Help-Seeking for Sexual Difficulties and the Potential Role of Interactive Digital Interventions: Findings From the Third British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles

Sexual difficulties are common and can negatively impact health and well-being. A wide range of support is available, but there are multiple barriers to accessing help. Interactive digital interventions (IDIs) for sexual difficulties have the potential to provide a convenient, wide-reaching, and cost-effective source of support, but little is known about who might use them. We explored the potential reach of IDIs by assessing the prevalence of help-seeking among people with distressing sexual difficulties, including who seeks which sources of help. Data came from sexually active men and women, ages 16 to 74, participating in Britain’s third National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal-3) (N = 11,637). Help/advice was sought by less than half of those with distressing sexual difficulties, and help-seeking was associated with younger age in women but not men. The most popular sources of support were family doctor (47.5% to 54.8%), Internet (22.0% to 25.6%), and family/friend (20.7% to 41.8%), with older participants (≥ 35), particularly men, preferring to seek help from a family doctor, and younger participants (<35) preferring to seek help from the Internet or family/friend. Despite a paucity of good digital support sites for sexual function, the Internet is a common source of help. As Internet access continues to increase, so too does the potential for well-designed IDIs to support those with sexual difficulties.     

Editors' Introduction

For the professional middle class in information industries, “working from home” is an increasingly common feature of the employment landscape, resulting from the affordability and portability of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The phrase invokes a sense of freedom from the banality of the traditional office, offering flexibility in both working hours and location when other commitments prevail. In recent debates in Australian politics, working from home is also offered as an empowered choice for women who seek to combine paid work and childcare duties, thereby consecrating a preferable version of (post)feminist subjectivity suited to neoliberal economics and ideologies. This paper shows how these subjectivities have been represented in recent ICT advertising for two purposes: firstly, to highlight the role of mainstream media in normalising preferred uses of new media technology for work purposes; and secondly, to note how this process contributes to wider discourses limiting the aspirations of middle-class feminist politics to an individual level. In doing so, the paper seeks to question the ethical horizon of new media advertising as well as the feminist and labour politics upon which its appeal relies.     

拒绝职场边缘化:模型与检验

初入职场,大学生员工希望被组织接纳而不是被边缘化。本文试图建模表现在如同"政治舞台"的职场中员工努力避免被边缘化的过程。为达到以上研究目标,执行了两项研究:预研究在国务院11个部委机关的公务员群体中收集数据,开发了职场边缘化的测量工具;主研究对16家制造型企业中的343个员工、662个同事及343个直接领导的配对数据进行实证分析,发现员工工作绩效、公民行为以及与上司的私人关系(Guanxi)与职场边缘化之间呈负向关联。相对而言,在政治氛围淡漠的企业中,上司关系与职场边缘化之间的负向关联更强。     

Responding to the recovery audit contractor program: a system-wide approach

After a long development period, the national Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) program is now fully operational Read about how one large hospital system structured its RAC team and management process.     

Small Group Predictions on an Uncertain Outcome: The Effect of Nondiagnostic Information

Research has established that exposure to a combination of diagnostic (i.e., relevant) and nondiagnostic (i.e., irrelevant) information results in predictions that are more regressive than predictions based on diagnostic information (Hackenbrack, 1992; Hoffman and Patton, 1997). This phenomenon has been labeled the dilution effect (e.g., Tetlock and Boettger, 1989) and has been documented when individuals make predictions. This study tests for the dilution effect when small groups make predictions, and examines the effect of using a procedure designed to reduce the dilution effect. Results indicate that group predictions are influenced by nondiagnostic information in the same manner as are individual predictions, and allowing participants to rate the diagnosticity of information prior to making predictions does not reduce the dilution effect.     

Friendship and Gender Differences in Task and Social Interpretations of Peer Collaborative Problem Solving

Investigations of peer collaboration often vary task or social aspects of collaborative contexts and assume that these aspects of the context are experienced similarly by individuals. The present study examined how social aspects (group friendship and gender) of a peer collaborative context related to differences in adolescents' interpretations of task and social problems that occurred while collaborating with peers in a naturalistic classroom setting. Eighth-grade adolescents ( N = 82, 44 females) worked with peers on a six-week Spanish project at school. Adolescents chose to work primarily with same-gender peers and friends. Task and social interpretations of problems were assessed twice. The salience of task problems decreased over time; social problems became somewhat more salient. Social problems were less salient to females than to males. Greater group friendship was associated with the lesser salience of task problems early in the project. The salience of social problems, gender, and friendship were important for understanding performance on the project. The value of considering the context of peer collaborative problem solving from individuals' perspectives is discussed.     

Comparison of the EU T25 Single Point Estimate Method with Benchmark Dose Response Modeling for Estimating Potency of Carcinogens

The T25 single-point estimate method of evaluating the carcinogenic potency of a chemical, which is currently used by the European Union (EU) and is denoted the EU approach, is based on the selection of a single dose in a chronic bioassay with an incidence rate that is significantly higher than the background rate. The T25 is determined from that single point by a linear extrapolation or interpolation to the chronic dose (in mg/kg/day), at which a 25% increase in the incidence of the specified tumor type is expected, corrected for the background rate. Another method used to obtain a carcinogenic potency value based on a 25% increase in incidence above the background rate is the estimation of a T25 derived from a benchmark dose (BMD) response model fit to the chronic bioassay data for the specified tumor type. A comparison was made between these two methods using 276 chronic bioassays conducted by the National Toxicology Program. In each of the 2-year bioassays, a tumor type was selected based on statistical and biological significance, and both EU T25 and BMD T25 estimates were determined for that end point. In addition, simulations were done using underlying cumulative probability distributions to examine the effect of dose spacing, the number of animals per dose group, the possibility of a dose threshold, and variation in the background incidence rates on the EU T25 and BMD estimates. The simulations showed that in the majority of cases the EU T25 method underestimated the true T25 dose and overestimated the carcinogenic potency. The BMD estimate is generally less biased and has less variation about the true T25 value than the EU estimate.     

Rural/urban differentials in demographic processes: The Central Asian states

While the populations of the Central Asian successor states are extremely heterogeneous on many indicators, the issue of rural or urban residence is consistently important in terms of differentials in population growth, socio-economic status and public health. In this paper I focus on rural population trends in Kazakhstan, Kyrghyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. I explore the relatively disadvantaged position of rural inhabitants as well as regional variations within the rural population. The differentials in fertility and mortality rates and the large projected population increases indicate that future policy interventions and data collection efforts should incorporate a specific focus on rural areas.     

Marriage and childbirth as factors in dropping out from school: an analysis of DHS data from sub-Saharan Africa

Leaving school prematurely is often claimed to be among the most negative consequences of early marriage and pregnancy for girls in less developed countries. However, an analysis of the relative frequency with which these events actually occur or are named as reasons for leaving school reveals that, at least in the case of francophone Africa, they explain no more than 20 per cent of dropouts. To the extent that demographic events trump school or family factors as determinants of school-leaving, our data indicate that it is union formation--defined by the DHS as first marriage or cohabitation--rather than childbirth that is more likely to have this effect. 'Schoolgirl pregnancy' typically accounts for only between 5 and 10 per cent of girls' departures from school. Furthermore, the risks of leaving school because of pregnancy or marriage have declined over time with the decline in rates of early marriage and childbearing.