Work-related reproductive health: A review

This paper reviews the literature concerning the impact of work on reproductive health. In doing so, it offers a framework model for guiding future research and practice. Contemporary models of occupational health usually identify at least two pathways linking exposure to workplace hazards to their effects on health. The study of work-related reproductive health has been largely restricted to the effects of the more tangible and physical hazards of work mediated by a largely physico-chemical pathway. However, the growth of research into the psycho-physiological influence of stress on reproductive health provides a new direction for research in this domain with the exploration of a complementary pathway. The extension of this new approach into the investigation of the effects of work design and management on reproductive health represents a potentially important and further development.     

Gendered gambling domains and changes in Sweden

Pachinko is an ‘amusement arcade’ type machine that is popular throughout Japan, with an estimated 17.1 million ‘players’ providing an enormous annual revenue of 2.87 trillion yen (US$250 billion). It is simple and easy to play and has all the hallmarks and structural features of gaming machines worldwide. While academic discourses on the addictive potential of gaming machines are well developed, their application to pachinko is very limited. This is, perhaps, due to a number of factors. First, pachinko is portrayed as a game rather than as gambling in Japan, so that addiction issues are ignored or downplayed. Second, most accounts of ‘playing’ pachinko are journalistic rather than academic. Third, academics tend to focus on police corruption and organized crime rather than addiction. Here, we take the approach that pachinko represents ‘gambling by proxy’ and explore its addictive potential. We conclude that unless pachinko is recognized as a form of gambling, present changes in Japanese legislation will be of limited value in tackling addiction.     

A Longitudinal Analysis of Parenting Practices,Couple Satisfaction,and Child Behavior Problems

This longitudinal study examined the relationship between couple relationship satisfaction, parenting practices, parent depression, and child problem behaviors. The study participants (n = 148) were part of a larger experimental study that examined the effectiveness of a brief family-centered intervention, the Family Check-Up model. Regression analysis results indicated that our proposed model accounted for 38% of the variance in child problem behavior at Time 2, with child problem behavior and couple relationship satisfaction at child age 2 years each accounting for a significant portion of the variance in child problem behavior at age 3. Couple relationship satisfaction directly predicted child behavior problems over time. Clinical and research implications are discussed.     

Sexual Abuse,Spiritual Formation,and Psychoanalysis

Sexual abuse, from being an event in fearful silence, is now seen as a civil wrong or crime. Participants are stereotyped as perpetrators, victims, and enablers. These are the simplifications of an adversarial legal and insurance system. I suggest a more complex view. I was abused as a boy by the senior acolyte who was training me. The abuse taught me to lie and lose trust in adults and myself. For survival, I learned to invent provisional selves without understanding that these would become profound confusions of identity, sexuality, and purpose, lifelong sources of anxiety and depression. Through a recovery of my abandoned spiritual life and an intense psychoanalysis that together amounted to a metanoia, “a change of heart,” I was able to move past mere forgiveness to a reconciliation with myself and my history, and with my elderly father, who I saw as having failed to protect me years before.     

Complexity and Hybrid Public Administration—Theoretical and Empirical Challenges

This article provides a greater understanding of hybrid public administration. Different generations of public sector reforms have accentuated hybrid and complex features of public organizations, resulting in multiple-layer structural and cultural features. The article covers the following research questions: 1) how can we interpret the increasing tendency towards hybrid administration in terms of a transformative approach; 2) how is hybrid administration developing out of attempts to balance NPM and post-NPM?; and 3) how can we understand the major mechanisms producing hybridity in a modern reform? The case we focus on is the reform of the Norwegian welfare administration.     

The neglected dimension of well-being: Analyzing the development of “conversion efficiency” in Great Britain

In Amartya Sen's capability approach, policy makers can focus on different levels to influence the well-being of a society. A dimension that is usually neglected is improving individuals’ “conversion efficiency”, i.e. the efficiency with which individual resources are converted into well-being. To examine effects of policies on (the development of) this measure we suggest an intertemporal index of conversion efficiency estimated via a nonparametric order-m approach. The approach is exemplified using data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) from 1991 to 2006. We find that over this time horizon between 24% and 29% of individuals were efficient in their conversion of resources into well-being. Moreover, age and self-employment increase an individual's conversion efficiency, while living in London, being disabled and being separated, divorced or widowed all decrease conversion efficiency. Being married also decreases the conversion efficiency and we find few evidence of gender disparities in conversion efficiency.     

Optimal Forecasts from Markov Switching Models

We derive forecasts for Markov switching models that are optimal in the mean square forecast error (MSFE) sense by means of weighting observations. We provide analytic expressions of the weights conditional on the Markov states and conditional on state probabilities. This allows us to study the effect of uncertainty around states on forecasts. It emerges that, even in large samples, forecasting performance increases substantially when the construction of optimal weights takes uncertainty around states into account. Performance of the optimal weights is shown through simulations and an application to U.S. GNP, where using optimal weights leads to significant reductions in MSFE. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

Stress,coping and problem solving

Abstract

This paper outlines the developing consensus on the nature of stress. It offers a definition of stress as a psychological state derived from the person's appraisal of their ability to cope with the demands which are made of them. The paper then examines the concept of coping and explores its role in stress theory. It contrasts two different approaches to the study of coping: the classification of coping strategies, and the investigation of the process of coping—coping as ‘problem solving’. The paper focuses on the latter and in doing so it describes the nature of rational models of problem solving, considering their utility and application to stress management.     

Fecal incontinence during intercourse associated with a rectocele: A case Report

We present results of the first longitudinal study of long‐term outcome correlates of sexual experiences in early childhood (“sex play”). Two hundred children participated in the UCLA Family Lifestyles Project (FLS), beginning at birth to the current wave of data collection at ages 17–18. For most of the current analyses, data were complete for 96 of the young men and 88 of the young women. Participants were assessed on a wide range of adjustment variables devised for the FLS and the UCLA Adolescent Growth Study. Participation in early childhood sex play was determined by parent self‐reports at child's age three and age six. Forty‐eight percent of children were reported to have engaged in interactive sex play prior to age six. Using socioeconomic status, sex of participant, family attitudes toward sexuality, and family type (conventional two‐parent versus nonconventional) as controls, no significant long‐term associations were found between exposure to sex play and adjustment at ages 17–18. Sexual liberalism/conservativism in family of origin was significantly associated with sexual liberalism I conservativism at ages 17–18. These results converge on earlier cross‐sectional retrospective work, suggesting that the experience of childhood sex play in itself is unrelated to long‐term adjustment.     

Contextualizing sugar production in nineteenth‐century Queensland

Cane and Labour: The Political Economy of the Queensland Sugar Industry 1862–1905. ADRIAN GRAVES. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 1993. Pp. xxi + 282. £35. ISBN 0–7486–0117–1.