Falls recall��limitations of the most used inclusion criteria

The demographic changes in the industrialized countries place new and important challenges to health care providers, politicians, and modern society. Many older persons wish to maintain independence and mobility as long as possible. Falls and their consequences constitute a serious threat to these most important goals of the older person, and they do occur frequently in the community-dwelling cohort of people aged 65 years and older. This article discusses the limitations of one of the most important independent risk factors to predict future falls: a positive fall history. Several issues arise with assessing fall history in an older population. Firstly, several studies indicated that self-reported recall of falls may lead to underreporting and that older persons perceive a fall differently compared to health professionals and researchers. Secondly, falls can be reported retrospectively or prospectively. In general, a prospective design is favored by researchers with “daily fall calendar” considered the golden standard. Thirdly, different research has been conducted to find the most reliable time frame for self-recorded falls in the past. Self-reported recall of falls by older persons may lead to underreporting due to older persons not recognizing (the severity of) a fall or not remembering a fall and due to different interpretation of “a fall”. Data on fall history should be expanded with questions about trips, slips, and self-perceived problems in balance, gait or mobility and preferably fear of falling or a quick physical assessment. In general, a prospective design is favored by researchers with “daily fall calendar” considered the golden standard. Computerized interactive response technology may be of additional value to prospectively monitoring falls in older persons. The best time frame for obtaining self-reported falls seems a period of 12 months, ruling out any seasonal influence.     

Medical tourism in the Caribbean

Although travel for medical reasons has a long history, it has more recently evolved from a cottage industry to a worldwide enterprise. A number of countries are positioning themselves to attract visitors who are willing to travel to obtain health services that are more accessible, less expensive, or more available than in their countries of origin. This has in turn given rise to medical packages that combine tourism with health. Several Caribbean nations - including Cuba, Barbados, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico - hope to expand their revenues in this new market. Each country has selected specific service niches and promotes its services accordingly. While Cuba has been promoting its services to other countries for several decades, medical tourism is just beginning in the other islands. Ultimately, these nations' economic success will hinge on their comparative advantage vis-à-vis other options, while their success in terms of improving their own health care depends on the extent to which the services for tourists are also available to the islands' populations.     

Economic hardship and depression across the life course: the impact of welfare state regimes

Previous research in the United States suggests that depression related to economic hardship decreases with age. We test whether this pattern can be generalized to other developed nations. Based on data from 23 countries in the European Social Survey (2006--2007), multilevel analyses show that the moderating role of age depends on the socio-political context. While the hardship--depression link is not significantly different across the life course in Nordic and Bismarckian regimes, the hardship--depression link increases with age in Southern and Eastern European countries and decreases with age in strength in Anglo-Saxon welfare states. Our findings suggest that welfare state regimes play a significant role in attenuating, boosting, or even reversing the health effects of social experiences such as economic hardship on aging. Health knowledge gained through research that ignores the socio-political context may be limited in terms of generalization.     

The psychological measurement of childhood sexual development in Western societies: methodological challenges

Children can display sexual behavior or have sexual experiences. Different psychological research methods are available for studying these kinds of behaviors and feelings, such as interviewing or observing children (direct methods), asking adolescents or adults to retrospectively report their childhood memories or using intermediaries to observe children (indirect methods). Each of these methods has its own advantages and limitations. Based on a review of the literature, this work answers three questions: (a) What research methods are generally used to study childhood sexual development? (b) What insight do these methods give into the sexual behaviors or feelings of children? and (c) What are the advantages and limitations of each of these research methods in this research domain? Almost all studies on childhood sexual behavior and feelings use either observational or retrospective methods. In both types of studies, only behavior that is considered to be sexual from an adult perspective is reported. To gain insight into the child's perspective, one has to rely on methods other than observations or retrospective research, such as interviews with children that match their developmental limitations and competencies.     

Boat race: rhythm and the possibility of collective performance

Many sociologists have observed the close connection between coordination and rhythm. In order to accomplish a communal task, participants need to develop a common rhythm if they are to coordinate their actions. Indeed, the harder the collective task, the more critical - but difficult - it is for participants to develop a common rhythm in order to synchronize their actions. Rhythm is thus an important and recurrent feature of social performance. This article explores the ways in which participants try to generate common rhythm in order to execute collective performances. To this end, the paper takes a single sporting example. It examines a decisive period in the 153rd Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race in 2007 to examine how a small social group, the Cambridge crew, struggled to create and maintain a rhythm in order to maximize their rowing performance.     

Reflexive audiovisual methodology: The emergence of “minority practices” among pluriactive stock farmers

This paper proposes a new way for sociology, through both methodology and theory, to understand the reality of social groups and their “minority practices.” It is based on an experiment that concerns a very specific category of agriculturalists called “pluriactive” stock farmers. These stock farmers, who engage in raising livestock part-time alongside another full-time job, form a minority category within the agricultural profession.We address the question of how to analyze and represent the practices of this kind of “social” group or category through participatory filmmaking. Our research shows that beyond the collaborative production and screening of the film done in close cooperation with the stock farmers themselves, a second unexpected dynamic emerged around the sequences that were cut in the final editing round. These cut sequences reveal hesitations and disagreements among the breeders about their own practices in relation to their work and to animal welfare. These hesitations are not considered weaknesses, but rather as proof of the emergence of this group of stock farmers as “practitioners”. In the realm of intervention research, the participatory film-making process is attractive because it enables the farmers to raise new questions on their own, discuss them, and eventually resolve them, while also encouraging the researchers to identify the conditions that must be met in order to achieve this fragile linkage. This process and its outcomes force us to revisit the theoretical question of what constitutes a pragmatic definition of a “practice.”     

Increasing the Revenue of Self‐Storage Warehouses by Facility Design

Self‐storage is a booming industry. Both private customers and companies can rent temporary space from such facilities. The design of self‐storage warehouses differs from other facility designs in its focus on revenue maximization. A major question is how to design self‐storage facilities to fit market segments and accommodate volatile demand to maximize revenue. Customers that cannot be accommodated with a space size of their choice can be either rejected or upscaled to a larger space. Based on data of 54 warehouses in America, Europe, and Asia, we propose a new facility design approach with models for three different cases: an overflow customer rejection model and two models with customer upscale possibilities, one with reservation and another without reservation. We solve the models for several real warehouse cases, and our results show that the existing self‐storage warehouses can be redesigned to generate larger revenues for all cases. Finally, we show that the upscaling policy without reservation generally outperforms the upscaling policy with reservation.     

论民生视角下的农民政治认同建设

由于农民的民生需求突出、基层民主的局限和国家民生政策的作用等原因,民生成为当前影响农民政治认同的主要因素。受民生因素的影响,农民政治认同表现出强调物质利益、规则意识、公正观念等重要特征,并呈现出鲜明的层次差异性。这些特征既反映了农民的生存压力和国家民生政策的执行偏差,也反映了农民对贯彻落实好民生政策的强烈要求,因此落实国家民生政策就成为增强农民政治认同的关键。要使国家的支农、惠农政策得到贯彻落实,当前主要应该做好限制县乡党政部门的自利性、建立合理的资金拨付机制、消除乡村裙带关系的消极影响三项工作。     

Editorial collaborators

Editorial collaborators     

Options and sequences: Europe’s demographic patterns

It is argued in this lecture that Ryder’s approach to the study of the role of the cohort in social change is too narrow. Cohorts do not only permit change; they actively create the options succeeding cohorts have to choose from. Through its own choice from amongst the options perceived, each cohort both limits and enriches the options of the next. It is through the choice people make with regard to life shaping demographic events that they group themselves into ‘mental’ cohorts. The course of demographic events in Western Europe in the postwar period is difficult to understand if one does not appreciate that these events form a sequence. A sequence generated by the quite specific option(s) each ‘mental’ cohort, through its own choice, created for the next. Current demographic patterns in Europe have to be interpreted in terms of differences in social and cultural heritage of the countries concerned, and in terms of the differences in options perceived and selected.