Older Adults’ Experiences of Sexual Difficulties: Qualitative Findings From the English Longitudinal Study on Ageing (ELSA)

There is a growing body of evidence demonstrating that sexual activity is important to the quality of life of older adults, and that it can be influenced by physical, psychological, and social factors. However, older adults’ experiences of sexual difficulties remain relatively unexplored. This article draws on qualitative data collected as part of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA). Participants answered a Sexual Relationships and Activities Questionnaire (SRA-Q), which included an open comment box for further details, 1,084 (1/7) of which were completed. These data were analyzed using Template Analysis, and findings on the experiences of sexual difficulties are presented in this article. Sexual difficulties were contextualized within the couple relationship and could be detrimental to the relationship, particularly if the partner would not seek professional help. Participants reported that sexual difficulties could also have a negative impact on psychological well-being, described mainly as frustration, depression, and sadness. For some participants the supportive nature of their relationship buffered these impacts. Few had sought professional help; those who had reported helpful and unhelpful experiences. These findings add to the limited evidence base and have implications for health care in the context of global aging and a growing recognition of older adults’ sexual rights.     

Grillin’ with My Grandchild©: multigenerational programming for grandfathers and grandchildren

This article describes the Grillin’ with My Grandchild^© multigenerational relationship education program which is designed to encourage the enhancement and maintenance of a meaningful grandfather-grandchild relationship. During this multi-session program, grandfather and grandchild participants engage in several activities which include creating an electronic memory book as well as grilling and eating food together. They learn through facilitated discussion and by sharing personal experiences what it means to be a grandfather and a grandchild. Facilitated discussion about nutritional grilling practices and safe food grilling are implemented at each session. Grandfather-grandchild dyads interact with other familial dyads in their group and experience a sense of community and familiarity. Future research into the relational and psychological benefits of the program are suggested.     

Exploring the link between integrated leadership and public sector performance

This study develops the concept of integrated leadership in the public sector. Integrated leadership is conceived as the combination of five leadership roles that are performed collectively by employees and managers at different levels of the hierarchy. The leadership roles are task-, relations-, change-, diversity-, and integrity-oriented leadership. Using data from the Federal Human Capital Survey and Program Assessment Rating Tool, we analyze the relationship between integrated leadership and federal program performance. The findings from the empirical analysis indicate that integrated leadership has a positive and sizeable effect on the performance of federal sub-agencies. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings and limitations of the study.     

On sequential closed testing dose groups with a control

Methods for a sequential test of a dose-response effect in pre-clinical studies are investigated. The objective of the test procedure is to compare several dose groups with a zero-dose control. The sequential testing is conducted within a closed family of one-sided tests. The procedures investigated are based on a monotonicity assumption. These closed procedures strongly control the familywise error rate while providing information about the shape of the dose-responce relationship. Performance of sequential testing procedures are compared via a Monte Carlo simulation study. We illustrae the procedures by application to a real data set.     

Income Diversity,Technology Choice and Agricultural Research Policy in Sub‐Saharan Africa

This article makes an initial analysis of the implications of income diversification for technical change and agricultural research policy in Africa, leading to two insights. First, that the dilution effect of income diversification means that, as the proportion of non‐farm income increases, so must the expected gains from adopting a new agricultural technology. Second, that diversified producers will face disproportionately large transactions costs associated with information acquisition to inform technology choice decisions. Two hypotheses about how diversified producers are likely to react are then explored. Both point to the conclusion that income diversification among the poor is likely to constrain significantly the direct poverty impacts of agricultural research. The policy implications of these findings are then considered.     

The breakdown and influence properties of outlier rejection-plus-mean procedures

In a recent paper, Hampel (1985) studied the properties of rejection-plus-mean procedures as estimators of a location parameter. He reported that these procedures have low breakdown and high variance. In this article it is pointed out that these results are due to the outliers being rejected in a forwards-stepping manner, and when a more appropriate backwards-stepping approach is used, rejection-plus-mean procedures lead to estimators with high breakdown and high variance. In this article it is pointed out that these results are due to the outliers being rejected in a forwards-stepping manner, and when a more appropriate backwards-stepping approach is used, rejection-plus-mean procedures lead to estimator with high breakdown and redescending theoretical influence function.     

Minimax property of stein's estimator

Stein's estimator and some other estimators of the mean of a K-variate normal distribution are known to dominate the maximum likelihood estimator under quadratic loss for K > 3, and are therefore minimax. In this paper it is shown that the minimax property of Stein's rule is preserved with respect to a generalized loss function.