Lactation and fertility in Rural Bangladesh

Summary Analysis of data from various phases of a study of post-partum amenorrhoea in Bangladesh illustrated good aggregate consistency of response on menstrual status, but less individual consistency on duration of post-partum amenorrhoea. Using life table techniques, the median duration of amenorrhoea was calculated as 19.9 months for women with births between February and September 1974. There were substantial seasonal variations in duration, with the median decreasing from 21.5 months for women with February births to 16.9 months for those with September births. By contrast, the median duration of post-partum amenorrhoea varies by only two months for women in the lowest and highest quartiles of weight and weight for height. The seasonal pattern was similar for all weight groups.     

Perceived morbidity, utilisation of health services and factors affecting it in a rural area

A survey of perceived morbidity was carried out in rural population in eight villages and four wards of Saoner town, covering a total population of 8,876. The nature of illness was assessed by weekly visits to the families. History regarding treatment taken for disease and its source was taken. The overall incidence of perceived morbidity was 176.35 spells of sickness per 1000 population per month. Health care agency was contacted for 36.7 per cent spells of sickness. Utilisation of health services was found to be affected significantly by factors like age (chi 2 = 138.36), literacy (chi 2 = 14.123), type of occupation (chi 2 = 433.74), nature of illness (chi 2 = 83.578) and accessibility of health services. A health behaviour model of the population has also been discussed in this paper.     

Support for National Health Insurance: Intercohort Differentials

Past research has demonstrated that the majority of the Americanpublic favor some form of national health insurance (NHI), butthe sources of this support have not been clearly identified.This paper shows that support for NHI follows party lines, withDemocrats most favoring it, followed by Independents and Republicans.The young, women, blacks, the less educated (among others) alsofavor NHI more than others, but it is apparently not a "personalneed" for the insurance that prompts this support. Lack of adequateinsurance coverage, dissatisfaction with current care, or pooraccess to health care are not associated with support for NHI.Instead, cognizance of the larger socioeconomic issues (particularlyrising society-wide health care costs), in addition to politicalidentification, generates support for NHI.     

Effects of Questionnaire Length on Response Quality

A response tendency resulting from the length of a group-administeredquestionnaire instrument is described. Respondents answeringitems that are included in large sets toward the later partsof a long questionnaire are more likely to give identical answersto most or all of the items, compared with those respondingto items in smaller sets or in shorter questionnaires. Whilemeans and intercorrelations among items within the same setare affected by this "straight-line" response pattern, intercorrelationsbetween items from different sets are much less affected byit. These investigations are based on comparisons between along questionnaire, administered to 1,050 high school seniorsin nine high schools across the nation in 1978, and five shorterquestionnaires administered to large national samples of highschool seniors.     

Regression of area mortality rates on explanatory variables: what weighting is appropriate?

"One can often gain insight into the aetiology of a disease by relating mortality rates in different areas to explanatory variables. Multiple regression techniques are usually employed, but unweighted least squares may be inappropriate if the areas vary in population size. Also, a fully weighted regression, with weights inversely proportional to binomial sampling variances, is usually too extreme. This paper proposes an intermediate solution via maximum likelihood which takes account of three sources of variation in death rates: sampling error, explanatory variables and unexplained differences between areas. The method is also adapted for logit (death rates), standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) and log (SMRs). Two [United Kingdom] examples are presented."