Fatalism and Well-Being Across Hispanic Cultures: The Social Fatalism Scales (SFS)

Social Indicators Research - Fatalism has been a core construct in the study of psychological and social processes related to well-being and life quality in social sciences. The objective of the...     

Number of children and later-life mortality among Finns born 1938–50

We investigated the association between number of offspring and later-life mortality of Finnish men and women born 1938–50, and whether the association was explained by living conditions in own childhood and adulthood, chronic conditions, fertility timing, and unobserved characteristics common to siblings. We used a longitudinal 1950 census sample to estimate mortality at ages 50–72. Relative to parents of two children, all-cause mortality is highest among childless men and women, and elevated among those with one child, independently of observed confounders. Fixed-effect models, which control for unobserved characteristics shared by siblings, clearly support these findings among men. Cardiovascular mortality is higher among men with no, one, or at least four children than among those with two. Living conditions in adulthood contribute to the association between the number of children and mortality to a greater extent than childhood background, and chronic conditions contribute to the excess mortality of the childless.     

Beyond “filling in the gap”: the state and status of Latina/o Feminist Media Studies

Against the socio-economic and cultural backdrop of the ongoing Latina/o media “boom,” this critical literature review delineates the location and status of contemporary Latina/o Feminist Media Studies. Departing from a critique of current mainstream Feminist Media Studies research and citational practices, it traces the influence of rapidly expanding transnational Latina/o media markets, the gendering of Latinidad, and transnational feminisms on recent Latina/o Feminist Media Studies scholarship. As it not only breaks with exclusively domestic analyses of intersectionality and accurately reflects twenty-first century media’s transnational orientation, this essay argues that the theoretical paradigms and thematic concerns of Latina/o Feminist Media Studies must ultimately be reframed as central, not marginal, to Feminist Media Studies research.     

Measuring disparities in access to water based on the normative content of the human right

Measuring access to water in the Sustainable Development Goals era involves taking into account the human rights framework. Therefore, its content should be considered to conceptualize the level of service through adequate indicators and to follow-up inequities reduction at global, national and local level. This research develops and tests a methodology to measure intra-community disparities based on human right to water normative criteria through a stratified sampling, splitting households served by community based organizations and those self-provided. This approach implies considering much reduced populations, thus special care needs to be taken with sample sizes and uncertainty of estimators. The proposed methodology is practical to locate and accurately characterize minority sectors within rural communities and allows moving beyond central-tendency estimators. It implies higher costs for field data collection than traditional approaches, but this can be assumed given the relevance of the approach from a human rights perspective, which calls for adequate tools for equity-oriented policy making at local level. The research point out how results might be used to shape decision-making processes.     

On the computation of the noncentral <Emphasis Type="Italic">F</Emphasis> and noncentral beta distribution

Unfortunately many of the numerous algorithms for computing the comulative distribution function (cdf) and noncentrality parameter of the noncentral F and beta distributions can produce completely incorrect results as demonstrated in the paper by examples. Existing algorithms are scrutinized and those parts that involve numerical difficulties are identified. As a result, a pseudo code is presented in which all the known numerical problems are resolved. This pseudo code can be easily implemented in programming language C or FORTRAN without understanding the complicated mathematical background. Symbolic evaluation of a finite and closed formula is proposed to compute exact cdf values. This approach makes it possible to check quickly and reliably the values returned by professional statistical packages over an extraordinarily wide parameter range without any programming knowledge. This research was motivated by the fact that a very useful table for calculating the size of detectable effects for ANOVA tables contains suspect values in the region of large noncentrality parameter values compared to the values obtained by Patnaik’s 2-moment central-F approximation. The cause is identified and the corrected form of the table for ANOVA purposes is given. The accuracy of the approximations to the noncentral-F distribution is also discussed. The authors wish to thank Mr. Richárd Király for his preliminary work. The authors are grateful to the Editor and Associate Editor of STCO and the unknown reviewers for their helpful suggestions.     

Interwoven migration narratives: identity and social representations in the Lusophone world

This article provides an exploratory analysis of the life narratives of migrants in the Portuguese-speaking world. By interweaving the life experiences of eight participants in three thematic clusters – ‘shared past’, language and sense of community – we propose a critique of the deep-seated idea of the Lusophone space as a community constructed by the harmonious conviviality of different countries and people. Drawing on contributions from cultural studies, social psychology, anthropology and sociology, we first aim to give voice to the human subjects who embark on migrations and then to understand how the engendered process of identity construction is framed by their social world, simultaneously reframing it. Thus, we aim at shedding light on the ways in which aspects of the political discourses on Lusophony are used (and are instrumental) to the migrants’ identity narrative (re)construction.     

Early Segmentation Abilities in Preterm Infants

Infants born preterm have higher risks of developing linguistic deficits. Considering that the ability to segment words from fluent speech is crucial for lexical acquisition, Experiment 1 tested the ability of healthy extremely‐to‐late preterm infants to segment monosyllabic words at 6 months of postnatal age. Results establish basic segmentation skills in these infants. While we failed to find an effect of the degree of prematurity, this issue will need further exploration. Future studies will also have to specify the scope of these early segmentation skills, both in terms of the types of words segmented, the cues used to do so, and in terms of possible differences in performance between subgroups of preterm infants (e.g., based on gestational age or medical risks). Lastly, given that the preterm infants tested had a mean maturational age of 4 months, Experiment 2 explored monosyllabic segmentation in full‐term 4‐month olds. Infants succeeded at the task, providing the earliest developmental evidence of word segmentation in full‐term infants. These findings better specify the early trajectory of segmentation abilities in both full‐term and healthy, low‐risk preterm infants and support the proposal that prematurity might have a differential effect on the early acquisition of various linguistic levels.     

Evidence that Two‐Year‐Old Children are Sensitive to Information Presented in Arguments

Preschoolers are more likely to endorse testimony supported by strong arguments than by weak, circular ones. Two‐year‐olds exchange arguments with others, but no experiment has demonstrated that they are sensitive to information presented as argument. In the first phase of this study, 2‐year‐olds were shown ambiguous pictures—for instance a bird–fish hybrid—and asked what they thought the picture represented. An informant then contradicted them, providing either a strong argument, a circular argument, or no argument, and the children were asked what they now thought the hybrid was. The second phase was identical to the first, with new hybrids, except that the informant never provided any argument for her position. Finally, in the third phase, the informant left the room and the children were asked again to tell what the hybrids from the first two phases were. On the whole, there was an effect of the amount of information provided in the argument so that children were more likely to endorse labels provided by the informant who had supported her answer with a strong argument in the first phase. Moreover, they generalized the trust granted to informants who provided strong arguments. These results constitute the first experimental demonstration that 2‐year‐olds possess some argument evaluation skills.     

Problem Gambling and Delinquent Behaviours Among Adolescents: A Scoping Review

Despite many studies indicating an association between problem gambling and delinquent behaviours among adolescents, there has been no effort to systematically analyze the state of the literature on this relationship. To fill this gap, we conducted a scoping review of the literature published between 2000 and 2016 on problem gambling and delinquent behaviours among adolescents. We searched twelve databases and reviewed reference lists to identify eligible studies. Search terms included a combination of medical subject headings and keywords for gambling, youth, and delinquency, which were combined with the Boolean operator “AND”. 1795 studies were identified through the literature search. Nine studies were eligible for inclusion. All of the studies were conducted in North America, with primarily male participants, and most of the data were cross-sectional. No qualitative studies met the inclusion criteria. Screening tools used to measure problem gambling were inconsistent, making comparisons across studies difficult. We found a consistent moderate to strong association between problem gambling and delinquent behaviour. Only one study presented associations by socio-economic status and none considered gender, sex or ethnic differences. Studies in the review showed that problem gambling is associated with both violent and non-violent behaviours among adolescents. These associations may suggest that problem gambling and delinquent behaviours have common risk factors and reflect a syndrome of risky behaviours best targeted through prevention and treatment that is holistic and considers the context in which the youth is situated. Further research is warranted to better understand the relationship between problem gambling and delinquent behaviours.