Is Asian ethnicity an independent risk factor for severe perineal trauma in childbirth? A systematic review of the literature

ObjectiveTo undertake a systematic review of the literature to determine whether Asian ethnicity is an independent risk factor for severe perineal trauma in childbirth.MethodOvid Medline, CINAHL, and Cochrane databases published in English were used to identify appropriate research articles from 2000 to 2010, using relevant terms in a variety of combinations. All articles included in this systematic review were assessed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) ‘making sense of evidence’ tools.FindingsAsian ethnicity does not appear to be a risk factor for severe perineal trauma for women living in Asia. In contrast, studies conducted in some Western countries have identified Asian ethnicity as a risk factor for severe perineal trauma. It is unknown why (in some situations) Asian women are more vulnerable to this birth complication. The lack of an international standard definition for the term Asian further undermines clarification of this issue. Nevertheless, there is an urgent need to explore why Asian women are reported to be significantly at risk for severe perineal trauma in some Western countries.ConclusionCurrent research on this topic is confusing and conflicting. Further research is urgently required to explore why Asian women are at risk for severe perineal trauma in some birth settings.     

The Slope of Change: An Environmental Management Approach to Reduce Drinking on a Day of Celebration at a US College

Abstract

Objective: This research extends the literature on event-specific environmental management with a case study evaluation of an intervention designed to reduce student drinking at a university's year-end celebration. Participants: Cornell University undergraduates were surveyed each May from 2001 through 2009. Sample sizes ranged from 322 to 1,973. Methods: Randomly sampled surveys were conducted after a large, annual spring campus celebration. An environmental management plan was initiated in 2003 that included increased enforcement of the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) law. Results: In the short term, drinking at the campus celebration decreased while drinking before the event increased. Over time, the intervention significantly reduced high-risk drinking on the day of the event, especially among those under the age of 21. Conclusion: These findings are contrary to the argument that enforcement of MLDA laws simply leads to increased high-risk drinking, and therefore have implications for how colleges approach the challenge of student alcohol misuse.     

“My nest is full:” Intergenerational relationships at midlife

Incorporating a life course perspective, this qualitative study used focus groups to explore the experiences of midlife adults who were simultaneously providing support to emerging adult children and aging parents. Results indicated that adults situated in middle generations held beliefs that endorsed family-based responsibility to both younger and older members. Parents gladly supported children despite their longer transition to adulthood. Often unanticipated but accepted, provisions of care to aging parents were experienced with ambivalence — a joy and a burden. The transition of their parents to greater dependence helped participants gain insights into the terrain of late life and encouraged reflections about the intersection of aging, independence, and family responsibility. Participants expressed intentions to preserve their own independence and spare their children of caregiving burdens through self-directed actions. Implications focused on negotiations of family relationships around issues of independence and family responsibilities as a way to reduce intergenerational ambivalence.     

Multiple Disadvantages Among Older Citizens: What a Multidimensional Measure of Poverty Can Show

Using the newly created Freedom Poverty Measure, a multidimensional measure of poverty, it can be seen that there were 534,700 individuals who were in freedom poverty, who had either poor health or poor education in addition to having low incomes. This multidimensional disadvantage would not normally be captured by single measures of poverty, such as income poverty measures. Men were significantly less likely to be in freedom poverty than women (OR = 0.63, 95% CI: 0.54–0.74, p < .0001), and the proportion of individuals in freedom poverty increased with age, with those older than 85 being 2.3 times more likely to be in freedom poverty than those aged 65 to 69 years (95% CI: 1.73–3.11, p < .0001). Policy responses to address the marginalization of disadvantaged older people should take a multidisciplinary approach, addressing health inequalities in particular, not just low income.     

Designing a Faculty Development Program on Technology

This article illustrates the challenges of creating a faculty development program on technology through the presentation of experiences with one such program, the Virtual Guild. Using examples from the Virtual Guild, the authors focus on the areas of program design and faculty motivation. The discussion of program design involves selecting content and determining the program format. Motivational issues discussed include individual- and organizational-level factors, as well as the combined effect of these factors on faculty participation.     

Braided geographies: bordered forms and cross-border formations in refugee comics

ABSTRACT

This article offers a close analysis of a trilogy of ‘refugee comics’ entitled ‘A Perilous Journey’, which were produced in 2015 by the non-profit organisation PositiveNegatives, to conceive of comics as a bordered form able to establish alternative cross-border formations, or ‘counter-geographies’, as it calls them. Drawing on the work of Martina Tazzioloi, Thierry Groensteen, Jason Dittmer, Michael Rothberg and others, the article argues that it is by building braided, multi-directional relationships between different geographic spaces, both past and present, that refugee comics realise a set of counter-geographic and potentially decolonising imaginaries. Through their spatial form, refugee comics disassemble geographic space to reveal counter-geographies of multiple synchronic and diachronic relations and coformations, as these occur between different regions and locations, and as they accumulate through complex aggregations of traumatic and other affective memories. The article contends that we need an interdisciplinary combination of the critical reading skills of humanities scholars and the rigorous anthropological, sociological and theoretical work of the social sciences to make sense of the visualisation of these counter-geographic movements in comics. It concludes by showing how the counter-geographies visualised by refugee comics can subvert the geopolitical landscape of discrete nation-states and their territorially bound imagined communities.     

Differences in Views of Family Life According to Age,Gender, and Parental Marital Status

A sample (N = 706) of children, adolescents, young adults, and older adults were surveyed with regard to their views of family. Young adults endorsed more nontraditional views than children and older adults and were more likely than other age groups to indicate that there is no best family type. Children and older adults were more likely than adolescents and young adults to endorse married or living together parents as the best family type. Women and respondents who had experienced parental divorce endorsed traditional views of family less strongly, but women also endorsed stronger expectations for their own family formation. Findings support the possibility of both developmental and sociocontextual influences on attitudes toward family life.     

Do the Kids Think They're Okay? Adolescents' Views on the Impact of Marriage and Divorce

A sample (N?=?365) of middle school and high school students from both divorced and intact families were surveyed with regard to their opinions about the impact of their parents' relationships (divorced or married) on a variety of areas of their lives. Adolescents from separated or divorced (S/D) families tended to rate their parents' relationships and impact on them more negatively than adolescents from living together or married (L/M) families. However, both groups consistently rated their parents in the same direction on a variety of topics. Gender was not a factor in the responses of either group. However, age (middle school vs. high school) was related to significant differences in adolescents' views about parents.     

Evaluation of an Innovative Tool for Child Sexual Abuse Education

Child sexual abuse poses a serious threat to public health and is often unreported, unrecognized, and untreated. Prevention, early recognition, and treatment are critically important to reduce long-term effects. Little data are available on effective methods of preventing child sexual abuse. The current research demonstrates a unique approach to promoting awareness and stimulating discussion about child sexual abuse. Qualitative methods have rarely been used to study child sexual abuse prevention. Qualitative inductive analyses of interviews from 20 key informants identified both positive and negative assessments with six emergent themes. The themes revealed inherent tensions in using narrative accounts to represent the complex cultural context within which child sexual abuse occurs. More research is needed, but the program shows potential as a methodology to raise awareness of child sexual abuse.     

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,Dissociation, and Neuropsychological Performance in Latina Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse

This study compared the memory, attention/concentration, and executive functioning of 12 women with histories of child sexual abuse with a control group of 12 women without childhood abuse. Participants completed a neuropsychological test battery and various instruments assessing post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociation. The child sexual abuse group had lower performance than the control group on long- and short-term visual and verbal memory and presented more limited performance on executive functioning tasks. Functioning in these areas showed a negative correlation with post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociative symptoms. These findings suggest that child sexual abuse is associated with memory and executive functioning deficits and supports the idea that people with trauma histories and increased post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociation symptoms may have alterations in neuropsychological functioning.