The British Chinese Adoption Study: planning a study of lifecourse and outcomes

Follow-up studies of adopted adults are very important in contributing to the development of policy and practice when placing children in families following early adversity. This article describes the development of a methodology for one such study due to be completed in 2012. The files of 100 ethnic Chinese girls adopted from Hong Kong into British families in the 1960s were made available and originally analysed in 2007. As the files recorded data on the children's pre-adoption experiences including orphanage care, this provided an opportunity to explore a well-established hypothesis that early orphanage experience has an enduring effect on later outcomes. However, given this group of women are now in their 40s and 50s, identifying these outcomes may offer a much longer term perspective to that usually available in research studies of this kind. This article reports the findings from an analysis of the information held on these files. It then discusses the benefits and challenges of developing a robust methodology for a follow-up study that compares this group of women with other adopted and non-adopted groups of a similar age and in particular explores how post-adoption experiences across the lifespan might moderate the effects of early adversity. Following up this group of women into their middle years and using data available about their early experiences provides a unique opportunity to test and challenge existing theories about the long-term consequences of international adoption. This will help to inform both policy and direct social work practice when children are being considered and placed through international adoption today.     

The statistician's role in the prevention of missing data

Considerable statistical research has been performed in recent years to develop sophisticated statistical methods for handling missing data and dropouts in the analysis of clinical trial data. However, if statisticians and other study team members proactively set out at the trial initiation stage to assess the impact of missing data and investigate ways to reduce dropouts, there is considerable potential to improve the clarity and quality of trial results and also increase efficiency. This paper presents a Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) case study where statisticians led a project to reduce dropouts. The first step was to perform a pooled analysis of past HIV trials investigating which patient subgroups are more likely to drop out. The second step was to educate internal and external trial staff at all levels about the patient types more likely to dropout, and the impact this has on data quality and sample sizes required. The final step was to work collaboratively with clinical trial teams to create proactive plans regarding focused retention efforts, identifying ways to increase retention particularly in patients most at risk. It is acknowledged that identifying the specific impact of new patient retention efforts/tools is difficult because patient retention can be influenced by overall study design, investigational product tolerability profile, current standard of care and treatment access for the disease under study, which may vary over time. However, the implementation of new retention strategies and efforts within clinical trial teams attests to the influence of the analyses described in this case study. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Parents Beyond Oceans: A Social Group Work Curriculum for Chinese Immigrant Parents

ABSTRACT

Parents Beyond Oceans is a unique curriculum that was first implemented in 2011 as part of The Center for Family Life’s efforts to work with Chinese immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York. Drawing on best practices in social group work and culturally competent social work, the curriculum creates a space where parents can share and process their immigration stories and traumas. Pre- and posttesting show that after participating in the program, parents felt less isolated, more a part of community that treated them like equals, and more accepting of cultural differences in parenting practices.     

It makes you keep trying: Life review writing for older adults

Life review writing produces numerous psychosocial benefits for older adults, who are at risk for isolation and depression. This article shares findings from a study that examined the experiences of older adults participating in a life review writing group. The impact of gender composition on the group dynamic was also explored. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, this study explored the experiences of six women and one man who participated in a life review writing group. Six unifying themes emerged from the research findings: (1) legacy, (2) connecting with others, (3) reflection, (4) vitality, (5) structure of the group, and (6) gender dynamics. Implications for theory, practice, and research are discussed.     

Unrestricted consumption under a deterministic wealth and an Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process as a discount rate

We consider an individual or household endowed with an initial capital and an income, modeled as a linear function of time. Assuming that the discount rate evolves as an Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process, we target to find an unrestricted consumption strategy such that the value of the expected discounted consumption is maximized. Differently than in the case with restricted consumption rates, we can determine the optimal strategy and the value function.     

Hormones and history: the evolution and development of primate female sexuality

Sexual behavior is required for reproduction in internally fertilizing species but poses significant social and physical risks. Females in many nonprimate species have evolved physical and behavioral mechanisms restricting sexual behavior to when females are fertile. The same hormones producing female fertility also control these mechanisms, assuring that sex only occurs when reproduction is possible. In contrast to nonprimate mammals, hormones do not regulate the capacity to engage in sex in female anthropoid primates, uncoupling fertility and the physical capacity to mate. Instead, in primates, sexual motivation has become the primary coordinator between sexual behavior and fertility. This dependence upon psychological mechanisms to coordinate physiology with behavior is possibly unique to primates, including humans, and allows a variety of nonphysiological influences, particularly social context, to regulate sexual behavior. The independence between hormonal state and sexual behavior allows sex to be used for social purposes. This complex regulation of primate sexuality develops during adolescence, where female monkeys show both hormonally influenced sexual motivation and socially modulated sexual behavior. We present findings from rhesus monkeys illustrating how social context and hormonal state interact to modulate adolescent and adult sexuality. It is argued that this flexibility in sexual behavior, combined with a tight regulation of sexual motivational systems by reproductive hormones, allows sexual behavior to be used for nonreproductive purposes while still assuring its occurrence during periods of female fertility. The evolutionary pressures that produced such flexibility in sexual behavior remain puzzling, but may reflect the importance of sexuality to primate social attraction and cohesion.     

Sexually transmitted disease services at US colleges and universities

The authors' objectives in this study were to describe the proportion of schools providing and the percentage of students with access to HIV and sexually transmitted disease (STD) education, treatment, and prevention services at 2-year and 4-year US colleges and universities. The authors mailed self-administered questionnaires to a stratified random sample (n = 910) of the 2,755 US schools with an enrollment of more than 500 students; 736 (81%) returned the survey. Four hundred seventy-four schools (60%) had a health center, representing 73% of students. Schools with a health center or housing for students were more likely to provide STD education; 52% of the schools made condoms available to students. Sixty percent of schools with health centers could test for both Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae, but only 67% of these schools screened women for these infections. Although most schools provided some prevention education, access to prevention, testing, and education should be increased at schools where these services are possible but not available.     

Trends in author characteristics and diversity issues in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy from 1990 to 2000

In this article, we present an analysis and comparison of published articles in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy (JMFT) between 1990-1995 and 1996-2000. This study focused on trends in author gender, highest degree, and professional affiliation, and article content on issues of cultural and family diversity (race/ethnicity, class, religion/spirituality, gender, sexual orientation, and varied family forms). Key findings show a significant shift from 69% male first authors in 1990-1995 to equal gender representation in authorship for 1996-2000 articles, with a particular increase in female PhDs. Articles addressing diversity issues doubled from 15.6% of all 1990-1995 articles to 31% in 1996-2000. Of note, women authored 73% of the 1996-2000 articles on the wide range of diversity issues. Implications for the field are discussed.     

Race,sex, and alternate lifestyle choices

This article is a criticism of recent work on alternative life styles both because of its lack of attention to structural constraints on the ability of individuals to pursue personal growth as an important goal in their lives and for its young, affluent, white male bias in the choice of alternatives being researched. Using a sample of first year students at a large urban university, we examined a range of lifestyle choices by race and sex. Differences in the students' background included larger families, lower levels of education, and more frequent contacts with the extended family for Black students as compared to their white counterparts. We were not surprised to find that, of the four groups, white male students most approved the types of alternatives usually discussed by alternative lifestyles researchers; specifically, those concerning sexual freedom, since this is an area traditionally more open to white males. On other alternatives, they were the most conservative. The other three groups were more likely to want egalitarian marriages and to be willing to raise an out of wedlock child. More blacks than whites supported extended family networks and radical political action. Women were more in favor of egalitarian marriages than men.     

Parent – Adolescent Relationships and Girls’ Unhealthy Eating: Testing Reciprocal Effects

This longitudinal study tested the direction of associations between parent –adolescent relationships and adolescent girls’ unhealthy eating. Girls (N= 184) were seen at Time 1 (M age = 14.30 years), and then again 2 years later (Time 2; M age = 16.04 years). At both assessment periods, they completed measures that assessed their eating attitudes and behaviors, relationships with their parents, height, weight, and age of menarche. Whereas unhealthy family relationships have been hypothesized as a precursor to unhealthy eating attitudes and behaviors, it is also possible that increases in these behaviors contribute to more negative relationships within the family. Structural equation modeling was employed to simultaneously investigate the longitudinal influence of parent – adolescent relationships on girls’ unhealthy eating, and girls’ unhealthy eating on parent – adolescent relationships. The model was tested with the following controls: body mass (kg/m²), pubertal timing and age. A longitudinal direct effect was found for unhealthy eating on parent– adolescent relationships; however, no direct effect was found for parent– adolescent relationships on unhealthy eating over time. For middle– and late–adolescent girls, it appears that unhealthy eating behaviors and attitudes are predictive of less positive parent – adolescent relationships over time.