Adolescent Women's Recommendations for Enhanced Parent-Adolescent Communication About Sexual Behavior

Family communication about adolescent sexual health and behavior promotes adolescent health and family connectedness. However, few studies seek the perspective of adolescents regarding their recommended strategies for family communication. Findings of a survey of female adolescent family planning patients (n = 249) indicated adolescent recommendations for better family communication included treat teen as an equal, 63%; increase parental knowledge about lifestyle and peer pressures, 61%, and improve parental listening skills, 61%. There were no statistically significant differences according to age, pregnancy history, or school enrollment status for suggested strategies for improved communication with parents. Sexually active adolescent daughters expressed interest in maintaining family connectedness and support with increased time for family activities as well as increased quality and quantity of dialogue between the adolescent girl and her parents.     

Assessing progress against the size of the problem

To summarize articles with the depth and range of the nine in this collection is difficult. What the articles demonstrate as a whole is that a great deal of activity is under way in the arena of connecting child welfare and substance abuse services, with a growing body of documentation accompanying it. The articles bode good news in that they indicate a broadening awareness of the interconnectedness of these issues, and they highlight a number of creative and effective programs that have been established to mitigate the problems. Tremendous challenges-from funding to outcomes research-however, are also made evident in this body of work.     

Myths and Misconceptions About University Student Volunteering: Development and Perpetuation

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This paper examines myths and misconceptions about university student volunteering. Our study explored the experiences of...     

Decomposition of the difference between two rates with hierarchical factors

A decomposition method for the difference between two rates when data are classified by two factors, one of which may be considered as a more direct factor than the other for the event under consideration, is presented in this paper. The two factors are treated as hierarchical and thus this method is conceptually different from the decomposition methods of Kitagawa (1955) and Das Gupta (1978), in which two factors are treated as symmetrical. Our method is shown to be a balanced version of the Cho-Retherford (1973) decomposition method. Analyses of neonatal mortality rates using our method are presented as an example.     

Catastrophe Risk Models for Evaluating Disaster Risk Reduction Investments in Developing Countries

Major natural disasters in recent years have had high human and economic costs, and triggered record high postdisaster relief from governments and international donors. Given the current economic situation worldwide, selecting the most effective disaster risk reduction (DRR) measures is critical. This is especially the case for low‐ and middle‐income countries, which have suffered disproportionally more economic and human losses from disasters. This article discusses a methodology that makes use of advanced probabilistic catastrophe models to estimate benefits of DRR measures. We apply such newly developed models to generate estimates for hurricane risk on residential structures on the island of St. Lucia, and earthquake risk on residential structures in Istanbul, Turkey, as two illustrative case studies. The costs and economic benefits for selected risk reduction measures are estimated taking account of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. We conclude by emphasizing the advantages and challenges of catastrophe model‐based cost‐benefit analyses for DRR in developing countries.     

On the dynamics of populations with two age groups

By restricting the number of age groups to two and by introducing continued fractions, the dynamics of populations with deterministically changing vital rates are completely specified at all times. Explicit expressions for the sequence of the product of population projection matrices are given. From these, relative age distribution and reproductive values to any desired accuracy are obtained as functions of the vital rates. Thus, the results given in this paper are stronger than any existing weak ergodic theorems.     

Advertising, Individual Consumption Levels, and the Natural Environment, 1900–2000

One central determinant of global environmental change is the continued expansion of personal consumption levels. In order to more fully understand the relationship between consumption and environmental degradation, the determinants of consumption must first be identified. Prior research in this area has focused on economic factors, primarily personal disposable income and population demographic characteristics. The role of cultural factors, including advertising, has been actively mentioned in theoretical analyses of the driving forces of individual consumption. However, this has not been empirically tested. In this article, we conduct an analysis of the impact of advertising on consumption levels in the United States. We start with a theoretical discussion of the literature on advertising and consumption. Based on this literature, we establish three hypotheses regarding the relationship between advertising expenditure and personal consumption. These hypotheses are then tested using time series analysis over the time period 1900–2000. The results show that advertising significantly impacts overall consumption and that these effects vary by type of consumption. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of this analysis for further research into the driving forces of global environmental change.