What is Sexual Satisfaction? Thematic Analysis of Lay People's Definitions

Sexual satisfaction is an important indicator of sexual health and is strongly associated with relationship satisfaction. However, research exploring lay definitions of sexual satisfaction has been scarce. We present thematic analysis of written responses of 449 women and 311 men to the question “How would you define sexual satisfaction?” The participants were heterosexual individuals with a mean age of 36.05 years (SD = 8.34) involved in a committed exclusive relationship. In this exploratory study, two main themes were identified: personal sexual well-being and dyadic processes. The first theme focuses on the positive aspects of individual sexual experience, such as pleasure, positive feelings, arousal, sexual openness, and orgasm. The second theme emphasizes relational dimensions, such as mutuality, romance, expression of feelings, creativity, acting out desires, and frequency of sexual activity. Our results highlight that mutual pleasure is a crucial component of sexual satisfaction and that sexual satisfaction derives from positive sexual experiences and not from the absence of conflict or dysfunction. The findings support definitions and models of sexual satisfaction that focus on positive sexual outcomes and the use of measures that incorporate items linked to personal and dyadic sexual rewards for both men and women.     

Maternal union instability and childhood mortality risk in the Global South, 2010–14

Efforts to improve child survival in lower-income countries typically focus on fundamental factors such as economic resources and infrastructure provision, even though research from post-industrial countries confirms that family instability has important health consequences. We tested the association between maternal union instability and children’s mortality risk in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia using children’s actual experience of mortality (discrete-time probit hazard models) as well as their experience of untreated morbidity (probit regression). Children of divorced/separated mothers experience compromised survival chances, but children of mothers who have never been in a union generally do not. Among children of partnered women, those whose mothers have experienced prior union transitions have a higher mortality risk. Targeting children of mothers who have experienced union instability—regardless of current union status—may augment ongoing efforts to reduce childhood mortality, especially in Africa and Latin America where union transitions are common.     

Effects of the social dominance orientation on environmental attitudes of Chilean university students / Efectos de la orientación a la dominancia social sobre las actitudes ambientales de universitarios chilenos

By adopting a multidimensional approach to environmental attitudes (apathy, anthropocentrism, connectedness and emotional affinity with nature), this study explores the relationships between these dimensions, social dominance orientation (SDO) and political orientation. Two hundred and sixty-two Chilean university students filled out an ad hoc online questionnaire. Two confirmatory factorial analyses showed the four typologies of environmental attitudes and the two factors for SDO, which are labelled group dominance and opposition to equality. Through hierarchical regressions, group dominance showed higher explanatory power of environmental attitudes than political orientation. Furthermore, using the bootstrap procedure we showed that group dominance mediated between political orientation and attitudes of apathy, anthropocentrism and connectedness, while opposition to equality mediated between apathy and emotional affinity. We conclude that SDO is an important variable for measuring political ideology while also providing new nuances when analysing the relationships with environmental attitudes.     

Estimation and diagnostic analysis in skew-generalized-normal regression models

The skew-generalized-normal distribution [Arellano-Valle, RB, Gómez, HW, Quintana, FA. A new class of skew-normal distributions. Comm Statist Theory Methods 2004;33(7):1465–1480] is a class of asymmetric normal distributions, which contains the normal and skew-normal distributions as special cases. The main virtues of this distribution is that it is easy to simulate from and it also supplies a genuine expectation–maximization (EM) algorithm for maximum likelihood estimation. In this paper, we extend the EM algorithm for linear regression models assuming skew-generalized-normal random errors and we develop a diagnostics analyses via local influence and generalized leverage, following Zhu and Lee's approach. This is because Cook's well-known approach would be more complicated to use to obtain measures of local influence. Finally, results obtained for a real data set are reported, illustrating the usefulness of the proposed method.     

Response‐adaptive designs for binary responses: How to offer patient benefit while being robust to time trends?

Response‐adaptive randomisation (RAR) can considerably improve the chances of a successful treatment outcome for patients in a clinical trial by skewing the allocation probability towards better performing treatments as data accumulates. There is considerable interest in using RAR designs in drug development for rare diseases, where traditional designs are not either feasible or ethically questionable. In this paper, we discuss and address a major criticism levelled at RAR: namely, type I error inflation due to an unknown time trend over the course of the trial. The most common cause of this phenomenon is changes in the characteristics of recruited patients—referred to as patient drift. This is a realistic concern for clinical trials in rare diseases due to their lengthly accrual rate. We compute the type I error inflation as a function of the time trend magnitude to determine in which contexts the problem is most exacerbated. We then assess the ability of different correction methods to preserve type I error in these contexts and their performance in terms of other operating characteristics, including patient benefit and power. We make recommendations as to which correction methods are most suitable in the rare disease context for several RAR rules, differentiating between the 2‐armed and the multi‐armed case. We further propose a RAR design for multi‐armed clinical trials, which is computationally efficient and robust to several time trends considered.     

Public intellectuals,political satire and the birth of activist public relations: The case of Attic Comedy

The purpose of this article is to explore the origins of dissent public relations and to establish its emergence in the context of the ancient Greek comedy represented by Aristophanes. Indeed, Attic Comedy (also known as Old Comedy) was the first great example of today’s mass communication, in which political satire was used to dissent and protest against political and social circumstances in fifth-century BC Athens. This situation was conditioned by the Peloponnesian War and its political, economic and social consequences. From this perspective, this article also constitutes an investigation into the intellectual history of public relations, of which Aristophanes can be considered to be one of the first practitioners.     

Family caregivers’ perceptions of maltreatment of older adults with dementia: findings from the northwest of Spain

Dementia is a neurocognitive disorder that implies a risk factor of maltreatment by family caregivers. In this study, we analyzed both informal caregiver’s perceptions of maltreatment and aspects of the caregiver and caregiving behavior that may be associated with maltreatment. We conducted five focus groups (FGs) in three Spanish cities: Segovia, Soria and León. The themes that were identified were related to two levels of maltreatment: (a) relational and (b) institutional. At the relational level, we observed the justification of maltreatment of Older Adults with Dementia (OAswD) by family caregivers during the occurrence of behavioral symptoms. At the institutional level, we noted that lack of support from the government was considered a type of maltreatment. These themes suggest that policy issues related to healthcare should be considered.     

Job-Related Well-Being of Immigrants

Social Indicators Research - Considerable literature exists on the acculturation and adaptation of immigrants. For the most part, studies looked at their psychological and social adaptation to the...     

Activity patterns and temporal niche partitioning of dogs and medium-sized wild mammals in urban parks of Xalapa,Mexico

Urban Ecosystems - Free-ranging domestic dogs are the world most common exotic carnivore species that could negatively interact with the native wildlife as predators, competitors, and disease...     

Mastery,Homeownership, and Adult Roles During the Transition to Adulthood

We investigate the relationship between homeownership and personal sense of mastery in the transition to adulthood and examine whether three important adult transitions (employment, marriage/cohabitation, and parenthood) moderate the impact of homeownership on mastery. Utilizing the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth—Young Adult Sample (N = 1,609), we estimate change models to assess the direct effects of homeownership on mastery as well as whether this impact is modified by the transition to adult roles. Homeownership increases the sense of mastery among young adults. Homeowners who are unemployed paradoxically receive a boost to mastery not experienced by those who are employed, and homeowners who are parents experience increased mastery, compared to those who do not have children. Owning a home has a positive influence on young adults' sense of mastery during a period when their mastery is in flux and they are accumulating new roles.