Establishing evaluation indicators on the population knowledge,attitudes, practices and skills (KAPS) of secondary school teachers and students in the Philippines

This study was conducted to establish evaluation indicators to be used as a basis in evaluating the integration of the population education program (POPED) of the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sports within the Philippine 2ndary school curriculum. Questionnaires were used to determine existing knowledge, attitude, practice and skills (KAPS) of 3,136 high school students and 490 teachers, and data was analyzed for significant relationships between KAPS concerning POPED and demographic characteristics, exposure to population information sources, type of school attended, and exposure to POPED. KAPS and teaching method determine KAPS of the student. Data indicate that 81% of teachers had integrated POPED into the curriculum; only 19% of these had attended training on POPED. 93% utilized a lecture-discussion method in teaching POPED. Knowledge tests given to students and teachers were the same, covering demography, family size, age at marriage, responsible parenthood, use-effectiveness of methods, and population and development. Teachers performed better than students in questions on knowledge; on attitude statements teachers showed a slightly more favorable attitude towards POPED issues, most favorable to responsible parenthood, and least favorable to age at marriage. Mean preferred age at marriage (25) and mean desired number of children (3) was the same for teachers and students; teachers desired wider child spacing than students (3.3 years vs. 2.7 years). 84% of teachers used or wanted to use a family planning method, 76% of students felt they would use a method after marriage. Factors useful in predicting KAPS of teachers and students on POPED are: region of residence, age, sex, educational level, marital status, grade average, type of school, and exposure to various sources of POPED information.     

Relationship quality of gay men in closed or open relationships

This study compared gay men in monogamous ("closed") relationships (n = 98) and gay men in nonmonogamous ("open") relationships (n = 34). Partners in open relationships were living together significantly longer than partners in closed relationships. Partners in the two types of relationships did not differ in Psychological Adjustment. Controlling for length of time living together, partners in closed relationships reported higher Affiliation/Dependency, more Favorable Attitudes toward the Relationship, and lower Tension than partners in open relationships. Global relationship quality for both types of couples was related to many Attractions, many Barriers, and few Alternatives to the relationship; few beliefs regarding both Disagreement is Destructive and Partners Cannot Change; high Dyadic Attachment; high Shared Decision Making; and low Psychological Maladjustment. Partners in both types of relationships were more similar to each other than different from each other, especially on the variables of Relationship Quality, a belief in Partner Changeability, and Dyadic Attachment.     

Late fertility decline in the Netherlands: The influence of religious denomination,socioeconomic group and region

Both published results from the 1930, 1947, 1960 and 1971 censuses and unpublished ones are used to examine the influence that religious denomination, socio-economic group and region exerted on the fertility of marriages contracted between 1876 and 1959. A theory formulated by Lesthaeghe and Wilson on the relation between modes of production and secularization and the pace of fertility decline in Western Europe offers — in combination with van Heek's views on the special position of Dutch Roman Catholicism — a starting point for an explanation of why the fertility decline of Roman Catholics, self-employed and agricultural labourers lagged behind.     

Individual behavior under risk and under uncertainty: An experimental study

These experiments are concerned with individual behavior under risk and under uncertainty. By exploiting the isolation effect the experiments were able to offer to 134 subjects the possibility of actually gaining or losing an important sum of money.The experimental data show that under risk as well as under complete ignorance the subjects' attitudes towards prospects of gains and towards prospects of losses are totally unrelated.The data also show that when facing prospects of gains, the subjects generally take the exact probabilities of the events into account, whereas, when facing prospects of losses many of then have only recourse to coarser categories of plausibility, or even no longer use their information at all.     

The nature and scope of international migration data in Nigeria

Nigeria, the largest country in Western Africa, has been attracting migrants from neighboring countries for the past decade or so. Although most of the movement of African migrants has occurred outside the regulatory framework set up to control migration, it is important to know the main elements of the latter to understand the likely limitations of the data collection systems currently in operation. Sources of data on international migration include censuses, arrival and departure statistics, work and resident permits, and sample surveys. The author concludes that, with the exception of information on residence and work permits, the relationship between Nigeria's data sources and the laws regulating migration is weak. Arrival and departure statistics, in particular, are not designed to distinguish migrants from all other international travellers. Lacking the political will to modify the system in accordance with internationally accepted recommendations, the prospects for increasing the usefulness of available data are grim.     

Efforts to improve international migration statistics: a historical perspective

During the past decade, the international statistical community has made several efforts to develop standards for the definition, collection and publication of statistics on international migration. This article surveys the history of official initiatives to standardize international migration statistics by reviewing the recommendations of the International Statistical Institute, International Labor Organization, and the UN, and reports a recently proposed agenda for moving toward comparability among national statistical systems. Heightening awareness of the benefits of exchange and creating motivation to implement international standards requires a 3-pronged effort from the international statistical community. 1st, it is essential to continue discussion about the significance of improvement, specifically standardization, of international migration statistics. The move from theory to practice in this area requires ongoing focus by migration statisticians so that conformity to international standards itself becomes a criterion by which national statistical practices are examined and assessed. 2nd, the countries should be provided with technical documentation to support and facilitate the implementation of the recommended statistical systems. Documentation should be developed with an understanding that conformity to international standards for migration and travel statistics must be achieved within existing national statistical programs. 3rd, the call for statistical research in this area requires more efforts by the community of migration statisticians, beginning with the mobilization of bilateral and multilateral resources to undertake the preceding list of activities.     

EXPERIMENTS WITH THE MIDDLE RESPONSE ALTERNATIVE IN SURVEY QUESTIONS

A series of experiments shows (1) that people are significantlymore likely to select the middle response alternative on anissue when it is explicitly offered to them as part of the questionthan when it is omitted; (2) that merely mentioning that thereis a middle alternative, in the preface to the question, makesit more likely that respondents will select it, even thoughit is not offered to them as an explicit choice; (3) that theorder in which the middle alternative is presented in the question—inthe middle or last position—can make a significant differencein the results, but that a "recency bias" does not occur invariably,or consistently; and (4) that people who select a middle responsealternative when it is offered would not necessarily answerthe question in the same way as other respondents if forcedto choose sides on the issue.     

THE PERSISTENCE OF POLITICAL ATTITUDES AMONG 1960s CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS

A scattering of recent research has studied the current politicalbeliefs and attitudes of individuals identified as "1960s activists."In contrast to much of the treatment accorded such people inthe popular media, this research tends to find most of theseactivists currently liberal on a wide variety of political topics.However, in the absence of panel data, most of this researchhas had to assess any change in the activists' attitudes eitherby assuming the activists' past positions or by trusting totheir retrospective reports. In this paper we report on panel data from a large group ofwhite activists, mostly students, who spent the summer of 1965organizing voter registration drives in Southern black communities.In some specific areas on which the activists tended to holdrather extreme positions in 1965, they may have moderated by1984. However, their overall pattern of response on a wide varietyof issues is basically stable over this twenty-year period.     

USING DUAL FRAME DESIGNS TO REDUCE NONRESPONSE IN TELEPHONE SURVEYS

This article reports on the results of a series of experimentsdesigned to improve response rates for telephone surveys. Inthree surveys telephone households were selected using bothstandard random digit dialing (RDD) techniques and lists oftelephone numbers purchased from a commercial firm. In the RDDportions of the samples "cold contact" interviewing methodswere used; in the list frame portions advance letters were mailed,and the listed household name was used in the introduction.Experiments were designed to test the effects on response ratesof the advance letters and use of the listed household nameas a means of establishing rapport. The advance letters increasedresponse rates, but no difference could be attributed to theuse of names. The mixture of RDD and list sampling techniquesis also used to evaluate the effects of relative response rateson substantive findings. The cost consequences of these dualframe designs are assessed along a number of dimensions, andthe cost and error components of these designs are discussed.