Multilevel Factors Influencing Maternal Stress During the First Three Years

This prospective study applies family stress theory to the influence of personal, child, and familial factors on a mother's parenting stress during the first 3 years of her infant's life. Participants included 134 mothers and their infants at ages 1, 6, 15, 24, and 36 months from one site of a multisite, longitudinal study. Mother's personality was most predictive of parenting stress cross‐sectionally and longitudinally. Intimacy with partner reduced parenting stress early in the infant's life and at 36 months, whereas general social support was more important in the second year. Child temperament was influential at 1 and 36 months. Counterintuitively, mothers who were more satisfied with work or school choices were more likely to be chronically stressed. Implications are discussed.     

Combined physical and psychosexual therapy for provoked vestibulodynia-an evaluation of a multidisciplinary treatment model

Our objective is to standardize and evaluate a combined physical and psychosexual therapy for women with provoked vestibulodynia. Twenty-four patients underwent the treatment program. Sessions with a psychosexual counselor included issues on sexual functioning, psychological adjustments, and stress elimination. Exercises for mucosal desensitization and reestablishment of pelvic floor function were supervised by a midwife. A questionnaire was used for evaluation at a minimum of 6 months after the treatment. The mean number of appointments to the counselor was 12 (4-24) and 15 (9-26) to the midwife during a mean period of 53 weeks (19-92). Nineteen women (79%) considered themselves to be cured or having greatly improved. Intercourse frequency was increased (p = 0.001) and coital pain was reduced (p = 0.02) after completing the treatment. Improvements in sexual functioning and coping strategies for psychological impairment and stress were reported. Women with provoked vestibulodynia benefit from a multidisciplinary treatment model including desensitization of the vestibular mucosa, rehabilitation of the pelvic floor, and psychosexual adjustments.     

The Impact of Democracy on Well-being

Can governance impact directly on well-being? In this paper we examine subjective well-being using data for a cross section of countries from the World Values data set. We find that regional democratic satisfaction impacts on both individual happiness and life satisfaction. However, the impact is less evident for women, rich people and for those in rich countries. The fact that the governance variable analysis is based on regional differences in democratic satisfaction reminds us that governance and indeed happiness often differs within countries as well as between them. The use of regional satisfaction in this manner helps overcome endogeneity problems which would be present if we were to use individual democratic satisfaction. Other significant determinants of happiness include settlement size, marital status, income, unemployment and being part of a linguistic minority/majority grouping.     

A spatial analysis of population dynamics and climate change in Africa: potential vulnerability hot spots emerge where precipitation declines and demographic pressures coincide

We present an integrative measure of exposure and sensitivity components of vulnerability to climatic and demographic change for the African continent in order to identify “hot spots” of high potential population vulnerability. Getis-Ord Gi* spatial clustering analyses reveal statistically significant locations of spatio-temporal precipitation decline coinciding with high population density and increase. Statistically significant areas are evident, particularly across central, southern, and eastern Africa. The highly populated Lake Victoria basin emerges as a particularly salient hot spot. People located in the regions highlighted in this analysis suffer exceptionally high exposure to negative climate change impacts (as populations increase on lands with decreasing rainfall). Results may help inform further hot spot mapping and related research on demographic vulnerabilities to climate change. Results may also inform more suitable geographical targeting of policy interventions across the continent.     

Social Capital and Subjective Wellbeing in Europe: A New Approach on Social Capital

This paper aims to analyze the relationship between the various dimensions of social capital and subjective wellbeing. Data used in this study come from the fourth wave of the European Social Survey and different measures of wellbeing are used to take account of both the cognitive and affective processes of individual wellbeing (i.e. life satisfaction, happiness, and subjective wellbeing). A factor analysis is performed to summarize information coming from a large set of variables into different components corresponding to each dimension of social capital (i.e. networks, norms, and trust). Among the results, we find that the impact of social capital on subjective wellbeing differ depending on the component of social capital which is under analysis. In particular, social networks, social trust and institutional trust are the components that show a higher correlation with subjective wellbeing. Furthermore, in addition to the positive effects of the individual variables, our results suggest that social capital at the aggregate level positively correlates with individual wellbeing, thus pointing to an external or environmental effect of social capital.     

Connectivity‐informed adaptive regularization for generalized outcomes

One of the challenging problems in neuroimaging is the principled incorporation of information from different imaging modalities. Data from each modality are frequently analyzed separately using, for instance, dimensionality reduction techniques, which result in a loss of mutual information. We propose a novel regularization method, generalized ridgified Partially Empirical Eigenvectors for Regression (griPEER), to estimate associations between the brain structure features and a scalar outcome within the generalized linear regression framework. griPEER improves the regression coefficient estimation by providing a principled approach to use external information from the structural brain connectivity. Specifically, we incorporate a penalty term, derived from the structural connectivity Laplacian matrix, in the penalized generalized linear regression. In this work, we address both theoretical and computational issues and demonstrate the robustness of our method despite incomplete information about the structural brain connectivity. In addition, we also provide a significance testing procedure for performing inference on the estimated coefficients. Finally, griPEER is evaluated both in extensive simulation studies and using clinical data to classify HIV+ and HIV? individuals.     

Mean square prediction error for long-memory processes

ARFIMA (p, d, q) processes. In particular we obtain the (asymptotic) mean square prediction error when the parameters of the process are either known or estimated in the cases both of correct and misspecified model. Some Monte Carlo experiments confirm the validity of the asymptotic results. Received: August 6, 1999; revised version: June 26, 2000     

Demographic Responses to Economic Recessions in Latin America Since 1900*

This paper explores the linkages between economic cycles and demographic processes in Latin America since 1900. We identify the mechanisms through which economic conditions have an impact on demographic outcomes and assess the demographic and socioeconomic consequences of the 1980s. Selected historical evidence is reviewed to illustrate the effects of economic cycles in Western Europe and, aided by an heuristic framework, tentative hypotheses are derived to interpret empirical evidence about the effects of the 1929 and 1980 depressions in selected Latin American countries. Results show that the demograhic consequences of the Great Depression were nontrivial. The analyses of demographic and socioeconomic responses of the post-1980 recession, however, reveal only weak linkages for some outcomes. We argue that the weak relationships may mask important transformations currently underway and conclude with a discussion of the implications for future research.     

The school experience of children in residential care: A multiple case study

Children in residential care are the out‐of‐home population group with the lowest rate of access to postsecondary education. Research aimed at understanding their situation within the school context suggests that besides learning progress and outcomes, subjective experiences should be taken into account. Qualitative research based on a multiple‐case study was designed and carried out in Spain with the aim of deepening the understanding of the individual school experiences of three children in residential care. Each case was analysed from the perspective of the child, the educators and the teachers. Semistructured, one‐to‐one interviews were carried out, and children's files were consulted. The results pointed to emotional distress and accumulated educational delay as common traits of the three children in the study. In shaping each particular school experience, the key themes identified included (1) individual characteristics, (2) the children's academic aspirations and strategies, (3) relationships with peers and teachers, (4) response experienced in school, (5) the complex structure of the residential centre, (6) the sense of belonging to the residential centre, (7) team work and (8) political action and investment in inclusive education.     

Regional Proximity Factor: An Advantage or a Disadvantage for Development?

This paper will focus on the assumption that in the actual globalized system, the role of the State is completely changed due to the new global players that are emerging as international and regional organizations. In this context, the regional proximity factor has acquired great importance, as the three case studies will demonstrate. For this purpose, we will introduce some alternative variables to facilitate the use of economic, political and social tools. Then, we will compare countries’ performances at the global and regional level and their social, economic and political results, in order to improve the utilization of the regional proximity factor as a tool to analyze the international relations dynamics and the innovative national approach to the international opening