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Parents of children with Down syndrome (DS) were interviewed about if their experiences raising their children matched their initial assumptions about parenting a child with DS. A dominant narrative was identified, wherein most parents described initially having negative assumptions, which did not come to fruition; parenting their child was not very different from parenting a typical child. There was also a sub-group of participants who disputed the dominant narrative; parenting their child was challenging and the dominant narrative marginalizes that experience. The findings indicate that although for many parents, having a child with DS is like "taking the scenic route" (i.e., it involves a few more hurdles, but often more rewards), this framing is not always applicable. Therefore, health care providers and support organizations should promote a narrative that encompasses the diversity of parenting a child with DS.

In 2014, the Undergraduate Research Initiative at the University of Saskatchewan implemented a pilot project to organize, support, and promote curriculum-based research experience as an integral aspect of participating first-year courses. The framework for the course-based initiative was the research arc; usually in groups, students in these classes would develop a research question, investigate it using discipline-appropriate methodologies, and disseminate the results. Nine classes (Agriculture, Animal Bioscience, Environmental Science, Women's and Gender Studies, Psychology, Kinesiology, and Interdisciplinary Studies) participated in this program pilot. There were four key agents in the program: faculty instructors, research coaches, students in participating first-year classes, and university administrative staff. This preliminary evaluation of the pilot suggests that first-year undergraduate research experiences have potential to benefit the undergraduate student participants as well as the faculty and research coaches involved. The primary benefits that faculty reported experiencing included an increased interest in ways to engage learners, reexamination of and reflection on their teaching strategies, the pragmatic support of a research coach helping with their work load, and an invigoration of their research. The primary benefits to research coaches included enhancement of their professional skills, experience in lesson planning and facilitation, CV building, and an ideology shift in how to best facilitate learning for undergraduate students. The most prominent benefits for undergraduate students appeared to be that they gained a better idea about how researchers think and work, that they increased their understanding of how research works, and that their own research and professional skills had improved. Early, bottom-up evaluation identified characteristics of implementation that appear to best facilitate achievement of the initiative's outcomes and identified the potential pitfall of imposing outcomes, from related but distinct initiatives, that may not be achievable or optimal in in the setting of first-year classes. The results of this evaluation suggest that rather than gaining clarity or focus, first-year students in course-based research experiences might gain awareness of their personal potential, of the potential of research, and of their career/educational options.

Objective:The purpose of this study is to explore whether women’s and men’s endorsement of abortion is differentially influenced by perspective-taking.Methods:An experimental design was employed in which 145 university students (104 women, 41 men) were randomly assigned to one of two conditions and asked to make judgements regarding the advisability of abortion across diverse situations. Participants in the self-referent condition (n = 82; 56 women, 26 men) were asked to render judgements in reference to themselves, while those in the other-referent condition (n = 63; 48 women, 15 men) were asked to make judgements in reference to a generic ‘other’.Results:A significant interaction emerged between Sex and Referent Group. Specifically, referent-group membership had no impact on men’s endorsement of abortion, but did have a significant impact on women’s ratings whereby women were more endorsing of abortion for others than for themselves. Subsequent item analyses revealed that this pattern was evident for 6 of the 14 items.Conclusions:Given societal expectations regarding women’s and men’s appropriate parental roles, it is reasonable to speculate that gender differences would exist in the value attached to the parental role, and subsequently, in the choice made when the opportunity to become a parent versus termination of a pregnancy presents itself. Counsellors can use this information to maximise the extent to which they facilitate autonomous decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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Objective:The purpose of this study is to investigate how Canadian print news frames infertility.Background:The way the media frames issues can affect the public’s interpretation of those issues. News coverage often frames health issues as highly alarming with few coping strategies, which tends to elicit fear, worry and avoidance, but no increase in issue knowledge or personal efficacy regarding the health issue. The present study will investigate the framing of infertility-related print news with respect to alarm, coping, medicalisation, genderisation, and identified causes/solutions.Methods:A content analysis was conducted on Canadian print news articles that contained the key word ‘infertility’ in the year 2012 (N= 157). Two independent raters analysed the articles using a pre-determined coding strategy.Results:Just over half of the articles employed alarm frames, and the vast majority of these met the criteria for categorisation as high alarm. The most commonly cited cause of infertility was delayed childbearing and the most frequently presented way to cope with infertility was in vitro fertilisation. Infertility was most often constructed as a women’s issue.Conclusion:Canadian print news media tends to present an alarming portrayal of infertility that adheres to a biomedical perspective that often conflates infertility with involuntary childlessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]