Risk Perception and Human Health Risk in Rural Communities Consuming Unregulated Well Water in Saskatchewan,Canada

Rural communities dependent on unregulated drinking water are potentially at increased health risk from exposure to contaminants. Perception of drinking water safety influences water consumption, exposure, and health risk. A community‐based participatory approach and probabilistic Bayesian methods were applied to integrate risk perception in a holistic human health risk assessment. Tap water arsenic concentrations and risk perception data were collected from two Saskatchewan communities. Drinking water health standards were exceeded in 67% (51/76) of households in Rural Municipality #184 (RM184) and 56% (25/45) in Beardy's and Okemasis First Nation (BOFN). There was no association between the presence of a health exceedance and risk perception. Households in RM184 or with an annual income >$50,000 were most likely to have in‐house water treatment. The probability of consuming tap water perceived as safe (92%) or not safe (0%) suggested that households in RM184 were unlikely to drink water perceived as not safe. The probability of drinking tap water perceived as safe (77%) or as not safe (11%) suggested households in BOFN contradicted their perception and consumed water perceived as unsafe. Integration of risk perception lowered the adult incremental lifetime cancer risk by 3% to 1.3 × 10^?5 (95% CI 8.4 × 10^?8 to 9.0 × 10^?5) for RM184 and by 8.9 × 10^?6 (95% CI 2.2 × 10^?7 to 5.9 × 10^?5) for BOFN. Probability of exposure to arsenic concentrations >1:100,000, negligible cancer risk, was 23% for RM184 and 22% for BOFN.     

Ethical challenges of community based participatory research: exploring researchers’ experience

Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) has been proposed as an equitable, empowering partnership approach to collaborative research. International literature about the ethical implications of CBPR suggests a continuing strong interest in the topic. However, there is a notable lack of research that captures the experience of ethical challenges of researchers from different countries who engage in CBPR. The aim of this research was to address this lack of evidence by exploring researchers’ experience of ethical challenges in CBPR at an international level. An innovative data collection method was designed utilising a purpose-built blog. Balancing participant protection and autonomy, partnership tensions, and enduring impacts of the researcher role emerged as the main themes. These findings illustrate the specific conflicts faced by researchers engaged in CBPR. This is largely as a result of the complexities of CBPR coupled with rigid ethics committee review that does not always take into account the more fluid nature of the approach.     

Why Are Some Subsidiaries of Multinationals the Source of Novel Practices while Others Are Not? National,Corporate and Functional Influences

It has frequently been argued that multinational companies are moving towards network forms whereby subsidiaries share different practices with the rest of the company. This paper presents large‐scale empirical evidence concerning the extent to which subsidiaries input novel practices into the rest of the multinational. We investigate this in the field of human resources through analysis of a unique international data set in four host countries – Canada, Ireland, Spain and the UK – and address the question of how we can explain variation between subsidiaries in terms of whether they initiate the diffusion of practices to other subsidiaries. The data support the argument that multiple, rather than single, factor explanations are required to more effectively understand the factors promoting or retarding the diffusion of human resource practices within multinational companies. It emerges that national, corporate and functional contexts all matter. More specifically, actors at subsidiary level who seek to initiate diffusion appear to be differentially placed according to their national context, their place within corporate structures and the extent to which the human resource function is internationally networked.     

Analysis of fertility using cohort-specific socio-economic data

Review of Economics of the Household - In this paper we propose a novel approach that relates age-specific cohort fertility rates with socioeconomic conditions faced by each cohort in each single...     

From interviewers to friendly visitors: bridging research and practice to meet the needs of low-income Latino seniors

This article describes a community-based participatory research (CBPR) effort conducted in a low-income, predominantly Latino community, which bridged traditionally-separate domains of practice and research by engaging neighborhood residents in a collaborative capacity-enhancement process for meeting the needs of vulnerable elderly residents. What began as a simple needs assessment to facilitate program development became a mechanism for engaging neighborhood residents in a collaborative social capital development process. The article describes the origins of this community-based effort, its consumer-led transformation from traditional needs assessment to service provision, resulting benefits and challenges, and implications for meeting the needs of vulnerable populations.     

Family Relationships and Adolescent Psychosocial Outcomes: Converging Findings From Eastern and Western Cultures

This study investigated the role of parent–adolescent relationships in mediating the association between family‐related negative life events and adolescent depressive symptoms and problem behaviors among 1,696 eleventh graders from the United States (n=201), China (n=502), Korea (n=497), and Czech Republic (n=496). Results indicated that perceived parental involvement and parent–adolescent conflict mediated the link between family‐related life events and adolescent depressed mood. The path from family‐related life events to adolescent problem behaviors was mediated by perceived parental involvement, parent–adolescent conflict, and perceived parental sanctions of adolescent misconduct. With the exception of minor cross‐cultural differences in the magnitude of associations among variables, this study revealed considerable similarity in the association of family factors with adolescent internalizing and externalizing symptomatology. The findings contribute to the growing literature on culture‐general developmental processes.     

The Influence of Gender and Ethnicity on Children's Inferences About Toy Choice

By 4–5 years of age children can make gender‐congruent inferences about toys. Not only do they respond differentially to gender labels attached to toys, even without such labels they make inferences about toy choice that reflect an awareness of and identification with their gender in‐group. However it is unclear how far inferences about toy choice extend to other aspects of a child's social identity. The present study explored the influence of both gender and ethnicity on children's judgements on toy choice for themselves and others. Eighty‐four children in three age groups (5, 6–7, 8–9 yrs) were shown photographs of unfamiliar toys and unfamiliar children from three ethnic groups (white, black, Asian) and were asked to rate how much they and these children would like each toy. Boys consistently predicted that Asian children would like the toys less than other ethnic groups. Ethnicity influenced inferences from 6–7 years old where children predicted that white, black and Asian peers would like the toys differently from each other. Children at 8–9 years old predicted that Asian peers would like the toys less than both white and black peers. Analysis of differences between children's own liking and predictions for same‐ and opposite‐sex others revealed that they were gendercentric. That is, children predicted that a same‐sex child would like a toy more similarly to themselves compared to an opposite‐sex child. Analysis between white and Asian children's own liking and predictions for same‐ and other‐ethnic others found that only 6–7‐year‐olds made ethnocentric inferences. That is, same‐ethnic peers’ liking was rated more similar to children's own compared to that of other‐ethnic peers. Findings are discussed in light of cognitive developmental theories and previous work on the development of perspective‐taking skills.