Faculty Bibliography

Smokeless tobacco and areca nut usage are integral cultural traditions in South Asia. Paan and gutka are two commonly used products which contain these ingredients. They are immensely popular in South Asia and with South Asian immigrants. Regular paan and gutka use is associated with several deleterious health consequences, most significantly oral cancer. Of particular concern is the markedly increased risk of oral cancer in South Asian immigrants when compared with the natives in new areas of settlement. The South Asian community in the United States is large and rapidly growing. Paan and gutka are legal in the United States, and readily available in ethnic enclaves. Smokeless tobacco prevention and cessation research and interventions have not yet addressed the unique sociocultural circumstances of this growing, at-risk community. The medical, dental, and public health communities need to join forces to combat this emerging threat

Cigarette ads in popular magazines play a role in smoking and in brand preferences among women and men, but few studies have analyzed ads directed at women vs men, and no study has examined ads directed at women of different ethnic groups. Hence, we examined cigarette ads in popular magazines for White women, Latinas, and men 1998 through 2002 for the first time. Significant differences in the number of cigarette ads by magazine audience were found, along with significant differences in the type and brands of cigarettes advertised to each group. These preliminary findings suggest that the tobacco industry may target women in a manner that differs from its targeting of men, and may target Latinas in a manner that it does not target White women. Results are discussed in terms of the need for further research on tobacco ads directed at women

Compliance-gaining strategies refer to subtle differences in ways people use language when their goal is to influence someone else's behavior. This stands in contrast to other kinds of persuasion aimed only at influencing others beliefs and attitudes. We have developed a new method of coding what physicians say when they are trying to influence patients' behaviors. This method applies theory and methods from the fields of interpersonal influence, linguistics and social psychology. We tested the reliability of this new method by randomly selecting 37 audiotaped medical interviews collected for an unrelated study [J. Gen. Int. Med., 9 (1994) 402] and having three coders independently identify physician compliance-gaining utterances and then independently apply one of 57 codes to each utterance. These codes also were categorized on two underlying dimensions reflecting whether the physician (1) framed the compliance-gaining utterance in a direct or indirect way, and (2) did or did not give a justification for that direct or indirect request. Reliability among coders and coders agreement with the final utterance identification and coding decisions, measured as per cent agreement among coders and/or, where appropriate, by Cohen's kappa were good to excellent. Most physicians' strategies were indirect and incomplete. For female patients, physicians used significantly more strategies, including more indirect strategies, complete strategies, 'prescriptions' and 'demands'. For male patients, physicians used a greater percent of direct strategies, including 'procedural demands'. This method provides a reliable and promising new technique for observing naturally occurring physician compliance-gaining speech