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Chagas disease is the neglected tropical disease of greatest public health impact in the United States, where it affects over 300,000 people. Diverse barriers limit healthcare access for affected people; fewer than 1% have obtained testing or treatment. We interviewed 50 people with Chagas disease in Los Angeles, California, and administered a cultural consensus analysis questionnaire. Participants were asked about their experiences and perceptions of Chagas disease, access to healthcare, and strategies for coping with the disease. In participants' narratives, the physical and emotional impacts of the disease were closely interwoven. Participant explanatory models highlight difficulties in accessing care, despite a desire for biomedical treatment. Obtaining testing and treatment for Chagas disease poses substantial challenges for US patients.

This study deals with an emerging domestic rail travel phenomenon among Korean youth, known as Rail-ro (Railo), which has influenced aspects of youth culture and domestic tourism in Korea since 2007. The purpose of this study is to determine whether Railo experiences exist as a coherent culture among Railers based on cultural consensus analysis. The result indicates Railers’ strong agreement about Railo experiences, which reinforces the view that a particular rail pass could be instrumental in forming a distinct youth travel subculture. This study demonstrates how travel culture driven by the seasonal rail pass supports domestic tourism and inbound tourism.

We examined hunters’ perceptions of fauna to see if expert hunters and other hunters perceive wildlife abundance similarly. We used cultural consensus analysis (CCA) to assess the knowledge of 25 hunters in the Bolivian Amazon about the abundance of 38 animals. CCA indicated highly shared beliefs among hunters concerning wildlife abundance (average agreement = .62). However, expert hunters (as judged by their reported successful hunts of rare species, having hunted recently, and consuming more game in their diet) perceived more animals as abundant than did non-experts, although they all shared the same model. Since the expert hunters did not always agree on which species was more abundant, they had low cultural knowledge scores in CCA results. These experts may be unwilling to curtail hunting efforts on key species that they perceive to be abundant.

This study tests the differences in the shared understanding of the backpacker cultural domain between two groups: backpackers from Australasia and backpackers from Asian countries. A total of 256 backpackers responded to a questionnaire administered in Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Krabi Province (Thailand). Cultural consensus analysis (CCA) guided the data analysis, to identify the shared values and the differences in the backpacker culture of the two groups. The findings revealed that while the two groups share some of the backpacker cultural values, some other values are distinctively different from one another. The study provides the first empirical evidence of the differences in backpacking culture between the two groups using CCA. Based on the study findings, we propose some marketing and managerial implications.

This study explored student and faculty perceptions of innovative teaching. Forty-eight faculty and 52 students at a southeastern university participated in interviews during which they were asked to free-list characteristics of innovative teaching. At the second stage of the study, separate lists for faculty and students were developed and e-mailed to participants, which produced faculty and student profiles of perceived characteristics of innovative teaching. Interestingly, although cultural consensus analysis indicated within-sample agreement for the faculty and student samples, the descriptors/characteristics of innovative teaching and their rankings differed for the two samples. Implications for education are discussed.

Promoting social justice is popular in American colleges, though the specific concepts and values associated with social justice tend to be inconsistently articulated. Noting that diverse possible definitions for social justice seem to underlie some controversies surrounding the concept, the authors conducted a study that employs a version of cultural consensus analysis to investigate actual college student definitions of conditions and actions they associate with social justice. Comparing students who identify as liberal politically with students who identify as conservative politically demonstrates more similarities than differences, with most students putting particular emphasis on equal rights, basic needs, education, and community service. At the same time, students who identify as liberal politically tended to put more emphasis on environmental issues while students who identify as conservative tended to put more emphasis on charity and just policy. Recognizing these commonalities and differences ha...