Cross‐Sectional Psychological and Demographic Associations of Zika Knowledge and Conspiracy Beliefs Before and After Local Zika Transmission

Perceptions of infectious diseases are important predictors of whether people engage in disease‐specific preventive behaviors. Having accurate beliefs about a given infectious disease has been found to be a necessary condition for engaging in appropriate preventive behaviors during an infectious disease outbreak, while endorsing conspiracy beliefs can inhibit preventive behaviors. Despite their seemingly opposing natures, knowledge and conspiracy beliefs may share some of the same psychological motivations, including a relationship with perceived risk and self‐efficacy (i.e., control). The 2015–2016 Zika epidemic provided an opportunity to explore this. The current research provides some exploratory tests of this topic derived from two studies with similar measures, but different primary outcomes: one study that included knowledge of Zika as a key outcome and one that included conspiracy beliefs about Zika as a key outcome. Both studies involved cross‐sectional data collections that occurred during the same two periods of the Zika outbreak: one data collection prior to the first cases of local Zika transmission in the United States (March–May 2016) and one just after the first cases of local transmission (July–August). Using ordinal logistic and linear regression analyses of data from two time points in both studies, the authors show an increase in relationship strength between greater perceived risk and self‐efficacy with both increased knowledge and increased conspiracy beliefs after local Zika transmission in the United States. Although these results highlight that similar psychological motivations may lead to Zika knowledge and conspiracy beliefs, there was a divergence in demographic association.     

Frustration in Infancy: Implications for Emotion Regulation,Physiological Processes,and Temperament

A study sample of 162 six‐month‐old children was selected from a larger sample of 346 infants on the basis of parents' report of their infants' temperament and a laboratory assessment of temperament. Infants were classified as easily frustrated and less easily frustrated and compared on a number of emotion regulation, physiology, and temperament measures. Results indicated that male and female infants were equally likely to be classified as frustrated and less easily frustrated; however, male infants were less able to regulate physiologically. Easily frustrated infants used different emotion regulation strategies and were observed to be less attentive and more active than less easily frustrated infants when observed in the laboratory. These infants were also characterized by their parents as more active, less attentive, and more distressed to novelty. Infants classified as easily frustrated were more reactive physiologically and less able to regulate physiological reactivity than their less easily frustrated counterparts. It is hypothesized that this cluster of characteristics may constitute a unique temperamental type that may have implications for other types of behavioral functioning. Limitations of the study are that observations are based on a single brief assessment of the infant, modest effect sizes were found, and the study is cross‐sectional.     

Punishment and pleasure: women, food and the imprisoned body1

Food assumes enormous importance in prison: for many prisoners it conditions their life in custody and, in many respects, is symbolic of the prison experience. This article explores the complex relationship between gender, food and imprisonment through an analysis of data obtained from in‐depth interviews and group discussions conducted in three women's prisons in England. The findings indicate that, in prison, where control is taken away as the prisoner and her body become the objects of external forces, food is experienced not only as part of the disciplinary machinery, but also as a powerful source of pleasure, resistance and rebellion. The implications of such findings for health promotion in the prison context are discussed. Here, the pleasures and consolations of food may well constitute a redefinition of what it is to be healthy in this context, one that challenges the dominant meaning constructed in current health promotional discourse.     

Police Reforms in Child Abuse Investigation: Their Success and Limitations in the Struggle to Uphold Children's Rights

SUMMARY. The past decade has shown increased awareness, concern and understanding about the extent of child abuse, particularly sexual abuse, and the caring agencies response to listen to and to support the young victims. This article looks at the response of the police service over that decade to meet such demands and to work jointly and responsively with social services to further the welfare and protection of children. It also examines the constraints and limitations of the police and social services when they attempt to uphold the rights of child victims and to gain redress through the criminal justice system     

Higher education outcomes, graduate employment and university performance indicators

Summary.  Official employment-related performance indicators in UK higher education are based on the population of students responding to the 'First destination supplement' (FDS). This generates potentially biased performance indicators as this population of students is not necessarily representative of the full population of leavers from each institution. University leavers who do not obtain qualifications and those who do not respond to the FDS are not included within the official analysis. We compare an employment-related performance indicator based on those students who responded to the FDS with alternative approaches which address the potential non-random nature of this subgroup of university leavers.     

Ethnic preferences and perceptions among Asian and White British middle school children

Asian and White middle school children were shown photographs of unknown Afro-Caribbean, Asian, and White individuals of approximately the same age as themselves, and asked which one wax most like them, which one they would prefer to be, which ones they would prefer to engage in various activities with, and finally, to allocate positive and negative traits to the three groups or to nobody. A similar majority of both Asian and While children selected an own-race photograph as being most like them, but only about a half selected the own-race photograph as the one they would most like to he. For sharing activities, children showed a strong own-tender preference, followed by an own-race preference. White children stated a greater preference for sharing activities with White children, then with Afro-Caribbean children, and least with Asian children. Asian children preferred Asian and White children the most, Afro-Caribbean the least. On a stereotypes test, similar trends were obtained; White children evaluated While children highest and Asian lowest; Asian children tended to evaluate Asian children highest but to a nonsignificant extent. The relative proportion of Asian/White children in school appeared to have little systematic influence on the results, thus arguing against the contact hypothesis of prejudice reduction in its simple form.     

A New Approach to Social Assistance: Latin America's Experience with Conditional Cash Transfer Programmes

Conditional cash transfers are a departure from more traditional approaches to social assistance that represents an innovative and increasingly popular channel for the delivery of social services. Conditional cash transfers provide money to poor families contingent upon certain behaviour, usually investments in human capital such as sending children to school or bringing them to health centres on a regular basis. They seek both to address traditional short-term income support objectives and promote the longer-term accumulation of human capital by serving as a demand-side complement to the supply of health and education services. Evaluation results reveal that this innovative design has been quite successful in addressing many of the failures in delivering social assistance such as poor poverty targeting, disincentive effects and limited welfare impacts. There is clear evidence of success from the first generation of programmes in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Nicaragua in increasing enrolment rates, improving preventive healthcare and raising household consumption. Despite this promising evidence, many questions remain unanswered about conditional cash transfer programmes, including the replicability of their success under different