Understanding Mothers’ Engagement with Antenatal Parent Education Services: A Critical Analysis of a local Sure Start Service

This article discusses the issue of engagement in antenatal parent education for women living in deprived areas. The article focuses on the findings of a local evaluation of a Sure Start parent education programme designed to improve parental engagement with antenatal services. The article discusses the re‐orientation of this service, the impact on service users and the implications for professionals. Evidence suggests that this service has been beneficial for those involved and resulted in improved levels of engagement, with 9 per cent of eligible women attending prenatal sessions prior to the introduction of the Sure Start local programme's parent education service and 34 per cent of eligible women attending after its introduction. Despite this, the service only reaches a small proportion of the eligible population. The article also discusses the issue of professional resistance from mainstream services as an unintended consequence of the introduction of the Sure Start local programme and considers the implications of this for effective delivery. Copyright © 2006 The Author(s).     

Structuring institutional analysis for urban ecosystems: A key to sustainable urban forest management

A decline in urban forest structure and function in the United States jeopardizes the current focus on developing sustainable cities. A number of social dilemmas—for example, free-rider problems—restrict the sustainable production of ecosystem services and the stock of urban trees from which they flow. However, institutions, or the rules, norms, and strategies that affect human decision-making, resolve many such social dilemmas, and thus, institutional analysis is imperative for understanding urban forest management outcomes. Unfortunately, we find that the definition of institutions varies greatly across and within disciplines, and conceptual frameworks in urban forest management and urban ecosystems research often embed institutions as minor variables. Given the significance of institutional analysis to understanding sustainable rural resource management, this paper attempts to bring clarity to defining, conceptually framing, and operationally analyzing institutions in urban settings with a specific focus on sustainable urban forest management. We conclude that urban ecologists and urban forest management researchers could benefit from applying a working definition of institutions that uniquely defines rules, norms, and strategies, by recognizing the nested nature of operational, collective choice, and constitutional institutions, and by applying the Institutional Analysis and Development framework for analysis of urban social-ecological systems (SESs). Such work promises to spur the desired policy-based research agenda of urban forestry and urban ecology and provide cross-disciplinary fertilization of institutional analysis between rural SESs and urban ecosystems.     

Comments on “Sums,Products, and Ratios of Non-Central Beta Variables” by Saralees Nadarajah

Brief comments on “Sums, Products, and Ratios of Non-Central Beta Variables” by Saralees Nadarajah, which appeared in Communications in Statistics – Theory and Methods, Volume 34, Issue 1, pp. 89–100.     

No Evidence for Treating Friends’ Children Like Kin in Canadian Androphilic Men

Given that same-sex sexual orientation is associated with lower reproductive success, how have genes associated with male androphilia (i.e., male sexual attraction/arousal to adult men) persisted over evolutionary time? The Kin Selection Hypothesis proposes that by directing valuable resources toward kin, androphilic men may enhance their indirect fitness and thereby offset the fitness costs of not reproducing directly. Support for this hypothesis has been garnered from studies conducted in Samoa, but not from studies of “gay” men in industrialized cultures (i.e., Canada, Japan, United Kingdom, and the United States). This cross-cultural difference may be due to relatively greater geographic and familial disconnect experienced by androphilic “gay” men in industrialized cultures. This article reasons that in more industrialized settings, friends’ children may serve as non-adaptive proxies for nieces and nephews. Hence, it was predicted that Canadian androphilic men would exhibit elevated altruistic tendencies toward their friends’ children compared with gynephilic men and androphilic women. This prediction was not supported. However, in line with previous research, the results indicated that androphilic women are more likely to behave altruistically toward friends’ children compared to gynephilic men. Other possible explanations for the existing cross-cultural discrepancy in altruistic tendencies toward nieces and nephews are discussed.     

Mental Health Treatment Barriers Among Racial/Ethnic Minority Versus White Young Adults 6 Months After Intake at a College Counseling Center

Abstract

Objective: This study examined mental health treatment barriers following intake at a counseling center among racially/ethnically diverse college students. Methods: College students (N = 122) seen for intake at a college counseling center in 2012–2013 completed self-reports of depressive symptoms, suicidal ideation, and mental health treatment barriers 6 months later. Results: Racial/ethnic minority students less often reported previous mental health treatment and treatment after being seen at the counseling center, compared with white students. They also endorsed more treatment barriers—most commonly, financial concerns and lack of time—and more often endorsed stigma-related concerns. Treatment barriers were associated with not following through with counseling center recommendations and with greater depressive symptom severity but not with suicidal ideation during follow-up. Conclusions: Improving mental health treatment seeking among racial/ethnic minority college students should involve decreasing treatment barriers, improving access to affordable options, providing flexible scheduling or time-limited options, and decreasing stigma.,     

Attack of the Butterfly Spirits: The Impact of Movement Framing by Community Garden Preservation Activists

This study of the community garden preservation movement on the Lower East Side of New York examines the role of movement framing by activists in their struggle to save hundreds of gardens from destruction. In repeated confrontations with the Giuliani administration, gardeners successfully de-routinized the process of urban redevelopment by portraying the loss of a garden as an unimaginable violation against themselves, and the city. This process of re-framing urban development helped activists to compensate for their disempowered political status, and was instrumental in forcing the Giuliani administration to negotiate to save the gardens. Focusing on framing by movement activists demonstrates the purposive and strategic character of neighborhood identity. Emphasizing the strategy of neighborhood identities is a useful corrective to the many studies of community movements that emphasize their emergence from a relational, presumably non-strategic, local reality.     

Sexual assault and alcohol use: exploring the self-medication hypothesis

Though a link between sexual victimization and alcohol use has been well documented, the mechanisms underlying this relationship remain unclear. The current study used path analysis to examine the role of self-reported levels of psychological distress and the function of alcohol use as indirect pathways between adult sexual assault and alcohol use. Participants were 318 undergraduate female victims and nonvictims of adult sexual assault. Results showed that a history of sexual assault was associated with increased psychological distress, which in turn contributed to alcohol use via negative reinforcement. Taken together, these findings provided support for the hypothesis that women who have been sexually assaulted consume alcohol, in part, to self-medicate. The implications for future research are discussed.     

Ergonomics analyses of five joineries located in Florianópolis-SC, using the LEST Method

Considering the goal of Ergonomic Work Analysis to establish, from the point of view of workers, safe, healthy, comfortable and efficient environments, this study propose to analyze the work situation of machine operators at five joineries from Florianópolis-SC. For this, it was applied the LEST Method to evaluate the task made by the operators, considering the physical, cognitive and organizational work environment. As results, it was identified the main ergonomics problems of these workstations, presenting an ergonomic diagnosis and their implications on health and safety of workers. As result, it was concluded that the main ergonomics problems at joineries are related with noise, with constant load of weight and with the postures taken. Besides these problems, others were diagnosed, for example, the pressure for workers to comply strictly the task stipulated and also the poor training and capacity of workers.     

Are young cohorts of women delaying first birth in Mexico?

In the last decades, female permanent sterilisation became the most used method of contraception in Mexico. During this time, the demand for pills, condoms and other short-term contraceptives fell consistently. The shift in the demand for contraceptives raises concerns among demographers that the timing of children may remain unchanged regardless of observed reductions in period fertility rates. This paper assesses such ideas in the context of the timing of a first child using duration models as the main analysis tool. Findings suggest that young cohorts of women are effectively delaying first birth relative to the experience of older generations.