The evidence base for social support interventions in child and family practice: Emerging issues for research and practice

This paper examines the evidence base for interventions which seek to enhance social support resources for families with children at risk of adverse developmental outcomes. Substantive and methodological issues related to the implementation of social support interventions are discussed and a research agenda for the development, testing and evaluation of such interventions is presented.     

Modelling period fertility: Schooling and intervals following a birth in Eastern Africa

We describe a regression-based approach to the modelling of age-, order-, and duration-specific period fertility, using retrospective survey data. The approach produces results that are free of selection biases and can be used to study differential fertility. It is applied to Demographic and Health Survey data for Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe to investigate differential trends in fertility by education. Parity progression fell and the intervals following each birth lengthened between the 1970s and 2000s in all four countries. Fertility fell most among women with secondary education. In contrast to other world regions, postponement of successive births for extended periods accounted for much of the initial drop in fertility in these African countries. However, family size limitation by women with secondary education in Ethiopia and Kenya and longer birth spacing in Zimbabwe also played significant roles. Thus, birth control is being adopted in Eastern Africa in response to diverse changes in fertility preferences.     

Coopetition in coworking-spaces: value creation and appropriation tensions in an entrepreneurial space

Coopetition has the potential to improve entrepreneurship and innovation. It will be prevalent in coworking-spaces building a growing field for individual and corporate entrepreneurship. The individuals’ physical closeness in the professional and social space of the coworking-space eases multifaceted transfers of explicit and implicit knowledge, stimulating creation, transfer, overhaul, and implementation of entrepreneurial ideas. While entrepreneurs in these coworking-spaces collaborate on sharing knowledge and resources and on finding creative ideas from which can breed new venture concepts, they simultaneously compete on the appropriation of values. Thus, entrepreneurs in coworking-spaces face coopetitive tensions of creating and appropriating the values. Based  on  interview data and secondary sources, this paper explains four different prototype institutions of coworking-spaces: the corporate coworking-space, the open corporate coworking-space, the consultancy coworking-space, and the independent coworking-space. Study explains different tensions of value creation and appropriation that occur within the coopetition in the different forms of coworking-spaces.     

International Remittances and Private Schooling: Evidence from Kerala,India

This study investigates the impact of international remittances on private school enrolment in Kerala. Using data from the 2010 Kerala Migration Survey and employing an instrumental variable (IV‐Probit) approach to address the endogeneity of migration, we found that remittances have a positive and significant effect on private school enrolment. After disaggregating the sample into different heterogeneous groups, we found that remittances have greater effect on boys, children residing in rural areas, and those belonging to socially advantageous groups and from higher wealth quintile. Children from lower wealth quintile and belonging to socially disadvantageous groups are least affected by migration and remittances.     

Separating Spheres? Diverging Trends in Youth's Gender Attitudes About Work and Family

The authors investigated whether trends in attitudes about gender were consistent with the gender stall primarily occurring in the family domain and examined potential mechanisms associated with changing gender norms. Using data from Monitoring the Future surveys (1976–2015), the authors assessed three components of trends in youth's beliefs about gender: the marketplace, the family, and mothers' employment. Findings showed continued increases in egalitarianism from 1976 through the mid‐1990s across all three dimensions. Thereafter, support for egalitarianism in the public sphere plateaued at high levels, rising support for mothers' employment persisted at a slower pace, and conventional ideology about gender in families returned. The changing demographic composition of American high school students did not account for the gender attitude trends. Youth's mothers' employment and increased education were related to increased egalitarianism. Changes in population averages of mothers' employment and educational attainment were only weakly associated with increases in egalitarian attitudes.     

Child labour measurement: Whom should we ask?

Funding decisions to support vulnerable children are tied to child labour statistics, hence the importance of an accurate measurement. The author analyses whether the type of respondent plays an important role in explaining variations in child labour statistics. Using data from two sites in Tanzania, the analysis shows that “whom we ask” matters considerably when estimating the prevalence of child labour. The results suggest that prevalence increases by approximately 35 to 65 per cent when using child self‐reports rather than proxy reports. This bias affects 14 to 31 per cent of the sample, depending on the indicator. Discrepancies decrease as the child ages and increase if proxy attitudes demonstrate opposition to child labour.     

Effects of a Mindfulness Task on Women’s Sexual Response

Mindfulness-based interventions are effective at improving symptoms of sexual dysfunction in women. The mechanisms by which mindfulness improves sexual function are less clear. The main objective of our study was to investigate the impact of a mindfulness task on sexual response in women. Forty-one women (mean age = 27.2, SD = 5.6) participated in two laboratory sessions that each included two erotic films and one attention task that were presented in counterbalanced order. Both attention tasks consisted of a six-minute audio recording of either a modified body scan, focusing on genital arousal sensations (mindfulness condition), or a visualization exercise. Subjective and genital sexual arousal were measured continuously during stimulus presentation. The mindfulness task led to greater subjective and lower genital arousal. The agreement of subjective and genital sexual arousal (i.e., concordance) was greater in the mindfulness condition. Trait mindfulness was related to lower sexual arousal but also greater sexual concordance in women. Mindfulness-based interventions that encourage women to focus on physical arousal sensations in the here and now may be associated with women’s improved sexual function by enhancing feelings of sexual arousal during sexual activity and by increasing concordance between subjective and genital sexual arousal.     

What Theories and Methods From Relationship Research Can Contribute to Sex Research

Sexual and relationship satisfaction tend to be closely linked in the context of romantic relationships. Understanding how sexual processes influence relationships and how aspects of the relationship influence a couple’s sex life can provide insight into the maintenance of sexual desire and satisfaction over time. In this article, we review how theories and methods that form the foundation for relationship research have made—and will continue to make—sexuality research a stronger, more theoretical, and methodologically sophisticated science. We discuss the key theories that have been used to advance our understanding of who is more likely to be sexually satisfied in relationships, when sex is most satisfying, and how couples can have more satisfying sex lives and relationships. We then provide an overview of dyadic and repeated-measures designs and demonstrate how the use of these types of research methods allows relationship and sexuality researchers to answer novel and nuanced questions about how romantic partners influence each other, as well as how sexual processes unfold in couples’ daily lives and over time. Throughout the review, we highlight what we see as fruitful directions for future research at the intersection of sexuality and relationships.     

Maintaining Sexual Desire in Long-Term Relationships: A Systematic Review and Conceptual Model

The most universally experienced sexual response is sexual desire. Though research on this topic has increased in recent years, low and high desire are still problematized in clinical settings and the broader culture. However, despite knowledge that sexual desire ebbs and flows both within and between individuals, and that problems with sexual desire are strongly linked to problems with relationships, there is a critical gap in understanding the factors that contribute to maintaining sexual desire in the context of relationships. This article offers a systematic review of the literature to provide researchers, educators, clinicians, and the broader public with an overview and a conceptual model of nonclinical sexual desire in long-term relationships. First, we systematically identified peer-reviewed, English-language articles that focused on the maintenance of sexual desire in the context of nonclinical romantic relationships. Second, we reviewed a total of 64 articles that met inclusion criteria and synthesized them into factors using a socioecological framework categorized as individual, interpersonal, and societal in nature. These findings are used to build a conceptual model of maintaining sexual desire in long-term relationships. Finally, we discuss the limitations of the existing research and suggest clear directions for future research.     

Do Associations Between Pleasure Ratings and Condom Use During Penile–Vaginal Intercourse Vary by Relationship Type?: A Study of Canadian University Students

Research suggests the relationship between pleasure and condom use during penile–vaginal intercourse (PVI) is associated with relationship status. This online study examined pleasure ratings and condom use at last PVI, stratifying by partner type, among a national sample of Canadian university students. Participants were 715 undergraduates (60.7% women, 39.3% men) who reported on their most recent sexual experience. Condom use decreased with level of relationship commitment, whereas ratings of pleasure increased. Overall, participants were more likely to rate their most recent PVI as Very pleasurable when condoms were not used compared to when condoms were used. However, when stratified by partner type, these differences largely disappeared. For women, with one exception, there were no differences in pleasure between PVI with and without condoms across most partner-type categories. Women in committed dating relationships were more likely to report their last PVI as very pleasurable if condoms were not used than women in these same relationships who had used condoms. Across relationship categories, men who did and did not use condoms did not differ in terms of their pleasure ratings. The results of this study suggest relationship context should be taken into account when assessing condom use experiences.