Barriers to Managing Coronary Artery Disease Among Older Women

Numerous barriers to managing coronary artery disease (CAD) among older women are reported in the literature; however, few studies adjust for demographic and health status differences. A survey assessing barriers and other factors was distributed to a stratified random sampling of older women with CAD. Factor analysis and multiple logistic regression procedures were used to estimate the impact of these issues on receiving a CAD-related office visit. The most problematic barriers included denial and low health literacy. Efforts to promote patient awareness of heart health and better communication between patients and clinicians may alleviate these barriers.     

Observed and parent‐reported conscience in childhood: Relations with bullying involvement in early primary school

This exploratory study aimed to examine which components of early childhood conscience predicted bullying involvement around school entry. In the population‐based Generation R Study, teacher reports of bullying involvement and parent reports of conscience were available for 3,244 children (M age = 6.7 years). Higher levels of overall conscience predicted lower bullying perpetration scores, independently of intelligence quotient, temperamental traits and sociodemographic characteristics. Particularly, the subscales guilt, confession, and internalized conduct, and to a lesser extent empathy, predicted bullying perpetration. Conscience was not related to victimization. Similar results were found using observations during so‐called ‘cheating games’ (subsample N = 450 children). Findings suggest that improving children's understanding of moral standards and norms may be a potential target for bullying intervention programs in early primary school.     

Changes in sex practices and beliefs of male college students: Over 30 years∗

Abstract

Replication of an earlier survey, using the same questionnaire in the same college course, reveals an increase in proportion of male students with premarital heterosexual experience, from 45 per cent in 1943–44 to 61.8 per cent in 1967–68 and 74.9 per cent in 1969–73. While the mean number of episodes is also greatly increased, the tendency is toward reducing the number of partners. Since the proportion condoning premarital intercourse has risen to over 90 per cent, still further increments in activity may be anticipated. The number reporting homosexual behavior (most often limited to the pre‐ and early‐adolescent years) has declined from 27 per cent to 13.7 per cent, but the amount of activity during the college years has increased. Students having experienced a particular sexual activity impute that activity to a higher proportion of the general population than do the inexperienced.     

Interplay between Friends' Aggression and Friendship Quality in the Development of Child Aggression during the Early School Years

The aim of this study was to investigate the unique and combined role of friendship quality and friends' aggression in regard to the persistence of young children's physical aggression from kindergarten to grade 2. The sample included 1555 children (808 girls) assessed annually using teacher ratings. Two theoretical perspectives (i.e., the social learning and the social bonding perspectives) served as frameworks to guide the analyses and interpret the results. In line with the social learning perspective, friends' aggression was related to a significant increase in children's physical aggression. However, in line with the social bonding perspective, good friendship quality played both a compensatory and a protective role, by, respectively, reducing children's initial level of physical aggression and by mitigating, albeit marginally, the associations between friends' and children's physical aggression. These results suggest that fostering a positive relationship between friends in the early school years may decrease physical aggression even if the friends are aggressive.     

Further Beyond the Basic Background Check: Predicting Future Unethical Behavior

In this paper, we analyze the ethical issues of using honesty and integrity tests in employment screening. Our focus will be on the United States context: legal requirements related to applicant privacy differ in other countries, but we posit that our proposed balancing test is broadly applicable. We start by discussing why companies have ethical and legal obligations, based on a stakeholder analysis, to assess the integrity of potential employees. We then move to a consideration of how companies currently use background checks as a pre‐employment screening tool, noting their limitations. We then take up honesty and integrity testing, focusing particularly on the problems of false positives and due process. We offer a balancing test for the use of honesty and integrity testing that takes in three factors: (1) the potential harm posed by a dishonest employee in a particular job, (2) the linkage between the test and the assessment process, and (3) the accuracy and validity of the honesty and integrity test. We conclude with implications for practice and future research.     

A Proportional Hazards Regression Model for the Subdistribution with Covariates‐adjusted Censoring Weight for Competing Risks Data

With competing risks data, one often needs to assess the treatment and covariate effects on the cumulative incidence function. Fine and Gray proposed a proportional hazards regression model for the subdistribution of a competing risk with the assumption that the censoring distribution and the covariates are independent. Covariate‐dependent censoring sometimes occurs in medical studies. In this paper, we study the proportional hazards regression model for the subdistribution of a competing risk with proper adjustments for covariate‐dependent censoring. We consider a covariate‐adjusted weight function by fitting the Cox model for the censoring distribution and using the predictive probability for each individual. Our simulation study shows that the covariate‐adjusted weight estimator is basically unbiased when the censoring time depends on the covariates, and the covariate‐adjusted weight approach works well for the variance estimator as well. We illustrate our methods with bone marrow transplant data from the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research. Here, cancer relapse and death in complete remission are two competing risks.     

Barrios and burbs: residential context and health-risk behaviors among Angeleno adolescents

The increasing size of the Latino immigrant population in the United States underscores the need for a more complete understanding of the role that social context plays in influencing the health of immigrants and their children. This analysis explores the possibility that residential location influences the health-risk behaviors of Latino youth in Los Angeles County, California. The data come from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey. We apply multivariate, multilevel Rasch models to two scales of adolescent health-risk behaviors (substance use and delinquency). The findings suggest that residence in Census tracts characterized by above-county-average levels of Latinos and above-county-average levels of poverty is associated with increased odds of health-risk behaviors for Latino adolescents, particularly for those born in the United States. The findings lend support to the contention, put forth in the segmented assimilation literature, that disadvantaged urban contexts increase the risk that U.S.-born children of immigrants will experience downward assimilation.     

Linking Migration Intentions with Flows: Evidence and Potential Use

In the absence of reliable, internationally available migration flow data necessary for statistical forecasting, policymakers increasingly turn to survey data on emigration intentions to evaluate future migration trends. The important assumption – i.e. that there is a measurable and systematic relationship between the intention to migrate and actual migration – has not been firmly established at the international level. We examine the association between estimated population averages of emigration intentions and official migration flow data based on data for more than 160 countries. The results show a strong association between emigration intentions and recorded bilateral flows to industrialized countries, as well as between intentions and aggregated out‐migration. The results provide policymakers with a reliability assessment of survey data on emigration intentions and encourage future attempts to incorporate survey data in formal statistical migration forecasting models.