Romantic Relationships,Relationship Styles,Coping Strategies,and Psychological Distress among Chinese and Australian Young Adults

This study examined the association between relationship styles, coping strategies, and psychological distress among 144 Anglo‐Australian and 250 Hong Kong Chinese undergraduate students. The results indicated that relationship styles (secure, clingy, and fickle) influenced psychological distress through their association with coping strategies (avoidance and self‐punishment). Society of residence was a moderating factor for the association between clingy relationship style and psychological distress. Females also reported higher levels of psychological distress than males. Among participants who had experienced a romantic relationship break up, participants endorsing clingy relationship style and those whose partners initiated the break up expressed more hurt in comparison, whereas those who endorsed avoidance strategy reported less hurt. The results of the present study also suggested that psychosocial variables (relationship styles, coping strategies) were generally more important than demographic factors (e.g., age) in predicting mental health outcomes. However, relationship styles and coping strategies may operate differently under different contexts.     

Bioinformatics: new science–new statistics?

The new research field of bioinformatics is concerned with the collection, maintenance and processing of genomic information. Like statistical genetics, it provides computational techniques for unravelling the complex machinery of the genome, but it is distinct in emphasis and approach. As a relative newcomer to bioinformatics, statistician Wally Gilks sets out to convey his excitement about the subject and to explain the opportunities it presents to professional statisticians.     

Meeting the statistical needs of 21st-century science

Kanti Mardia and Walter Gilks consider the future role of statistics in scientific explanation and prediction, through views expressed by eminent scientists, philosophers and statisticians and through their own experience, particularly in the field of bioinformatics.     

Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Maternal Cohort Study—Exploratory Analysis

The bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) maternal cohort study supports a role both for direct maternal transmission and for inherited genetic susceptibilty to the BSE agent. Additional data from the main BSE database do not resolve whether the risk of direct maternal transmission of BSE from dam to calf is concentrated in the interval within 5 months before the onset of BSE in the dam, as data from the BSE maternal cohort study suggest. The reason for this is that we cannot rely, as our analysis requires, on the survival of calves or traceability of the dam being independent of the interval from the birth of a calf to onset of BSE in the dam. Accordingly, for the present, we place most weight on evidence from the BSE maternal cohort study. Direct maternal transmission of the BSE agent from dam to calf has not been ruled out; vertical transmission of the new variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (NVCJD) from mother with NVCJD to baby is therefore also possible. Actions to quantify, and minimize, the transmission risk, if any, from a mother with NVCJD to her baby, or to delivery teams, should be taken without delay.     

Bayesian projection of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome epidemic

Short-term projections of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic in England and Wales have been regularly updated since the publication of the Cox report in 1988. The key approach for those updates has been the back-calculation method, which has been informally adapted to acknowledge various sources of uncertainty as well as to incorporate increasingly available information on the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the population. We propose a Bayesian formulation of the back-calculation method which allows a formal treatment of uncertainty and the inclusion of extra information, within a single coherent composite model. Estimation of the variably dimensioned model is carried out by using reversible-jump Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. Application of the model to data for homosexual and bisexual males in England and Wales is presented, and the role of the various sources of information and model assumptions is appraised. Our results show a massive peak in HIV infections around 1983 and suggest that the incidence of AIDS has now reached a plateau, although there is still substantial uncertainty about the future.     

The Relationship between Birth History and Current Fertility in Developing Countries

The aim of this research is to find a model of fertility in terms of ‘birth-history’ factors which is common to a diversity of developing countries. Data for nine WFS countries are analysed. The analysis is essentially a birth-interval life-table analysis with regression where factor effects are allowed to vary smoothly over time since previous birth. Strong evidence for a common model is found, with surprisingly similar patterns in the parameters emerging for each country. The main components of the model may be interpreted in terms of ‘tempo’ of previous reproduction, age-related infecundity, and birth-order-related fertility control.     

Fitting Bayesian multiple random effects models

Bayesian random effects models may be fitted using Gibbs sampling, but the Gibbs sampler can be slow mixing due to what might be regarded as lack of model identifiability. This slow mixing substantially increases the number of iterations required during Gibbs sampling. We present an analysis of data on immunity after Rubella vaccinations which results in a slow-mixing Gibbs sampler. We show that this problem of slow mixing can be resolved by transforming the random effects and then, if desired, expressing their joint prior distribution as a sequence of univariate conditional distributions. The resulting analysis shows that the decline in antibodies after Rubella vaccination is relatively shallow compared to the decline in antibodies which has been shown after Hepatitis B vaccination.