Family Structure and Child Well-Being in a Non-western Context: The Role of Parent–Child Relations and Parental Conflict in South Korea

Population Research and Policy Review - Research suggests that children who live with two biological married parents are less likely to exhibit behavioral problems than children who do not. While...     

Motherhood status and union formation in Moshi, Tanzania 2002-2003

Age at first union is increasing throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa at the same time that not all couples are waiting for marriage before their first sexual intercourse. We assessed the effect of a premarital first birth on entrance into a first union in an urban area in East Africa -- Moshi, Tanzania. The data come from the Moshi Infertility Survey of 2002-2003. Women who spent less than a year in single motherhood were significantly more likely than childless women to enter into a first union, although the magnitude of this relationship was weaker for more recent cohorts. Women who had been single mothers for 5 or more years (about two-thirds of women with a premarital birth) were significantly less likely than women without children to enter into a first union.     

A Half Century of Mate Preferences: The Cultural Evolution of Values

The qualities people believe are important in selecting a marriage partner afford one domain for assessing human values. We examined the cultural evolution of these values over more than half a century. Building on existing data on mate preferences collected in 1939 (N= 628 ), 1956 (N= 120 ), 1967 (N= 566 ), and 1977 (N= 316 ), we collected data using the same instrument in 1984/1985 (N= 1,496 ) and in 1996 (N= 607 ) at geographically diverse locations. Several changes in values were documented across the 57‐year span. Both sexes increased the importance they attach to physical attractiveness in a mate. Both sexes, but especially men, increased the importance they attach to mates with good financial prospects. Domestic skills in a partner plummeted in importance for men. Mutual attraction and love climbed in importance for both sexes. The sexes converged in the ordering of the importance of different mate qualities, showing maximum similarity in 1996. Discussion speculates about causes of the cultural evolution of values.     

Measuring sterility from incomplete birth histories

In this article, methods are presented for measuring the level and age pattern of sterility from incomplete birth histories, such as those that can be collected in demographic surveys of women who may not yet have reached the end of their reproductive span. The characteristics of the methods are examined in a simulation study that demonstrates that estimates based on information about fertility subsequent to a given age are more robust to variations in reproductive determinants, sample size, and sampling variation than the other measures, which include the frequently employed length of the open birth interval. In an illustrative analysis of World Fertility Survey data from sub-Saharan Africa, sterility was found to be high in Cameroon, intermediate in Lesotho and Sudan, and low in Ghana and Kenya relative to an English historical population.     

Qualitative psychological autopsy interviews on suicide in post-conflict Northern Uganda: the participants' perceptions

Participants' perceptions of psychological autopsy interviews were investigated in post-conflict Northern Uganda. Data were derived out of their responses in the debriefing session after the formal interviews. These responses were subjected to Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The majority of the participants were positive about the interview as reflected in the two broad themes: positivation of the situation through the possibility of helping others and opportunity for personal development through sharing. To some few participants the interview aroused guilt, self-reproach, and anger and reactivated painful memories. As regards suicide postvention, the findings implied that not much has been done to help the bereaved by suicide in this region, and few resources for such efforts are currently available. However, the bereaved are ready to contribute toward the fight against suicide in their communities. Hence, it is argued that a community-based mental health and Primary Health Care approaches should be encouraged in this context.     

AIDS victims and heterosexual attitudes

This study reports on the development of a Likert scale that measures attitudes toward AIDS victims (ATAV) in five phases. A total of 582 undergraduate (means age = 24.2) completed the survey forms, 249 males and 333 females. The results for Phase 1 yielded a scale with high part-whole correlations (.62-.90, p less than .001), corrected split-half reliability (.87, p less than .001), and alpha coefficients (.91, p less than .001). The following phases yielded significant correlations between the ATAV scale and attitudes toward homosexuals (.60, p less than .001), homosexual parenting (.64, p less than .001), other minority groups (.33, .37, p less than .001), capital punishment (-.27 p less than .001), and sexually liberal attitudes (.22, .37, .23, p, less than .025). Attitudes toward homosexuals are the central component in attitudes toward AIDS victims. A varimax rotated factor analysis of the ATAV yielded one primary factor accounting for 85.9% of the variance.     

Infant Emotionality: Observational Methods and the Validity of Maternal Reports

This study was designed to improve the observational measurement of emotionality, and to test factors that influence the validity of maternal reports. More than 150 infants were visited at home with their mothers, two thirds of whom were depressed. These visits yielded 4 different observational measures of positive and negative emotionality at both 6 and 9 months. These were standard assessments (based on LabTab), naturalistic interactions, atypical reactions to the standard assessments, and the still‐face procedure. Atypical reactions were consistently related to traditional measures of emotionality. Responses to the still‐face procedure also generally cohered with the other measures. Aggregation improved agreement between mothers and observers. Depressed mothers' reports of negative emotionality were less accurate at 6 months than those of nondepressed mothers. Parenting experience appeared to be associated with greater maternal accuracy. Taken together the findings provide some support for both sides of the controversy surrounding the validity of maternal reports.     

Evaluating U.S. Medical Schools' Efforts to Educate Faculty Researchers on Research Integrity and Research Misconduct Policies and Procedures

This paper examines how well U.S. medical school institutions are doing to promote research integrity. It is an important question to ask in order to determine whether there are sufficient and adequate protections in place to protect the U.S. Public Health Service's (PHS) resources devoted to medical research. This paper focuses on 5,100 medical school researchers' knowledge of what constitutes research misconduct as well as their willingness to report it to the research integrity officer (RIO) and educate their Ph.D. trainees. We learned that 5.6% of researchers could correctly distinguish seven or more of the nine scenarios that depicted likely research misconduct, as defined by the PHS regulations, from scenarios describing other ethical issues. Instead, researchers had expansive definitions and often inappropriately identified infractions such as conflicts of interest, Institutional Review Board (IRB) violations, and other breaches in ethical standards to be research misconduct. In addition, researchers who correctly identified four instances of likely research misconduct in the test items were highly unlikely to report their observations to a RIO. Researchers also provided insight on the factors they believe influence their decision making process of whether to report research misconduct. In addition, this paper also reports on the guidance that faculty said they provided their trainees on research misconduct issues. We conclude with a discussion and recommendations on what institutional leaders might consider doing in order to enhance their research integrity efforts and protect their institution's reputation.     

Establishing turf grass increases soil greenhouse gas emissions in peri-urban environments

Urbanization is becoming increasingly important in terms of climate change and ecosystem functionality worldwide. We are only beginning to understand how the processes of urbanization influence ecosystem dynamics and how peri-urban environments contribute to climate change. Brisbane in South East Queensland (SEQ) currently has the most extensive urban sprawl of all Australian cities. This leads to substantial land use changes in urban and peri-urban environments and the subsequent gaseous emissions from soils are to date neglected for IPCC climate change estimations. This research examines how land use change effects methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O) fluxes from peri-urban soils and consequently influences the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of rural ecosystems in agricultural use undergoing urbanization. Therefore, manual and fully automated static chamber measurements determined soil gas fluxes over a full year and an intensive sampling campaign of 80 days after land use change. Turf grass, as the major peri-urban land cover, increased the GWP by 415 kg CO₂-e ha^?1 over the first 80 days after conversion from a well-established pasture. This results principally from increased daily average N₂O emissions of 0.5 g N₂O ha^?1 d^?1 from the pasture to 18.3 g N₂O ha^?1 d^?1 from the turf grass due to fertilizer application during conversion. Compared to the native dry sclerophyll eucalypt forest, turf grass establishment increases the GWP by another 30 kg CO₂-e ha^?1. The results presented in this study clearly indicate the substantial impact of urbanization on soil-atmosphere gas exchange in form of non-CO₂ greenhouse gas emissions particularly after turf grass establishment.