HPV vaccine acceptance among a sample of Southern men who have sex with men: A comparison of younger and older men

Objectives: Do short, online educational messages about the human papillomavirus (HPV) influence younger and older men who have sex with men (MSM) differently? Second, what are the HPV knowledge levels and risk perceptions of Southern MSM living outside of major metropolitan areas? Methods: This study draws on participants who completed an anonymous online survey asking about their knowledge, risk assessment, and vaccine acceptance regarding HPV. Results: Knowledge about HPV was low among the MSM in this study. After reading a one-page information intervention, vaccine acceptability increased by a statistically significant amount among both a Younger and Older cohort but risk perception only increased among the younger respondents. Single men regardless of age cohort reported sharper increases in perceived risk after the intervention, but relationship status did not produce significant differences in vaccine acceptability. Conclusion: Online, brief interventions may be effective means of increasing motivation to vaccinate among Southern MSM.     

Financial Reporting Lags in the Non-profit Sector: An Empirical Analysis

We examine financial reporting lags among a large sample of Belgian non-profit organizations (NPOs). Doing so, we add to the literature on financial reporting and accountability in the non-profit sector. Next to drivers of the financial reporting lag that have been identified in prior studies based on private firms (e.g., delaying the disclosure of bad news), we find that the way of funding the NPO (i.e., reliance upon donations and/or grants) and its specific area of activity are significantly related to the financial reporting lag. Our results also suggest that important changes in accounting regulation significantly delay the financial reporting process. Importantly, we note that 17.2 % of the sample organizations do not file their financial statements within the legal time span.     

Reframing Resilience: Equitable Access to Essential Services

We urgently need to put the concept of resilience into practice if we are to prepare our communities for climate change and exacerbated natural hazards. Yet, despite the extensive discussion surrounding community resilience, operationalizing the concept remains challenging. The dominant approaches for assessing resilience focus on either evaluating community characteristics or infrastructure functionality. While both remain useful, they have several limitations to their ability to provide actionable insight. More importantly, the current conceptualizations do not consider essential services or how access is impaired by hazards. We argue that people need access to services such as food, education, health care, and cultural amenities, in addition to water, power, sanitation, and communications, to get back some semblance of normal life. Providing equitable access to these types of services and quickly restoring that access following a disruption are paramount to community resilience. We propose a new conceptualization of community resilience that is based on access to essential services. This reframing of resilience facilitates a new measure of resilience that is spatially explicit and operational. Using two illustrative examples from the impacts of Hurricanes Florence and Michael, we demonstrate how decisionmakers and planners can use this framework to visualize the effect of a hazard and quantify resilience-enhancing interventions. This “equitable access to essentials” approach to community resilience integrates with spatial planning, and will enable communities not only to “bounce back” from a disruption, but to “bound forward” and improve the resilience and quality of life for all residents.     

Parent–Adolescent Sexual Communication and Its Association With Adolescent Sexual Behaviors: A Nationally Representative Analysis in the Netherlands

Sexual communication is a principal means of transmitting sexual values, beliefs, expectations, and knowledge from parents to children. Although this area has received considerable research attention, more studies with representative samples are needed to assure that findings are reflective of populations of interest. A nationally representative sample of parent–adolescent dyads (N = 2,965; mean adolescent age = 13.8 years) in the Netherlands was employed to examine the frequency of parent–adolescent sexual communication and its association with adolescent sexual behaviors (defined as sexual initiation, condom use, and contraceptive pill use). Nine communication topics in the areas of anatomy, relationships and rights, and protection and contraception were examined. In all, 75%of parents reported having discussed at least one topic multiple times with their adolescents. Romantic relationships were discussed most frequently. Hierarchical logistic regression analyses indicated that parent–adolescent sexual communication on protection and contraception was positively associated with adolescent sexual initiation and contraceptive pill use but not condom use. This may reflect that adolescents, when they become sexually active, are more likely to discuss sexuality with their parents. Findings are interpreted within the context of Dutch culture, which is generally accepting of adolescent sexuality and characterized by open sexual communication.     

Measurement of the subjective work environment

Abstract

This paper considers the various issues that frame the development and use of measures of the subjective work environment. It begins by questioning the role of the work environment in determining occupational health, and explores the possible mechanisms by which that environment might exert its influence. It concludes that one of the important final common pathways is psycho-physiological in nature, and is rooted in individual perception and cognition and the experience of stress. Important for this model are the concepts of mediation and moderation. The measurement of the subjective work environment has often been idiosyncratic to the study in hand, and there are few well-established measures in common use. It is argued that researchers should be careful when deciding not to use established measures and effectively ‘invent’ their own. In developing new measures, decisions have to be made concerning the nature of the measure along with its ‘granularity’ and complexity. It is also argued that it is important that researchers should follow good psychometric practice in the development of those measures. Suggestions for ‘good practice’ are discussed. Attention is drawn to the issues of reliability and validity, and this paper discusses the role of triangulation in the planning and execution of data collection and analysis. The paper ends by reviewing the recommendations made towards the development and use of measures of the subjective work environment.     

Functional benefit of power training for older adults

Aging leads to significant losses in muscle mass, strength, and the ability to independently perform activities of daily living (ADL). Typically, standard resistance training (RT) has been used to reduce these losses in function by maintaining or even increasing muscle strength in older adults. Increasing strength does not necessarily, however, result in an increase in the ability to perform ADL. There is now research suggesting that muscle power is more closely associated with the performance of ADL than muscle strength is, so training for muscle power might lead to more beneficial results in functional performance. This review of studies investigating the effect of training on ADL performance in older adults indicated that standard RT is effective in increasing strength in older adults, but power training that contains high-velocity contractions might be a more optimal means of training older adults when the emphasis is on increasing the performance of ADL.     

Protecting and Benchmarking Migrants’ Rights: An Analysis of the Global Compact for Safe,Orderly and Regular Migration

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration (GCM) was to be “guided by human rights law and standards” in recognition of the rights of international migrants, who are currently protected by an overlapping patchwork of treaties and international law. The GCM contains many laudable commitments that, if implemented, will ensure that states more consistently respect, protect, and fulfil the rights of all migrants and also that states incorporate data on migration into a more cohesive governance regime that does more to promote cooperation on the issue of international migration. However, many concerns remain. Using a legal analysis and cross‐national policy data, we find that the GCM neither fully articulates existing law nor makes use of international consensus to expand the rights of migrants. In its first section, this article provides a concise analysis of the GCM's compliance with a set of core principles of existing international human rights law regarding migrants. In the second section, we apply a novel instrument to create an objective, cross‐national accounting of the laws protecting migrants’ rights in various national legal frameworks. Focusing on a sample of five diverse destination and sending countries, the results suggest we are close to an international consensus on the protection of a core set of migrants’ rights. This analysis should help prioritize the work necessary to implement the GCM.     

Portuguese Scientists’ Migration: a study on the 2008 crisis aftermath

In the economic and social aftermath of the 2008 crisis there has been an important and growing new wave of highly qualified Portuguese emigration comprising scientists. No or very few public policies have been designed to reverse this phenomenon, risking the consequences of brain drain. International literature argues that professional reasons are central to scientists’ decision to migrate, even after the 2008 crisis. Spending some time in a foreign country to study, research, or teach, is perceived as a common step in an individual academic trajectory and an advantage for a successful professional career in academia. It is also encouraged by European Union policies. Twelve individual portraits of Portuguese scientists living in central Europe reveal how important other factors are to the migration decision‐making process. These factors include the economic crisis, student mobility programmes, and the current Portuguese scientific system revision.     

Introduction: decolonising the “undecolonisable”? Portugal and the independence of Lusophone Africa

In 2015, Lusophone Africa celebrated 40 years since independence. Portuguese colonies in Africa became independent in the aftermath of two orders of interlinked events. The first was the fierce-armed opposition to the colonial order – through the action of nationalist movements and nationalist thinkers such as Amílcar Cabral – which escalated after 1960 when French and English colonies in Africa were achieving independence. The second was the Carnation Revolution, in 1974, which, despite having taken place in Lisbon, had powerful reverberations across Portuguese Africa. Here, I argue that the Carnation Revolution was a by-product of the emergence of nationalist movements in Africa, when it became apparent that popular uprisings there could not be won by conventional armed struggle. Or, to put it slightly different, anticolonial struggle in Africa opened the way not only for the end of Portuguese rule on the continent, but also for the demise of dictatorship in Portugal itself.