Cancer premiums and latency effects: A risk tradeoff approach for valuing reductions in fatal cancer risks

Many studies estimate individuals’ values for avoiding fatality risks; however, most value-of-statistical-life studies focus on accident-related deaths. Consequently, little is known about preferences for avoiding other fatal risks, such as cancer. Cancer may engender strong feelings of dread, leading to a “cancer premium,” but cancer latency periods may have the opposite effect. Using a national survey, we elicit relative preferences for avoiding fatal cancer and auto-accident risks. We find strong preferences for avoiding cancer risks. With a 5-year latency, they are valued roughly three times greater than immediate accident risks, declining to 50% greater for a 25-year latency.

Victimization,Aggression, and Other Problem Behaviors: Trajectories of Change Within and Across Middle School Grades

This study examined trajectories of victimization and problem behaviors within and across three grades of middle school. Participants were 2,166 adolescents from three urban middle schools in the United States who completed measures of victimization, physical and relational aggression, substance use, and delinquent behavior. Latent curve analyses modeled changes in each construct across 12 waves collected every 3 months. In each case, the best‐fitting model required separate linear slopes to represent changes within each grade and a factor representing decreases in the summers. Positive cross‐construct correlations were found for intercepts, linear slopes, and measures within waves. The findings suggest strong associations among victimization and problem behaviors, and individual differences in their patterns of change both within and across grades.     

Where Do Population Policies Come From? Copying in African Fertility and Refugee Policies

Population Research and Policy Review - Population policies aim to alter demographic behavior, but their impact can depend on their origins. We analyze these origins using an innovative...     

Advance care planning by unmarried women of different sexual orientations: the importance of social support

We examined social support as a facilitator of advance care planning in unmarried women of different sexual orientations. Survey participants consisted of 215 women, 90 who reported a preference for partnering with women (WPW) and 125 for partnering with men (WPM). Our findings indicate that the association between social support and advance care planning was mixed. Specifically, social support had no significant impact on executing a will for either WPW or WPM. Among WPW, naming a health-care proxy was associated with reporting a partner who provided social support. For WPM, having a partner for social support was not associated with naming a health-care proxy. These insights help in the understanding of women's advance care planning.     

Counting women's labour: a reanalysis of children's net production using Cain's data from a Bangladeshi village

The economic contribution of children to their parents' households has long interested demographers because of its potential to influence fertility levels. Valuing children's labour in pre-industrial economies, however, is inherently difficult. The same is true of women's labour, a crucial component of any analysis of net production. Here we use Mead Cain's seminal study (Population and Development Review 3(3): 201-227, 1977) of children's economic contributions in a Bangladeshi village to illustrate these points. We combine Cain's data on landless women's and men's hours of work with data on the efficiency per hour of work from other pre-industrial settings (Mueller, Population and Development: The Search for Selective Interventions. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 98-153, 1976; Kramer, Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, 1998). When women's labour is incorporated, we find that the Bangladeshi children begin to produce as much as they consume by ages 10 (girls) or 11 (boys). Despite these productive contributions, neither women nor men 'pay' for their cumulative consumption until their early 20s. We believe our methods could be usefully applied in other contexts.     

Pathways from origins to destinations: Stability and change in the roles of cognition,private schools and educational attainment

While much attention has been devoted to measuring levels of social mobility over time, less attention has been given to the possibility of changing pathways to social mobility. This paper examines pathways from social origins to socio-economic destinations in midlife for two British cohorts, born in 1958 and 1970 respectively, using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). We address the roles of cognitive attainment, private schooling and educational attainment in mediating the link between social origins and destinations. Have these mechanisms become more or less important over time, in a context of structural change in the state schooling system and educational expansion? We find that private schools displayed greater academic selectivity and an increased link to high levels of educational attainment for the younger cohort. Essentially, private schools adapted to changing circumstances, becoming more academically selective and less socially selective, and more focused on educational credentials. Childhood social origins were less strongly linked to childhood cognitive scores in the younger cohort, but cognitive scores were also more weakly linked to educational attainment for this cohort. We also find a decreased association between social origins and educational attainment for the younger cohort. While the finding that educational inequalities weakened over this time period is positive, the lack of a corresponding reduction in the overall link between social origins and destinations suggests that reducing educational inequalities was not sufficient to increase social mobility when accompanied by countervailing changes in the role of private schools.     

RCR Online Course: Build an Online Course to Augment RCR Training Using Evidenced-Based Learning Theory

This article demonstrates how to apply evidenced-based instructional design principles to develop a supplemental, online Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) course. The supplement RCR course may serve to appropriately augment the National Institutes of Health (NIH) required RCR training. The way to ensure that an online RCR course is effective is to incorporate evidence-based learning theories into the development of the course content. This article specifically demonstrates application of Bloom's taxonomy and Gagne's Nine Instructional Events to a research misconduct course. At the conclusion, the reader will be able to apply evidence-based learning theories to the development of any online course.     

Parents' supportive reactions to sexual orientation disclosure associated with better health: results from a population-based survey of LGB adults in Massachusetts

This study investigated associations between coming out to parents, experiences of parental support, and self-reported health behaviors and conditions among a population-based sample of LGB individuals using data collected via the 2002 Massachusetts Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS; N = 177). We explored the following two hypotheses: 1) Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals who had never disclosed their sexual orientation to a parent would report higher levels of risk behaviors and poorer health conditions than those who had come out; and 2) among LGB respondents who had come out to their parents, the individuals whose parents had reacted unsupportively would report higher levels of risk behaviors and poorer health conditions than those who had come out to parents who were supportive. Approximately two thirds of gay and bisexual (GB) males and lesbian and bisexual (LB) females reported receiving adequate social and emotional support from the parent to whom they first disclosed their sexual orientation. Among LB females, no disclosure of sexual orientation to a parent was associated with significantly elevated levels of past-month illicit drug use (AOR 12.16, 95% CI 2.87-51.54), fair or poor self-reported health status (AOR 5.71, 95% CI 1.45-22.51), and >15 days of depression in the past month (AOR 5.95, 95% CI 1.78-19.90), controlling for potential confounders. However, nondisclosure to a parent by GB males was not associated with greater odds of any of the health indicators assessed. Among GB males, those with unsupportive parents were significantly more likely to report current binge drinking (AOR 6.94, 95% CI 1.70-28.35) and >15 days depression in the past month (AOR 6.08, 95% CI 1.15-32.15), and among LB females, those with unsupportive parents were significantly more likely to report lifetime illicit drug use (AOR 11.43, 95% CI 2.50-52.30), and >15 days depression in the past month (AOR 5.51, 95% CI 1.36-22.36). We conclude that coming out may be associated with better health for LB women, and that parents who react nonsupportively when their children disclose LGB sexual orientation may contribute to children's increased odds of depression and hazardous substance use.