs were conducted at Cooperative Extension Service offices. Participants received instruction on healthy diet choices and children were given pedometers and encouraged to gradually increase their daily steps. Families and group leaders worked together to set individualized dietary goals based on the children’s progress and preferences.

In the parent-only treatment group, parents received training on nutrition, exercise and behavior management strategies for their children. In the family-based group, parents and children met separately but in simultaneous groups. While the parents received instruction, the children reviewed their progress, participated in a physical activity and learned how to prepare a healthy snack.

“In the group setting families can talk with each other about barriers to making changes, offer suggestions and hold each other accountable,” Janicke said.

While the parent-only and family-based groups were effective, the parent-only format offers potential cost benefits, the researchers say. Parent-only programs require fewer resources, such as staff, space and materials. Parents may also take more responsibility for teaching healthier lifestyle habits and implementing the changes at home. In addition, children can avoid a possible stigma among their peers associated with attending weight-management programs and it may be easier for parents to attend the sessions without their children. Participants in the parent-only group attended 74 percent of the sessions compared with 63 percent attendance in the family-based group.

The UF study also has implications for the delivery of community-based treatment programs for children, particularly the use of Cooperative Extension Service offices, which exist in nearly every county in the United States, Janicke said.

“The Cooperative Extension Service network offers a unique setting in that it provides the infrastructure and stature within rural communities to support preventive services for families,” he said.

Child weight-management studies in real-world settings like the one led by Janicke are extremely valuable and much too rare, writes Dr. Thomas Robinson, the Irving Schulman, M.D. endowed professor in child health at Stanford University, in an editorial accompanying the article on the UF study.

“We need to focus new energy on finding solutions to childhood obesity, not just documenting the problem,” Robinson wrote. “This is the most direct way to generate the high-quality data needed to establish an evidence base for effectively and efficiently managing pediatric obesity.”

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Radar — the technology that tracks enemy bombers and hurricanes — is now being employed to detect another danger: when babies stop breathing.

In a high-tech twist on the remote devices that allow parents to listen to or watch their baby from afar, University of Florida engineering researchers have built a prototype baby monitor that focuses on a baby’s breathing. If his or her chest stops moving, the crib-mounted monitor detects the problem and sends an alarm to a portable unit kept by the parents.

“It’s a step beyond just watching the baby through a video link or hearing it cry,” said Jenshan Lin, a UF professor of electrical and computer engineering and the principal investigator of the Doppler radar technology used in the monitor.

A paper on the system, which works by using Doppler radar to remotely scan the in-and-out movement of the baby’s chest due to respiration, will appear in the February issue of IEEE Microwave Magazine.

Parents buy millions of baby monitors each year in the U.S., but most transmit only sounds or video images of the baby — both useful, but only if a parent is listening or watching. Some recently available monitors also monitor babies’ movements and breathing, but Lin said he is not aware of any on the market that use wireless technology.

UF engineering students Changzhi Li, Julie Cummings, Jeffrey Lam, Eric Graves and Stephanie Jimenez designed the monitor.

The students did the work as part of the College of Engineering’s Integrated Product and Process Design Program, which allows senior-level undergraduates to participate in yearlong design projects of new products or processes. The student team’s goal: to use Lin’s radar technology, first developed three years ago and under continuous refinement since, in a useful product with the potential to be licensed to a company.

The students produced a small-book-sized device that attaches to the crib just like a standard monitor. They also designed a remote station with red, blue, green and yellow lights, variously indicating the status of the baby’s vital signs, the battery life of the station and confirming the station’s wireless connection to the crib monitor. The station emits a loud alarm and flashes a red light when the monitor detects that the baby’s breathing activity has fallen below a preset threshold, or that he or she has stopped breathing.

Future versions could also detect heartbeat, using a higher frequency signal, Lin said.

“It’s the same Doppler radar that police use to catch speeders, but in our case, we don’t measure constant speed, but rather back-and-forth motion — sort of like vibration,” Lin said. “That’s the fundamental principle of this technology.”

The crib monitor’s signals are very low power and not harmful to the baby or parents, Lin added. While a standard cell phone emits about one watt of power, the Doppler radar emits just one ten-thousandth of a watt of power, he said.

Tom Weller, associate dean for research at the University of South Florida College of Engineering, said the baby monitor is a good example of how research and education can come together in a useful product.

“This miniaturized monitor is an example of solid microwave engineering coupled with great innovation, and something with the potential for a very broad societal impact,” Weller said in an e-mail. “It is especially noteworthy that Dr. Lin transferred his research output into the very capable hands of creative undergraduate students.”

Lin is also pursuing other applications for his technology. His best-realized idea so far: a search-and-rescue robot equipped with the Doppler system to determine the presence of living people in structures damaged by earthquakes or explosions. Lin said the system, so far tested in a small working prototype robot, could complement robotic video systems because it requires less power to operate and has greater range. The robot was developed by student Gabriel Reyes as his research project in the University Scholars Program.

“Or the military could use it to find enemy soldiers,” Lin said, noting that the Doppler radar easily penetrates walls or other structural components.

Lin has also reduced the size of the electronics in his system so that they fit on a fruit fly-sized microchip, potentially enabling the remote monitor to be used in cell phones. That could turn the phones into portable life-sign detectors useful, for example, for friends and family who wish to keep tabs on elderly relatives living alone, he said.

Li, who based his dissertation on the research, was awarded a graduate fellowship from the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society for his work.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Girls who enter puberty early may be less able to cope with being bullied or rejected by other students than their female classmates who mature later, a new University of Florida study finds.

“Although it was expected that early maturing girls would be at greater risk for developing symptoms of depression, anxiety or aggression when they experienced higher levels of peer stress, we also found that they have a tendency to use fewer problem-solving skills, which ultimately increases the likelihood of responding to stress in negative ways,” said Julia Graber, a UF psychologist and one of the study’s authors.

Because of the increasing time teenagers spend with peers, social stress becomes particularly important as a threat to their psychological well-being, Graber said. Girls are especially vulnerable because they rely heavily on peers for emotional support and intimacy, she said.

The subject is timely as the general trend has been for girls to enter puberty at slightly earlier ages than prior generations, she said.

The study, which actually measured girls’ physiological reactions to stress by recording levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, is scheduled to be published in the November edition of the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology. The participants were 111 girls between fifth- and eighth-grades who, along with their mothers, were recruited from public schools in ethnically diverse working- and middle-class communities in the New York City area in 1995 and 1996 as part of a larger study.

Mothers and daughters completed surveys and participated in a series of tasks. During a home visit, researchers collected saliva samples to determine levels of cortisol while the girls engaged in a series of neutral and stressful experiences such as completing a timed test, said Lisa Sontag, a UF psychology graduate student who led the study.

“Interestingly, the study found that girls who mature early exhibited higher overall cortisol levels compared to other girls, suggesting that early maturers may have a more difficult time regulating stress levels once they begin to experience feelings of physiological arousal such as their heart beating at a faster rate,” Sontag said.

These girls may especially fear being teased about gaining weight or looking more adult-like, she said.

The results also showed that girls who entered puberty early used fewer problem-solving strategies than did on-time or late maturers, Sontag said. And because they were less likely to take steps such as going for a walk to calm themselves down or asking for advice, they internalized much of their distress, she said.

These girls would often think about a problem over and over again and how badly it made them feel, Sontag said. They also reported experiencing more physical symptoms such as stomach cramps and racing heart beats, she said.

“Everybody is going to respond at some level to stressful situations with a degree of sweaty palms, heart racing or getting really angry, but most of us have the ability to actively try to control those responses by saying to ourselves ‘It’s not that big of a deal’ or trying to approach it by fixing the problem,” Sontag said. “Girls without coping skills have problems because they have a high level of impulsive responses but don’t have the strategies in place to control those responses.”

Unfortunately, new technology now allows various forms of cyber bullying involving text messaging, MySpace and Facebook, Graber said.

Another trend that has made bullying easier is bigger schools, Graber said. “On one hand it may give students the opportunity to meet more peers, but there also is the potential to be more isolated with fewer people knowing who you are and for peer group behavior to be monitored less closely than it would be in smaller school environments,” she said.

University of Illinois psychology professor Karen D. Rudolph said the study is a “fascinating contribution” to understanding how the timing of girls’ pubertal development shapes their social and mental health. “Although it has been known for some time that girls who physically mature earlier than their peers are at greater risk for mental health problems, these findings help to explain why this may be the case — early-maturing girls seem to have more difficulty responding effectively to social stress, a form of stress that they are likely to encounter at some point during adolescence,” she said.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Men’s and women’s attitudes about their proper place at work and home may matter as much as economic forces when it comes to how much money they make, a new University of Florida study finds.

Women with traditional ideas about sex roles earn less than their female counterparts with more egalitarian views; in contrast, men with traditional beliefs make more than those who are less conventional minded, said Timothy Judge, a UF management professor. His study appears in the September issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology published by the American Psychological Association.

Among married couples, the biggest wage disparity occurs among those with a more traditional outlook. A 25 percent wage gap exists among couples who think husbands should be the family’s primary breadwinner and wives should manage the home, compared with about a 10 percent gap in marriages where more progressive attitudes prevail, Judge said.

“Our children need to be taught that there is no such thing as ‘men’s work’ and ‘women’s work,’” he said. “If one is concerned about economic inequality between men and women, then we should realize that traditional attitudes about gender roles are the enemy of wage parity.”

The study controlled for job complexity, number of hours worked, initial earnings, industry employed and education level. It used a nationally representative sample of men and women, who were interviewed four times between 1979 and 2005.

Judge worked with Beth Livingston, a UF management graduate student, in analyzing the data, which in the beginning involved a total of 12,686 participants, ages 14 to 22, with a 60 percent retention rate over the course of the study.

Among married couples with traditional ideas about gender roles, the husband is predicted to have an annual earnings advantage eight times greater than that within marriages where the partners have less orthodox views, Judge said.

Traditional-minded men make an average of about $8,500 a year more than their male counterparts with a less-conventional orientation; however, their wives earn an average of about $1,500 less than women with egalitarian beliefs, he said.

Perhaps women with a traditional outlook are more accepting of lower earnings, making it easier for employers to pay them less, Judge said.

“It’s likely that traditional women approach the work role in such a fashion that they demand less, settle for less, negotiate less aggressively and otherwise fail to put their economic interests first, at least to the same degree as traditional men,” he said.

Because the gap in earnings was found to be strongest in jobs of low complexity, which employ large numbers of traditional men, these women’s husbands, who also work in male-dominated environments, stand to benefit salary-wise, he said.

“Some low complexity, ‘blue collar’ jobs may become hyper-masculinized and reward those who are the most traditional in terms of gender roles,” Judge said. “There may be a ‘double-whammy’ both in terms of greater employer prejudice and greater actions on the part of employees to conform to traditional roles.”

This belief that work is more important to men and they should be paid more becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, he said.

Overall, the study found a much more rapid change over time in gender role attitudes of men, who started out as considerably more traditional in 1979, Judge said. While other studies show that the gender pay gap has narrowed, it has not disappeared; today’s women earn on average about 80 percent of what men do, he said.

Although laws such as the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which forbid explicit discrimination based on gender, have reduced discrimination’s effects, much of the continuing wage gap is due to the individual employee rather than employer, he said.

“Our findings show that the gender wage gap is not solely a reflection of economic or sociological forces; psychology also plays a role,” Judge said. “Parents should realize that if they want their daughters to be economically self-sufficient and successful, teaching them traditional gender role attitudes hinders that goal.”

Children raised by educated parents and who are educated themselves, as well as those growing up in urban areas, are less likely to have traditional ideas about gender, he said.

Gender role attitudes were determined by asking study participants how strongly they agreed or disagreed with such statements as “a woman’s place is in the home, not the office or shop;” “employment of wives leads to more juvenile delinquency;” and “it is much better if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family.”

Titled “Managing in Tough Times,” the 40-page booklet is available free at county extension offices and online at http://fycs.ifas.ufl.edu.

The booklet was created in response to recent economic woes, said Nayda Torres, a professor and chairwoman of UF’s family, youth and community sciences department.

“Families are faced with making difficult choices as the cost of living continues to increase but their income does not,” Torres said.

Published in English and Spanish, the booklet contains 18 chapters, addressing topics from savings and teen employment to stress and low-cost entertainment. Each chapter was written by UF experts in the subject.

But users will need to do more than read the booklet, they’ll need to take action, said Michael Gutter, a family, youth and community sciences assistant professor who led the project.

For example, one of the most important steps in financial management is determining your net worth, which means taking stock of assets and liabilities, Gutter said. The process may take a little time, but it provides a road map for progress.

“We encourage people to assess their situation right now,” he said. “But we also want them to look ahead just a bit.”

That means finding ways to increase income and reduce expenses, the keys to building wealth. Much of the booklet is devoted to ideas on prioritizing debts and handling them more efficiently, saving money on basic needs, and finding overlooked sources of income.

Unlike most UF extension publications, “Managing in Tough Times” is the size of an address book and printed on tough card-stock pages held together with a ring binder. It was designed this way to encourage users to carry it with them, Gutter said.

Family, youth and community sciences faculty had been discussing the idea of a bottom-line financial project for some time, he said. But the booklet was created at the request of IFAS Dean for Extension Larry Arrington, who was concerned about recent events.

“As we looked around the state at the pressures facing families as a result of energy costs, rising living expenses and the number of families struggling with mortgages, we decided that a quick reaction was necessary,” Arrington said.

Department faculty and extension personnel are planning an education program for Florida residents based on the booklet, Gutter said. The program, emphasizing discussion and practical activities, will be available at extension offices beginning later this year.

Chronic ear infections appear to trigger a preference for high-calorie food, leading to increased consumption and excessive weight gain in adulthood, said Linda Bartoshuk, a UF expert on the sense of taste and genetic variations in taste perception. She reported study findings from health surveys establishing the link at today’s (Aug. 14) annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in Boston.

Bartoshuk’s preliminary study findings suggested a link between the infections and obesity. Researchers from other academic institutions confirmed the discovery with data from three independent studies.

“We have known for a long time that ear infections can damage taste because the major taste nerve, the chorda tympani nerve, passes through the middle ear on its way to the brain,” said Bartoshuk, a presidential endowed professor of community dentistry and behavioral science affiliated with the McKnight Brain Institute’s Center for Smell and Taste. “When we learned that taste damage can intensify non-taste sensations from foods, all of the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.”

When ear infection pathogens damage the main sensory taste nerve it can intensify sensations produced by fatty foods. This heightens the preference for those foods and can lead to weight gain, Bartoshuk said.

In 1993, Bartoshuk and her students began collecting general health information from written questionnaires distributed during taste lectures she gave across the country. Since 1993, she has surveyed more than 6,500 people ages 16 to 92. With age, those individuals who had moderate to severe histories of ear infections gained weight at a faster rate than those who had never had an ear infection. Of respondents over 30 years old, 39 percent of those with no history of chronic ear infections were overweight or obese, whereas 51 percent of those with ear infections were overweight or obese.

In addition, UF researchers found that those with ear infections liked sweet foods such as cookies and milk chocolate 14 percent more than those without ear infections. And they liked high-fat foods such as mayonnaise and butter 18 percent more than those without ear infections.

In a supporting study examining the predictors of obesity in Puerto Rican children, obese children were more likely to have experienced ear infections.

“One public health consequence of these observations may well be to alert parents and pediatricians to the long-term consequences of childhood earaches,” said Jim Weiffenbach, a retired researcher from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. “Knowledge of a sensory basis for this class of over-nutrition might allow for the development of new obesity prevention strategies.”

UF researchers and National Institutes of Health researchers are now examining whether tonsillectomies also influence weight gain. They suspect the procedure can damage other taste nerves, which might affect weight in a similar manner.

“Obesity is heavily inherited,” Bartoshuk said. “But (ear infections) are not genetic. This is environmental and this is something you can stop.”

Today’s high rates of divorce, single parenting and working mothers place a greater premium on men in the community to nurture the next generation, but frequent media accounts about male pedophiles, pornographers and child abusers cast suspicion over well-intentioned efforts at helping, said William Marsiglio, a UF sociology professor and expert on men’s and family issues.

“Despite the challenges, there are men who develop a passion for working with kids – sometimes to the point of thinking of youth work as a ‘mission’ or ‘calling,’ — and they do make a difference in kids’ lives,” he said. “They are quite capable of establishing meaningful, close relationships with kids in public settings, and they can help young people manage their developmental needs.”

Marsiglio chronicles men’s life experiences with young people in his new book “Men on a Mission: Valuing Youth Work in Our Communities,” published this month by Johns Hopkins University Press.

From 2005 to 2006, he interviewed 55 diverse men ranging in age from 19 to 65 who worked with children and teenagers as coaches, teachers, Big Brothers, Boys & Girls Club staff, Boy Scout leaders, 4-H Club agents, camp counselors, youth ministers and other authority figures. He also observed 11 of the men interact with the young people they guided.

The number of at-risk youth in American society has increased over the last few decades, but even those with supportive fathers and grandfathers can benefit from having other male models in public settings, Marsiglio said. A coach on the field may be better able than family members to instill ideas about competition and good sportsmanship, for example, just as the respectful manner a male teacher treats a female colleague is better observed in a classroom than discussed in a household, he said.

The men in Marsiglio’s study found creative ways to relate to youth despite society’s taboos, including instituting a “hug day” at an alternative school; “circle of trust” talk sessions where at-risk teenagers sat on the floor to share their personal struggles with issues such as drugs, alcohol, violence and sex; and a freestyle rap exercise as an ice breaker for a sexual abstinence program. One 4-H director encouraged a group of boys and girls to take on the images of clowns — selecting their own personality, costume and makeup — and practice sharing various performance techniques, which they used before audiences in nursing homes, hospitals and parades, he said.

“The clowning program was a way to nurture kids’ inner spirits and enhance their self-esteem,” Marsiglio said. “It helped them to develop their own personality and come out of their shell. Parents were sold on how much it changed their sons and daughters.”

Marsiglio said he was impressed by the men’s eagerness to do whatever it took to improve kids’ lives, including using their own money to pay for eye exams, winter coats and summer camps. For some men, the work was strictly volunteer, while those who were paid for their efforts often devoted many hours beyond what they were paid for, he said.

Their motivation stemmed from the desire to leave a mark on the next generation in the spirit of “passing it on” to a range of various personal experiences, Marsiglio said. Some wanted to repay a debt to an organization that benefited them as a child, such as the Boys & Girls Club; some hoped to fill in gaps that once existed in their own life, such as not having an attentive father; and others wanted to expand youths’ opportunities to learn and grow, he said.

Even so, participants in the study were well aware of public scrutiny to the point that a few were reluctant to touch young people in any way, even to shake hands, Marsiglio said.

“Men have clearly become more cautious of their behavior around kids in terms of how they touch them and are very reluctant to engage in serious forms of affection, such as giving hugs or pats on the back,” he said. “But even those men concerned about society’s perceptions sometimes followed the adage that everyone needs a hug. They considered it irresponsible to deny affection to kids who are neglected or abused at home.”

Ultimately, the men’s contributions not only improved circumstances for the youngsters, but added to their own personal development in varied ways as well, Marsiglio said. For example, “those who were fathers became more responsive to their own kids in certain ways,” he said. “And for men without children, it gave them a blueprint of how to be a good father.”

The study is unusual in that it obtained breath samples from college students to measure intoxication levels after they exited bars, rather than relying on self-reports, said Virginia Dodd, a professor in UF’s department of health education and behavior.

“These drink specials foster the same mentality as an all-you-can eat buffet,” said Dodd, one of the study’s researchers. “When you pay a certain amount of money, you’re going to want to drink to get your money’s worth.”

Customers who take advantage of drink specials offered as part of such promotions as “happy hour,” “ladies night” and especially “all you can drink” were more than four times as likely to leave liquor-serving establishments with a blood-alcohol level exceeding the legal limit for driving than patrons who did not participate in a drink promotion, Dodd said.

These discounts were more important than the total number of drinks people consumed that day, the hours they spent drinking, the amount of money they spent on alcohol or whether they were of legal drinking age, said Dennis Thombs, a UF health education and behavior professor who led the research. The study is scheduled to appear in the American Journal of Health Behavior this summer.

“Contrary to what the bar management may contend, there is no doubt that drink specials influence the extent to which young people become intoxicated, and the problem is especially worrisome in those under age,” Thombs said.

Sixty-eight percent of the study’s participants under the age of 21 who took advantage of a drink special had a blood-alcohol level above the legal limit of .08 compared with only 32 percent of those aged 21 and older, the study found.

“I think what’s happening is that if younger people have gone to the trouble to get into a bar and they’re underage, they’re really going to whoop it up,” Thombs said.

Although other studies have found a direct relationship between alcohol promotions and the amount that college students drink, they have relied on students’ self-reports, Thombs said. Students may not accurately remember how many drinks they had, and self-reports don’t take into account individual differences in body weight and alcohol metabolism, which can affect intoxication levels, he said.

The researchers collected information on 177 men and 114 women — 86 percent of whom were college students — at 15 bars in Gainesville during three nights in December 2006 and three nights in May 2007. They interviewed the students as they left the bars and walked out onto the sidewalks and had them blow into a hand-held breath-testing device to determine their blood-alcohol levels. More than half of the patrons were intoxicated upon leaving the establishment, with 59 percent of the men and 57 percent of the women having blood-alcohol levels of .08 or higher, Thombs said.

There is an association between consuming four or five alcoholic beverages at least once in a two-week period with high-risk sexual behavior, poor academic performance and other problems in the college student population, Dodd said. To combat underage drinking in bars, some cities have passed laws prohibiting anyone under a certain age from entering the premises, but unless administered on a statewide basis young people often drive to other cities to avoid them, she said.

The researchers found the biggest problem was not drink markdowns so much as being able to drink an unlimited amount for a set fee, Dodd said. “We’ve seen students who have blown a really high reading into the breath tester and said, ‘Wow! I got all that for $4,’” she said.

The type of drink special that seems to cause the most all-around harm is Ladies Drink Free Night, Dodd said. “Women who become intoxicated this way are exposed to all sorts of risks, including leaving a bar with someone they don’t know and having unprotected sex,” she said. “We know it is not just college males who hang out at these bars on Ladies Night, but older men from the community as well.”

“Within African-American and Latino families, children follow a cultural tradition that places a high value on respecting, obeying and learning from elders, and in our study they did indeed show more respect for parental authority,” said Julia Graber, a UF psychology professor.

However, when African-American and Latina girls do act up, their mothers consider the arguments more intense than those reported by white mothers who clash with their daughters, said Graber, whose study is published in the February issue of the Journal of Family Psychology.

Hispanic and black mothers, who value strong family connections, a deep sense of family loyalty and the importance of extended family and social support networks, seemed to be much more upset if daughters fell short of cultural, good girl expectations, Graber said. “It may be just the kind of issue that pushes their buttons more, thinking of their daughter as no longer being the good, respectful daughter,” she said.

For all girls, discipline was the only factor that influenced how much conflict they perceived in the relationship. The stricter and harsher mothers were, the less conflict their daughters reported, Graber said. However, as girls get older, stricter discipline may lead to greater conflict if girls try to disagree, she said.

The study differs from other research on mother-daughter conflict in that instead of looking at adolescence, it examines girls in middle to late childhood, at an average age of 8½, Graber said. The teenage years are naturally turbulent times for families, but understanding what happens immediately preceding them sets the stage for a smoother or rockier transition, she said.

Teen conflict is a risk for other behavior-related problems, Graber said. “It does seem that when there are higher levels of conflict, those daughters are more likely to have adjustment problems in terms of feeling more depression, sadness, anxiety and those problems,” she said.

The intensity of the conflicts aside, the study found that mothers’ and daughters’ reports of the frequency of conflict were similar, Graber said. The study, which Graber did with Sara Villanueva Dixon, a St. Edward’s University psychology professor, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, a Columbia University child development professor, involved 45 African-American, 23 Latina and 65 white girls recruited through fliers while in the third grade and their mothers. The girls and their families were from racially integrated, working and middle-class communities in a large metropolitan area.

The girls’ respect for authority was observed during a series of videotaped interactions with their mothers. Daughters were scored on their listening behaviors, which included attending to their mothers when their mothers were speaking, acknowledging their mothers’ comments and not interrupting their mothers. They also were evaluated for defiant behaviors, such as disobeying their mothers’ requests, being unwilling to cooperate with their mothers and ignoring their mothers during the interaction.

Not only do children need to be more aware of the expectations their parents have for them, but mothers may also want to reassess their feelings about particular issues, she said.

“The challenge for African-American and Latina mothers is they are in an environment where their children are potentially getting messages at school, on television and elsewhere about what normal childhood behavior is like that may conflict with their own expectations for these behaviors,” Graber said.

“In the higher conflict families where mothers and daughters are arguing much more often there seems to be less productive resolution going on and less learning of those skills,” she said. “Everybody feels mad afterwards rather than feeling the potential of moving forward.”

“This is a fascinating study that enhances our understanding of ethnic and racial differences in parent-child relationships,” said Judi Smetana, a University of Rochester psychologist. “One of its strengths is that it examines in a very careful and detailed way how different cultural values are expressed in mother-daughter interactions and how those values influence the quality of family relationships.”

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Spreading rumors and gossiping may not cause bruises or black eyes, but the psychological consequences of this social type of bullying could linger into early adulthood, a new University of Florida study shows.

In a study of 210 college students, UF researchers discovered a link between what psychologists call relational victimization in adolescence and depression and anxiety in early adulthood, according to findings published online this month in the journal Psychology in the Schools. Rather than threatening a child with physical violence, these bullies target a child’s social status and relationships by shunning them, excluding them from social activities or spreading rumors, said Allison Dempsey, a doctoral student in the UF College of Education and the study’s lead author.

“Even though people are outside of high school, the memories of these experiences continue to be associated with depression and social anxiety,” said Dempsey, who graduated from Columbine High School in Colorado one year before the 1999 school shooting there and now studies school prevention programs. “It was interesting to see these relationships still continue to exist even though they are in early adulthood now and in a completely different setting.

“I’m hoping this study will help shed light on the fact that this is a real problem and continues to be a real problem after students leave school.”

To uncover the relationships between social bullying and loneliness, depression and anxiety, researchers surveyed college undergraduates between the ages of 18 and 25 and asked them to recall their experiences from high school. They were also looking to see if having friends mitigated some of the effects of bullying and if there was any relationship between gender and the severity of psychological symptoms, said Eric Storch, an assistant professor of psychiatry in the UF College of Medicine and a co-author of the study.

“About 20 years ago people thought of bullying as very physical,” Storch said. “As a result people thought guys did the bullying, and that it wasn’t really a big experience for girls. The problem is that isn’t actually true. There are different types of aggression.

“Boys do tend to be more physical, but both sexes engage in relational victimization. We wanted to see if gender affected strength of the relationship between depressive symptoms and victimization.”

But researchers found no gender difference in the link between this type of bullying and depression. They also discovered that having friends or other positive social relationships didn’t lessen rates of depression and anxiety in adulthood, a finding that surprised them, Dempsey said.

For some children, having friends and positive support can help make them more resilient to the slings and arrows from bullies, Storch said. But other children take the words and abuse more to heart and begin to believe what’s being said about them.

“Those types of negative thoughts are actually believed to be at the core of things like depression and anxiety,” Storch said. “Behaviorally what starts happening is you avoid interactions and situations that could be quite positive for you.”

Currently, there are few prevention or intervention programs that focus specifically on relational victimization, in part because it’s tougher to pinpoint and stop, Dempsey said.

“If a child tries to punch someone or kick someone, there’s evidence of that happening,” Dempsey said. “There’s a definite aggressor and a definite victim. When it comes to spreading rumors and gossiping, that’s a lot more difficult to prove who’s doing it. And it’s harder to provide consequences.”

Dempsey said she hopes this study and others will help other researchers and psychologists design programs that can help stop this form of bullying in schools.

“I think many people have the belief that victimization is a normal rite of passage in childhood,” Storch said. “While it certainly does happen to most kids, it’s not acceptable. And while I think it would be difficult to completely curtail it, by reducing it you’re going to help someone a tremendous amount to not have to go to school and be plagued by this environment of being tortured day in and day out.

“This isn’t a normative experience and we need to do something about it and recognize that not doing something could affect children who are really rising stars.”

Wendy Troop-Gordon, an assistant professor of psychology at North Dakota State University, said understanding how past relational bullying affects people in adulthood is an important step forward for research in this field.

“Turning 18 is not a magical age when you leave all of these experiences behind,” said Troop-Gordon, who is not affiliated with the study. “People do seem to carry these experiences with them.”