The majority of students was not supportive of concealed handguns on campus and claimed that they would not feel safer if students and faculty carried concealed handguns.

No abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the level and type of public policy involvement, as well as perceptions regarding public policy involvement of nurse practitioners. A four-page survey was mailed to a sample of 600 certified nurse practitioners, randomly selected from the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners' database. A three-stage mailing procedure yielded a 73% response rate. Most (59.6%) were involved in three or less public policy activities. The most frequently indicated activities included voting (87%) and giving money to a campaign (57%). Lack of time was the most frequently cited barrier, while improving the health of the public was cited most often as a benefit. Overall, nurse practitioners felt they had limited knowledge on how to go about changing public policy, were somewhat interested in public policy issues, believed the actions of public policymakers were very important, and believed these actions influenced the public's health. The majority (79%) had received some information/education on public policy change. Those most active in public policy had high public policy efficacy expectations and perceived a high number of benefits to public policy involvement.

Objectives: We sought to determine how the Health Belief Model (HBM) constructs relate to Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) screening decisions among international students and which of the HBM constructs was most relevant in those screening decisions. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional pilot study using an online survey of international students at Western Illinois University in the United States. Participants signed electronic informed consent. The online survey comprised of questions that assessed their sociodemographic characteristics, acceptance of HIV screening, and perceived knowledge of HIV. The survey also determined the role of perceived benefits, perceived threat, and cues to action in making HIV screening decisions among the study population. Results: Four hundred and ninety students were invited to participate in the survey out of which 185 responses were obtained. In all, 107(57.8%) were males, and 78(42.8%) were females. Most of the respondents were from Asia (64.9%) and Africa (24.9%). The prevalence of acceptance of HIV screening among international students was found to be 73.5%. About 90% of the participants perceived HIV screening to be beneficial to their health, and 76% of them would accept the screening because they were offered. The majority (83%) of participants who said that they would not accept HIV screening, were also not sexually active, and they did not think they could be susceptible to HIV. Conclusion and Implications for Translation: Perceived benefits and cues to action were found to be the significant factors that informed the decision of people who accepted to be screened for HIV. Perceived susceptibility informed the decision of those that rejected the screening. Caution is warranted in generalizing the findings from this study because of the limited sample size; however, we are confident that our findings are reproducible in a larger population context. Key words: • HIV • HIV screening • Decision • Acceptance • Perceived benefit • Perceived threat • Perceived susceptibility • Health belief model • International students   Copyright © 2020 Ayosanmi et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The purpose was to examine the effectiveness of a modest monetary incentive ($1) and none in increasing the response rate of a mail survey to 600 nurse practitioners. The response rate in the incentive group was 81% and 66% in the control group, significant by chi-square test. The most cost effective survey technique for increasing the response rate of nurse practitioners was to code the envelopes and eliminate the monetary incentive.