NGO Hybridisation as an Outcome of HIV Services Delivery in Global Fund-Supported Programmes in Ukraine

Ukraine has one of the world’s fastest growing HIV rates and was one of the largest recipients of funding from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GF). Doctoral research recently completed by the author investigates the conduct and practice of international and national nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) as Principal Recipients of GF grants in Ukraine from 2004 to 2012. The study aimed to understand how NGO-based services were implemented in the context of a state-owned health care system. An ethnographic enquiry including 50 participant interviews was conducted in three oblasts in Ukraine, and in its capital, Kyiv, between 2011 and 2013. The paper is based on a doctoral research and presents some of the findings that emerged from the analysis. The author argues that the accent on NGO-run services promoted by GF has rendered the original grass roots, community-based NGOs, to be undermined or replaced by ‘quasi’, hybrid NGOs created by health officials and AIDS centres head doctors. The outcome of such hybridization is a weakened civil society that is dependent on external funding and is unable to genuinely represent their communities.     

Assessing physical activity in inpatient rehabilitation—sensor-based validation of the PAIR

Increased physical activity is positively associated with better health in community-dwelling older persons. It is unclear whether physical activity also influences success of inpatient rehabilitation. For the assessment of physical activity in inpatient rehabilitation the Physical Activity in Inpatient Rehabilitation Assessment (PAIR), a short questionnaire based on five questions, was developed and preliminary validated. In this study, the PAIR was validated against a sensor-based physical activity measurement. Seventy functionally impaired and cognitively mostly intact patients of a German geriatric inpatient rehabilitation clinic who had undergone hip surgery (n?=?62 women, median age?=?83 years) participated. Physical activity was measured using the PAIR and a sensor-based activity monitor (Physilog ®; BioAGM, CH). Assessments were conducted at admission (T1) and 2 weeks later (T2) during the rehabilitation process. To assess concurrent and predictive validity, Spearman correlations and linear regression models were calculated using sensor-based walking activity and uptime activity (walking and standing time) as dependent variables. Criterion-related concurrent validity using physical activity sensors was weak to moderate. Correlations were slightly higher at T2 (r?=?0.45-0.53) than at T1 (r?=?0.44-0.46). The objectively measured variance of physical activity, explained by the PAIR, ranged from 25 to 43 %. PAIR activity scores and sensor-based walking or total activity increased in a dose-dependent manner, confirming the scoring system of the PAIR. The application time was usually less than 2 min. The validity of the PAIR is weak to moderate when compared to a sensor-based activity monitor and comparable to existing physical activity assessments for community-dwelling older adults.     

Panel Quantile Regressions and the Subjective Well-Being in Urban China: Evidence from RUMiC Data

Using RUMiC data and a simple panel quantile regression method, this paper accounts for the time-invariant individual specific characteristics and investigates the heterogeneous effects of factors on the distribution of subjective well-being (SWB, measured by GHQ-12) in urban China. Comparing results from the pooled regression and fixed effect regression, we find that most results from pooled regressions are likely overestimated. Panel quantile regression results show that income affects the least happy 10 % group twice as much as the happiest 10 % people. Being unemployed brings down the happiness level by 0.97 points on average, but individuals with high SWB seem to be not significantly affected. The complete picture of the relationship between SWB and various factors would have been veiled without using quantile techniques. This paper therefore not only contributes to the happiness literature in China, but also adds evidence to stylized findings going beyond the average.     

Handling precedence constraints in scheduling problems by the sequence pair representation

In this paper, we show that sequence pair (SP) representation, primarily applied to the rectangle packing problems appearing in the VLSI industry, can be a solution representation of precedence constrained scheduling. We present three interpretations of sequence pair, which differ in complexity of schedule evaluation and size of a corresponding solution space. For each interpretation we construct an incremental precedence constrained SP neighborhood evaluation algorithm, computing feasibility of each solution in the insert neighborhood in an amortized constant time per examined solution, and prove the connectivity property of the considered neighborhoods. To compare proposed interpretations of SP, we construct heuristic and metaheuristic algorithms for the multiprocessor job scheduling problem, and verify their efficiency in the numerical experiment.     

Young Adult Gambling Behaviors and their Relationship with the Persistence of ADHD

Young adulthood is a period renowned for engagement in impulsive and risky behaviors, including gambling. There are some indications that young adults exhibit higher gambling rates in comparison to older adults. Problem gambling has also been linked to ADHD. This longitudinal study examines the relationship between gambling and ADHD among an epidemiological sample of young adults (n = 235; males = 179, females = 56) aged 18-24. Results indicate that individuals who report childhood ADHD symptoms which persist into young adulthood experience greater gambling problem severity than participants with no ADHD or those with non-persistent ADHD.     

Going it alone and adrift: the socioeconomic profile and parental involvement of single-father and single-mother families in post-industrial Taiwan

In spite of the rising prevalence of marital dissolution in Asia over the past decades, little is known about single-parent families in Asia. The present study aims to contribute to the literature by investigating the changing socioeconomic characteristics and parental involvement (measured by parent–child activities and parental awareness of children) of single-father and single-mother families in Taiwan around the millennium. Using a nationally representative sample of 641 single fathers and 730 single mothers from the Taiwan Social Trend Survey collected in 1998, 2002 and 2006, this study found that the apparent socioeconomic advantage of single-father families over single-mother families has weakened. Parent–child activities and parental awareness are lower for single fathers than for single mothers and married fathers. The association between higher parental education and more parent–child activities and parental awareness is more pronounced among single fathers than among single mothers. The presence of co-residential grandparents is associated with lower parent–child activities with pre-teen children among single mothers. The results warrant greater attention to the wellbeing and development of adults and children from low SES single-father families in post-industrial Taiwan.     

A permutation test for umbrella alternatives

There is a wide variety of stochastic ordering problems where K groups (typically ordered with respect to time) are observed along with a (continuous) response. The interest of the study may be on finding the change-point group, i.e. the group where an inversion of trend of the variable under study is observed. A change point is not merely a maximum (or a minimum) of the time-series function, but a further requirement is that the trend of the time-series is monotonically increasing before that point, and monotonically decreasing afterwards. A suitable solution can be provided within a conditional approach, i.e. by considering some suitable nonparametric combination of dependent tests for simple stochastic ordering problems. The proposed procedure is very flexible and can be extended to trend and/or repeated measure problems. Some comparisons through simulations and examples with the well known Mack & Wolfe test for umbrella alternative and with Page’s test for trend problems with correlated data are investigated.     

Two Case Studies on Family Work with Eating Disorders and Body Image Issues

This article highlights the need for clinicians who work with eating disorders and body image problems to address the deeper family issues underlying these symptoms. The authors propose an eclectic approach including family systems, structural and experiential family therapy theory as a guide. The paper begins with an overview of family therapy theories currently used in the treatment of eating disorders, and goes into greater detail about the three theories highlighted in the eclectic model proposed. The authors present two cases with actual case dialogue, demonstrating how they used this composite model. This article has both theoretical and practical implications for clinicians working in the field.     

Mark-specific hazard ratio model with missing multivariate marks

An objective of randomized placebo-controlled preventive HIV vaccine efficacy (VE) trials is to assess the relationship between vaccine effects to prevent HIV acquisition and continuous genetic distances of the exposing HIVs to multiple HIV strains represented in the vaccine. The set of genetic distances, only observed in failures, is collectively termed the ‘mark.’ The objective has motivated a recent study of a multivariate mark-specific hazard ratio model in the competing risks failure time analysis framework. Marks of interest, however, are commonly subject to substantial missingness, largely due to rapid post-acquisition viral evolution. In this article, we investigate the mark-specific hazard ratio model with missing multivariate marks and develop two inferential procedures based on (i) inverse probability weighting (IPW) of the complete cases, and (ii) augmentation of the IPW estimating functions by leveraging auxiliary data predictive of the mark. Asymptotic properties and finite-sample performance of the inferential procedures are presented. This research also provides general inferential methods for semiparametric density ratio/biased sampling models with missing data. We apply the developed procedures to data from the HVTN 502 ‘Step’ HIV VE trial.