What's happening in the Israeli family? Recent demographic trends

Recent changes in the family in Israel are analyzed using official data. The results indicate that both Arab and Jewish families show signs of rapid modernization, involving a shift to the urban nuclear family. It is concluded that Israeli families are becoming similar to those in Western developed countries, namely, small, individualistic, and unstable.     

The link between parenting approaches and health behavior: A systematic review

The familial home environment, where parenting takes place, plays an important role in the health behaviors that children and adolescents engage in and has implications on health and well-being in later life. Lifestyle-related behaviors predispose children and adolescents to the global burden of non-communicable and other lifestyle-related diseases. This review therefore examined and described previous studies looking at the associations between health behaviors and parenting approaches. It suggests that engagement in health behaviors, which promotes overall health and well-being, was associated with autonomy, supportive parenting, parental encouragement, behavior control, parental nurturance, warmth and responsiveness, and parental involvement. The review highlights the gap in literature focusing on the health behavior of children and adolescents as well as on parenting. In addition, the review also provides an overview of the continents where fewer studies have examined the presented associations. The findings presented also serve as a guide for program development and implementation to address the increase in non-communicable and other lifestyle-related diseases.     

Islam,Moderation, Radicalism,and Justly Balanced Communities

If media outlets and political rhetoric are to be believed, then the way to counter “radical” Islam is through “moderate” Islam. Seemingly, “moderate” Islam is that which “radical” Islam is not. In appointing “moderate” Islam as an antidote to “radical” Islam, the implication is that, conceptually at least, the two terms are contradistinctive. Yet, while much is, perceivably, known about “radical” Islam, with its associated ills of an unequivocal Islamic worldview, very little attention has been afforded to this signifier, “moderate”. Inasmuch as this term is bandied around, even scholars of Islam will acknowledge that, within Islamic education, understandings of and debates on conceptions of moderation, and moderate Muslim communities, have been somewhat overlooked. What, therefore, is a “moderate” Islam? What is a “moderate” Muslim community and how would it act? What are the implications for a “moderate” community in relation to pluralist societies? And, can such a “moderate” community offer a practical response not only to “radical” Islam, but, perhaps, more importantly, to increasingly antagonistic, liberal contexts?     

Agreement Between Scales in the Measurement of Breast Cancer Risk Perceptions

The objective of this article is to compare the accuracy and numeric responses of breast cancer risk perception as measured by a frequency scale and percentage scale. A cross-sectional survey was conducted. Perceptions of five-year and lifetime breast cancer risk were measured using a frequency and a percentage scale. Estimation error was calculated as the absolute difference between actual breast cancer risk as determined by the Gail model and perceived risk. Agreement between scales was determined by calculating the mean and standard deviation of the difference between numeric responses. The study was conducted among women enrolled in two primary care clinics associated with an academic medical center. Two-hundred-fifty-four participants were recruited from one of the two participating internal medicine clinics. Inclusion criteria included female gender and age 40-84 years. Exclusion criteria included a history of breast cancer, dementia, or a life expectancy of less than two years. The frequency scale was more accurate than the percentage scale in estimating lifetime risk (p= 0.05), but less accurate in estimating five-year risk (p < 0.02). Only 79 participants (31%) were considered consistent scale users, providing identical responses when using the frequency and percentage scale for a given risk estimate. Although the mean difference (percentage-frequency scale) for estimates of breast cancer lifetime risk was only 2.4, the empirically determined 90% limits of agreement between the frequency and percentage scale for lifetime risk were wide, from -30 to 40. Higher numeracy was associated with consistent use of scales (OR 1.61, 95% CI; 1.09-2.37). We report disagreement in breast cancer risk perceptions when measured by a frequency and a percentage scale. The accuracy and direction of bias associated with each scale varies according to the time frame of risk being assessed.     

Narrating marriage: negotiating practices and politics of belonging of Afghan return migrants

ABSTRACT

This article explores Afghan return migrants’ strategies and constraints to identify with the different spaces of belonging they encountered, through their expressions and practices of marriage. We take an in-depth approach to the life histories of 35 voluntary and involuntary Afghan returnees from European countries. We find that in narrating and performing different marriage practices, some Afghan return migrants construct fixed boundaries between different spaces of belonging, while others try to construct these boundaries as permeable and hybrid. Gender and mobility strongly define the way in which return migrants narrate and perform marriage as a cultural practice that determines who belongs, who wants to belong and who is able to belong. We conclude that while openly negotiating hybrid practices within a delicate theme such as marriage requires careful negotiation of boundaries, mobility can improve the extent to which return migrants can apply inventive and hybrid identifications for their personal needs and desires.     

Alcohol and drug abuse: removing structural barriers to treatment for historically disadvantaged communities in Cape Town

The article reports on an exploratory study that examined access to alcohol and other drug treatment for historically disadvantaged communities in the Cape Town metropole. In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 key informants from various sectors of the alcohol and drug treatment system, including treatment service providers, members of local drug action committees and social workers from district social service offices. Findings highlighted three structural barriers to service delivery: (i) difficulties in developing and implementing a strategic plan relating to alcohol and drug problems due to poor capacity and other infrastructural issues, such as a lack of information, poor intersectoral collaboration and limited consultation with service providers; (ii) limited allocation of resources to alcohol and drug treatment which has restricted the availability of affordable services as well as the capacity of established services to meet increased demand for services in this area; and (iii) fragmented service delivery. The study highlighted the need for further transformation of the South African social welfare system responsible for alcohol and drug treatment service delivery through public–private partnership development and the introduction of a management information system.     

Temporal dynamics of inter-limb coordination in ice climbing revealed through change-point analysis of the geodesic mean of circular data

This study examined the temporal dynamics of the inter-limb angles of skilled and less skilled ice climbers to determine how they explored ice fall properties to adapt their coordination patterns during performance. We observed two circular time series corresponding to the upper- and lower-limbs of seven expert and eight inexperienced ice climbers. We analyzed these data through a multiple change-point analysis of the geodesic (or Fréchet) mean on the circle. Guided by the nature of the geodesic mean obtained by an optimization procedure, we extended the filtered derivative method, known to be computationally very cheap and fast, to circular data. Local estimation of the variability was assessed through the number of change-points computed via the filtered derivatives with p-value method for the time series and integrated squared error (ISE). Results of this change-point analysis did not reveal significant differences of the number of change-points between groups but indicated higher ISE that supported the existence of plateaux for beginners. These results emphasized higher local variability of limb angles for experts than for beginners suggesting greater dependence on the properties of the performance environment and adaptive behaviors in the former. Conversely, the lower local variance of limb angles assessed in beginners may reflect their independence of the environmental constraints, as they focused mainly on controlling body equilibrium.     

Monitoring Perceptions of the Causes of Poverty in South Africa

This study explored how people perceive the causes of poverty. Literature revealed that there are three broad theoretical explanations of perceptions of the causes of poverty, namely individualistic explanations, where blame is placed squarely on the poor themselves; structural explanations, where poverty is blamed on external social and economic forces; and fatalistic explanations, which attribute poverty to factors such as bad luck or illness. To examine South Africans perceptions according to these dimensions secondary analysis was employed on one of the Human Sciences Research Council’s (HSRC) national representative client surveys. Approximately 3,498 respondents across South Africa were surveyed between 18 April and 30 May 2006. The bivariate analysis revealed that South Africans in general attribute poverty to structural over individualistic and fatalistic dimensions of poverty. Ordinary least square regressions revealed that these perceptions of poverty interacted with a host of socio-demographic and economic variables such as race and peoples’ lived experiences of poverty. In this regard, all three ordinary least square regressions showed that lived poverty had a significant impact in predicting respectively structural, individualistic and fatalistic perceptions of the causes of poverty. The second regression predicted individualistic perceptions and showed that being white was the most significant predictor. The third regression predicted fatalistic perceptions and established that being coloured was the most significant predictor.     

What Determines the Embeddedness of Forced‐Return Migrants? Rethinking the Role of Pre‐ and Post‐Return Assistance1

Return migration is not always a process of simply “going home.” Particularly when return is not fully voluntarily, returnees face severe obstacles. This study argues that such return can only become sustainable when returnees are provided with possibilities to become re‐embedded in terms of economic, social network, and psychosocial dimensions. We analyze the return migration experiences of 178 rejected asylum seekers and migrants who did not obtain residence permit to six different countries: Afghanistan, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sierra Leone, Togo and Vietnam. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods of data analysis, we identify several key factors that influence prospects for embeddedness, such as individual and family characteristics, position in the migration cycle, and the role of pre‐ and post‐return assistance. We find that the possibilities for successful return are highly dependent on the living circumstances provided in the host country: returnees who were enabled to engage in work, had access to independent housing and freedom to develop social contacts proved to be better able to exercise agency and maintain self‐esteem. Post‐return assistance by non‐governmental organizations will be particularly helpful when financial support is combined with human guidance and practical information to enhance a more sustainable return process.