Knowledge and Attitudes of University Health Service Clients about Genital Herpes: Implications for Patient Education and Counseling

Abstract

Genital herpes virus infection is an important target for health education efforts because of its apparently rising incidence in the college student population and because it can have potentially serious psychological as well as medical consequences. In order to better understand the health education and counseling needs of students, the present study surveyed knowledge and attitudes about genital herpes of 190 university students using a gynecology clinic and of 161 students using a general medical clinic. The students were found to have a high degree of familiarity with the disease, its cause, and mode of transmission, but tended to view the consequences of the disease as more severe than is actually warranted by the common medical complications. There was some degree of misinformation about prevention and treatment of the disease and some negative attitudes about patients suffering from it, but the survey respondents endorsed a high level of responsible behavior with regard to the disease and expressed some optimism about the possibility of adapting to it. These findings suggest specific misconceptions about genital herpes that might be amenable to a mass education approach. They also suggest the need for a counseling program that centers around reasonable reassurance and appropriately positive psychological and medical management for newly diagnosed patients.     

Modeling large electorates with Fourier series, with applications to Nash equilibria in proximity and directional models of spatial competition

 In this paper we introduce harmonic analysis (Fourier series) as a tool for characterizing the existence of Nash equilibria in two-dimensional spatial majority rule voting games with large electorates. We apply our methods both to traditional proximity models and to directional models. In the latter voters exhibit preferences over directions rather than over alternatives, per se. A directional equilibrium can be characterized as a Condorcet direction, in analogy to the Condorcet (majority) winner in the usual voting models, i.e., a direction which is preferred by a majority to (or at least is not beaten by) any other direction. We provide a parallel treatment of the total median condition for equilibrium under proximity voting and equilibrium conditions for directional voting that shows that the former result is in terms of a strict equality (a knife-edge result very unlikely to hold) while the latter is in terms of an inequality which is relatively easy to satisfy. For the Matthews [3] directional model and a variant of the Rabinowitz and Macdonald [7] directional model, we present a sufficiency condition for the existence of a Condorcet directional vector in terms of the odd-numbered components of the Fourier series representing the density distribution of the voter points. We interpret our theoretical results by looking at real-world voter distributions and direction fields among voter points derived from U.S. and Norwegian survey data. Received: 7 July 1995 / Accepted: 14 May 1996     

Palestinian Society

Conclusion Several observations are in order. One is that despite a considerable divergence in the points of view, the authors of the works under review share a single language and methodology, that of the modern social sciences, and a common commitment to understanding Palestinian society. There is a significant overlap of subject matter as well. It is not always possible to infer the personal sympathies of the author from his or her essay.Since the illusion of a Palestinian military threat to Israel has been dispelled, these volumes' lasting contribution is the findings they provide on the political economy of Palestinian society. The Palestinian's future on the West Bank and in Gaza will depend on the differential impact of these territories' incorporation into the Israeli economy on specific groups within the society, as well as by Israeli policies of control, and the will and capacity of the Palestinians to resist them. The work of Tamari, Graham-Brown, Taqqu, Lustick, Migdal, and others contained in the volumes under review here provides a necessary perspective from which to observe events. To the extent that the complex dispute between Israelis and Palestinians turns on the land question, the specific ways in which land is alienated and peasant populations are transformed into workers has a major bearing on ultimate outcomes.Consideration of Palestinian society raises significant theoretical issues. These include the impact upon agricultural societies of their integration into the capitalist world market, the role of the state in the rule of minorities, the study of elite factionalism, and the development of national consciousness. The findings of the works on Palestinian society suggest the following hypotheses: that agricultural populations respond to the market in differential ways, which can work against the emergence of both nationalist and working class consciousness; that the policies adopted by states confronted with highly politicized minorities can have significant impacts; that factionalism is a product of state policy choices (and not foreordained), and that national consciousness does not diminish (and may increase) with economic incorporation. The recent literature on Palestinian society thus has strategic contributions to make to the social sciences.Finally, in studying Palestinian society, we come to grips more directly than we might in a less highly conflicted subject with the problematic epistemological grounds on which the social sciences are erected. Here we can see (somewhat more clearly than normally) the ways in which the questions asked by social scientists derive from their positions in the political and intellectual fields of their societies. This may be a salutary and sobering experience.

---

     

A Critical Analysis of Australian Television Coverage of Election Opinion Polls

Much recent attention has focused on the nature and possibleeffects of media coverage of opinion polls. Accordingly, thisarticle reports the results of a detailed critical analysisof Victorian television news coverage of election opinion pollsduring the 1980 Australian federal election campaign. Five aspectsof the coverage were analyzed: its extent, focus, completeness,accuracy, and critical balance. The results of the study indicatethat the coverage was seriously, perhaps irredeemably, flawed     

PUBLIC OPINION AND THE PANAMA CANAL TREATIES OF 1977

In April 1978, after nine months of national debate, the Senatenarrowly ratified new Panama Canal treaties. Voting was apparentlyinfluenced by numerous opinion polls, which were seen as showingincreased support for the treaties. But several analysts haveshown that this interpretation was erroneous; public opinionconsistently opposed the treaties. This study attempts to determinewhat went wrong. It begins by arraying and analyzing all nationalpoll results on the topic in order to establish a coherent pictureof public opinion. It then identifies a number of polling andreporting practices which may have contributed to the misinterpretationof the findings. The study concludes with recommendations foralleviating these problems.     

IMPOSED HEALTH INSURANCE IN MONOPOLISTIC MARKETS: A THEORETICAL ANALYSIS

The impact of public health insurance on price and output of medical care is analyzed within the context of monopolistic markets for health services. An important result, which is not obtained in competitive markets, is that indemnity benefits cause smaller price increases than service benefits, both directly and indirectly through the effect of benefit structure on the production of information. Various types of price regulation are considered, including limitation to "usual, customary, and prevailing" levels, a frequently used technique. With a simple dynamic model this type of regulation is shown to cause chronic price inflation.     

Tissue Dosimetry, Pharmacokinetic Modeling, and Interspecies Scaling Factors

Interspecies scaling factors (ISFs) are numbers used to adjust the potency factor (for example, the q1* for carcinogens or reference doses for compounds eliciting other toxic endpoints) determined in experimental animals to account for expected differences in potency between test animals and people. ISFs have been developed for both cancer and non-cancer risk assessments in response to a common issue: toxicologists often determine adverse effects of chemicals in test animals and then they, or more commonly risk assessors and risk managers, have to draw inferences about what these observations mean for the human population. This perspective briefly reviews the development of ISFs and their applications in health risk assessments over the past 20 years, examining the impact of pharmacokinetic principles in altering current perceptions of the ISFs applied in these health risk assessments, and assessing future directions in applying both pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic principles for developing ISFs.