Correlates of sport participation among community-dwelling elderly people in Germany: a cross-sectional study

The aims of this study were (1) to analyze the sport participation in a cohort of community-dwelling elderly people in Germany and (2) to evaluate associations between sport participation, sociodemographic factors, cardiovascular risk factors, and health status. In a monitored prospective cohort study (getABI), 6,880 unselected patients ≥65 years have been followed up by 344 general practitioners beginning in 2001. As part of the 5-year follow-up telephone interview, a sample of 1,376 participants was interviewed on sport participation. The association between participation in at least one sporting activity (“sporty” yes/no) during the past week (cycling) or month (other sports) and the following parameters was analyzed by logistic regression: age, sex, immigration background, education, waist circumference, smoking, self-reported health, history of vascular events, diabetes mellitus, lipometabolic disorder, and arterial hypertension. Analysis of activities (n = 1,304; median age 76 (70–94) years; 55.1% women) showed that 27.6% of participants rode a bicycle during the previous week. During the previous month, 24.9% of participants did gymnastics or strength training, and 16.5% swam. Of all participants, 53.8% were sporty. Multivariate analysis revealed several independent factors to be associated with being sporty (p < 0.05): younger age, male sex, higher education, nonsmoking, better self-reported health, and not being diagnosed with diabetes. Immigration background, waist circumference, history of vascular events, lipometabolic disorder, and hypertension did not show a statistically significant association (p ≥ 0.05) with sport participation. Summing up, the most frequently performed sporting activities were cycling, gymnastics or strength training, and swimming. Sport participation was associated with, for example, age and sex.     

Faire Formeln

The literature on fair division has experienced a renaissance recently. Novel mathematical procedures promising an envy-free, socially efficient solution to conflicts over nearly indivisible goods play a particularly prominent role. This article presents a comparative experimental evaluation of three procedures. We examine to what extent features of the subjects of the procedures influence the choice in favor of one of the three negotiation protocols and the results of the division. Our analysis of the behavior of 119 subjects shows that psychological factors only affect the procedural choice. Dominance-seeking individuals tend to opt for those procedures that promise a fairer outcome than the relatively crude divide-and-choose-mechanism. In contrast, the outcome of the bilateral negotiations is determined by the attributes of the procedures. The strong influence of psychological factors at the initial stage of the bargaining process nevertheless casts strong doubts on the practicability of the procedures, recommended by the normative strand of game-theoretic negotiation analysis. The further development of ”fair formulas” for the resolution of redistributive conflicts should not neglect that the warring parties have to agree with the philosophy of the proposed bargaining protocol.     

Income vulnerability of rural households in Bangladesh: a comparison between Bayesian and classical methods

The geographical location and the monsoon climate render Bangladesh highly vulnerable to natural hazards, deteriorating the country's socio-economic stability. This study is based on 500 randomly chosen rural households from the Household Income and Expenditure Survey [Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, Planning Division, Ministry of Planning, Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh, Dhaka, 2006]. The objectives are to estimate the income vulnerability of rural households and to check whether the Bayesian approaches (natural conjugate prior and non-informative prior estimates) have any superiority over the classical (feasible generalized least square (FGLS)) method. The poverty level, measured from the data, is 24%; whereas the vulnerability estimates, using FGLS, natural conjugate prior and non-informative prior are 31%, 69% and 82%, respectively. Vulnerability estimates by the Bayesian natural conjugate prior approach is found to have greater efficiency compared with FGLS and non-informative prior approaches.     

The asymptotic distribution of the partial attributable risk in cross-sectional studies

The partial attributable risk (PAR) has been introduced as a tool for partitioning the responsibility for causing an adverse event between various risk factors. It has arisen from epidemiology, but it is also a valid general risk allocation concept, which can, for example, be applied to data from customer satisfaction surveys. So far, a variance formula for the PAR has been missing so that the confidence intervals were not directly available. This paper provides the asymptotic normal distribution for the PAR determined from a cross-sectional study.     

Krisencoaching zur Bewältigung von beruflichen und privaten Krisensituationen

A crisis, which develops over a longer time, normally affects the professional and the private area in a negative and durable way. The article describes the process of a crisis coaching with a 38 years old self-employed woman, who experiences herself as completely unable to take action because of the difficult situation. The coaching intends to disentangle and to structure the different problems and to change the feelings of chaos and missing orientation into clarity and solution confidence. Besides it is necessary to support and to make success experiences possible.     

Unchaining the human of the humanities

This paper is a statement of concern about the problems of gender relations in the Western Cape Hostels which are seen as exaggerations of the general problems of gender in the wider South African society. The paper traces the historical reasons for the existence of hostels and draws heavily on the analysis by Elias of the legislative machinery utilized by various administrations to achieve this. An attempt is made to link gender relations to overall power relations in society. The particular class position of the men in the hostels seems to be significant in creating the specific content of the oppression experienced by women in these hostels.

The distinctions and the discrimination that hostel dwellers perceive in relation to township dwellers also impacts on their social behavioural patterns. The competition between urbanised women and the rural wives of hostel dwellers also places additional strains on the coping mechanism of these hostel dwellers. There is no pretence that this is anything but a preliminary survey, but it is meant to raise issues for further analysis and study.     

Eskalierendes Commitment bei Gruppenentscheidungen: Begünstigende Faktoren und Maßnahmen zur Reduktion

Escalating commitment to a course of action that is failing or incurring great costs is at least as prevalent in group decision making as in individual decisions. The first experiment studies factors influencing escalating commitment in groups in the context of social identity and dissonance theory. 36 3-person-groups had to decide about further investigations into a risky urban development project. The amount of investigations as an indicator of escalating commitment depended as well on social identity (strong vs. weak) as on the responsibility for initiating the project (high vs. low). The second study investigated the effectiveness of two interventions aimed at reducing escalating commitment: introduction of an advocatus diaboli and pre-information about psychological insights into escalating commitment. Further, interaction processes correlating with escalation or reduction of commitment are studied.     

Leistung, Unsicherbeit und Ohnmacht

The European research project SIREN analysed subjective perceptions and interpretations of changes in working life and their interrelation with political orientations. This article presents the results of the qualitative part of the research in Austria. The findings lead to a better understanding of the appeal to various population groups of rightwing populism and allow an empirical scrutiny of related theses. In particular, the contribution describes, by way of a typology, the variety of reasons as to why people take on authoritarian-exclusivist orientations and accept right-wing populist political propositions. The core question is how subjective perceptions and interpretations of socioeconomic change are transformed into political subjectivity.     

Credit and Ethnic Consumption Inequality in the Central Highlands of Vietnam

Social Indicators Research - Credit is commonly considered an important instrument to relieve financial capital constraints of poor households and subsequently to improve their welfare. However,...