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Background: The partograph has been endorsed by World Health Organization (WHO) since 1994 which presents an algorithm for assessing maternal and foetal conditions and labor progression. Monitoring labour with a partograph can reduce adverse pregnancy outcomes such as prolonged labor, emergency C-sections, birth asphyxia and stillbirths. However, partograph use is still very low, particularly in low and middle income countries (LMICs). In Bangladesh the reported partograph user rate varies from 1.4% to 33.0%. Recently, an electronic version of the partograph, with the provision of online data entry and user aid for emergency clinical support, has been tested successfully in different settings. With this proven evidence, we conducted and operations research to test the feasibility and effectiveness of implementing an e-partograph, for the first time, in 2 public hospitals in Bangladesh Methods: We followed a prospective crossover design. Two secondary level referral hospitals, Jessore and Kushtia District Hospital (DH) were the study sites. All pregnant women who delivered in the study hospitals were the study participants. All nurse-midwives working in the labor ward of study hospitals were trained on appropriate use of both types of partograph along with standard labour management guidelines. Collected quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS 23 statistical software. Discrete variables were expressed as percentages and presented as frequency distribution and cross tabulations. Chi square tests were employed to test the association between exposure and outcome variables. Potential confounding factors were adjusted using multivariate binary logistic regression methods. Ethical approval was obtained from the institutional review board of the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b). Findings: In total 2918 deliveries were conducted at Jessore DH and 2312 at Kushtia DH during one-year study period. Of them, 1012 (506 in each facility) deliveries were monitored using partograph (paper or electronic). The trends of facility based C-section rates was downwards in both the hospitals; 43% to 37% in Jessore and from 36% to 25% in Kushtia Hospital. There was a significant reduction of prolonged labour with e-partograph use. In Kushtia DH, the prolonged labour rate was 42% during phase 1 with the paper version which came down to 29% during phase-2 with the e-partograph use. The similar result was observed in Jessore DH where the prolonged labour rate reduced to 7% with paper partograph from the reported 30% prolonged labour with e-partograph. The e-partograph user rate was higher than the paper partograph during both phases (phase 1: 3.31, CI: 2.04–5.38, p < .001 and in phase 2: 15.20 CI: 6.36–36.33, p < .001) after adjusting for maternal age, parity, gestational age, religion, mother’s education, husband’s education, and fetal sex Conclusion: The partograph user rate has significantly improved with the e- partograph and was associated with an overall reduction in cesarean births. Use of the e-partograph was also associated with reduced rates of prolonged labour. This study has added to the growing body of evidence on the positive impact of e-partograph use. We recommend implementing e-partograph intervention at scale in both public and private hospitals in Bangladesh. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Data collection using paper-based questionnaires can be time consuming and return errors affect data accuracy, completeness, and information quality in health surveys. We compared smartphone and paper-based data collection systems in the Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease (BOLD) study in rural Sudan. Methods: This exploratory pilot study was designed to run in parallel with the cross-sectional household survey. The Open Data Kit was used to programme questionnaires in Arabic into smartphones. We included 100 study participants (83% women; median age = 41.5 ± 16.4 years) from the BOLD study from 3 rural villages in East-Gezira and Kamleen localities of Gezira state, Sudan. Questionnaire data were collected using smartphone and paper-based technologies simultaneously. We used Kappa statistics and inter-rater class coefficient to test agreement between the two methods. Results: Symptoms reported included cough (24%), phlegm (15%), wheezing (17%), and shortness of breath (18%). One in five were or had been cigarette smokers. The two data collection methods varied between perfect to slight agreement across the 204 variables evaluated (Kappa varied between 1.00 and 0.02 and inter-rater coefficient between 1.00 and -0.12). Errors were most commonly seen with paper questionnaires (83% of errors seen) vs smartphones (17% of errors seen) administered questionnaires with questions with complex skip-patterns being a major source of errors in paper questionnaires. Automated checks and validations in smartphone-administered questionnaires avoided skip-pattern related errors. Incomplete and inconsistent records were more likely seen on paper questionnaires. Conclusion: Compared to paper-based data collection, smartphone technology worked well for data collection in the study, which was conducted in a challenging rural environment in Sudan. This approach provided timely, quality data with fewer errors and inconsistencies compared to paper-based data collection. We recommend this method for future BOLD studies and other population-based studies in similar settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Personal motivation is a key factor in the service of foster care, impending both on the welfare of the child and on the satisfaction of the carer. This paper explores the benefits, challenges and dilemmas involved in the job of professional (i.e. state-supported) foster carer in Romania–a country where the issue of child protection has drawn a great deal of international attention over the last thirty years. The principal hypothesis concerns whether the benefits, challenges and dilemmas identified by foster carers are influenced by the factors that led to their taking up this kind of work. Quantitative research was conducted using a questionnaire as the main tool. The paper takes a descriptive, cross-sectional and multifactorial approach. Sampling was carried out by self-selecting method, and the study involved 51 participants. The research project identified a statistically significant variation in the challenges and dilemmas reported by foster carers. Thus, the results of the study show that the majority of the carers indicate a primarily intrinsic motivation for their work. By way of conclusion, it is argued that social workers, operating in collaboration with multidisciplinary teams, can offer carers support in managing more difficult periods in the child–carer relationship, thus enhancing the sustainability of the foster care service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Large numbers of young people die yearly due to homicide, but little is known about homicide during adolescence. Research primarily focuses on youth violence among young men and masks important gender-related factors inherent in the adolescent age group. Although young women are less likely to be victims of homicide, violence against women is an important form of violence experienced during adolescence. In this paper, we describe the prevalence of and gender difference in adolescent homicide in South Africa in 2009. Methods: We conducted a retrospective national mortuary-based study to identify all child homicides (boys and girls < 18 years) in 2009 in a proportionate sample of mortuaries. Victim, perpetrator and crime data were collected in three phases: cases were identified from the mortuary register, the autopsy report and from police interviews. In this paper we focus on the adolescent group, aged 10 to 17 years. Findings: We identified 674 (95% CI: 520–823) adolescent homicides for 2009, with more male (520) than female (154) homicides. This gender disparity increased as children aged, with the male homicide rate 27.9/100 000 population (95% CI: 20.3–35.5), nearly 5 times the female rate (4.5:1) of 6.5/ 100 000 population (95% CI: 4.7–8.2) in older adolescents (15–17 year old). Adolescent males were significantly more likely (61.2%) to die in a public space compared to female adolescents (39.3%) but more adolescent females (48.4%) died at home compared to adolescent males (32.9%). Adolescent females (42.1%) were mainly killed by a family member or intimate partner while adolescent males were predominantly (58%) killed by an acquaintance. Conclusion: We found a distinct gender pattern for adolescent homicide in South Africa. This pattern appears to be driven by gender norms that support violence. South Africa requires an investment in developing evidence informed interventions to reduce violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While diaspora communities have become more critical of Female Genital Cutting (FGC), there are also trends of continuity. To explore the interplay between continuity and change, I designed a study among Somali migrants in Norway. A team of six Somali research assistants collected data from 72 male and female research participants between 16 and 57 years of age through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. The aim of the study was to gather knowledge that could improve interventions among migrant populations. The study findings indicate that the experience of FGC as a practice in transition implies that people have to maneuver between different and partly contradictory social norms. The paper first discusses the contradiction between a strong negative attitude toward FGC and very low engagement. The lack of engagement is explained by the increased privatization of FGC and insecurities due to the transition and disempowerment with regard to challenging the FGC practices of relatives based in countries of origin. Second, the paper explores the contradiction between perceptions of FGC as a disappearing practice and the recognition of trends of continuation. Trends of continuation include those related to perceptions of risk during travel to countries of origin, resistance to defibulation, support for sunna circumcision and insecurities regarding the significance of FGC for marriageability. Thus, despite an almost universally negative attitude toward FGC in the form of infibulation, ongoing changes can, to some extent, hamper further change. This suggests that to ensure further progress in the abandonment of the practice, these complex and interconnected expectations must be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: While school-aged children in low- and middle-income countries remain highly exposed to acute infections, programs targeting this age group remain limited in scale and scope. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of a new and comprehensive primary school-based health intervention program on student-reported morbidity and anthropometric outcomes in Lusaka, Zambia. Methods: A prospective matched control study identified 12 classes in 7 schools for the intervention and 12 classes in 7 matched schools as controls. Teachers in intervention schools were trained to deliver health lessons and to refer sick students to care. In addition, vitamin A and deworming medication were biannually administered to intervention students. The primary study outcome was student-reported morbidity. Secondary outcomes were weight, height, health knowledge, and absenteeism. Multivariable linear and logistic regression models were used to estimate program impact. Results: 380 students ages 4–16 were enrolled in the study in 2015, and 97% were followed up at endline in 2016. The intervention decreased the adjusted odds of self-reported acute illnesses by 38% (95% CI: 0.48, 0.77) and the adjusted odds of stunting by 52% (95% CI: 0.26, 0.87). It also increased health knowledge by 0.53 standard deviations (95% CI: 0.24, 0.81). No impact was found on weight (adjusted mean difference β = 0.17, 95% CI: - 1.11, 1.44) and student absenteeism (adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 0.89, 95% CI: 0.60, 1.33). Conclusion: The results presented in this paper suggest that comprehensive school-based health programs may offer a highly effective way to improve students’ health knowledge as well as their health status. Given their low cost, a more general adoption and implementation of such programs seems recommendable. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of outlaw bikers is growing globally. Despite this, little research exists on these groups and their alleged violent tendencies. To address this, the current paper uses unique data to examine whether gang violence causes outlaw biker violence. The period examined runs from mid-2008 until early 2012 during which violent clashes occurred between outlaw bikers and street gang members involved in an alleged conflict in Copenhagen, Denmark. A precise description of each individual act of violence would make it possible to identify whether specific acts were carried out in furtherance of the alleged conflict. This would allow one to determine whether outlaw bikers commit violence on behalf of their club. However, such knowledge is unavailable. The paper therefore takes a different approach by examining whether acts of violence committed by the two groups are statistically associated. In other words, it considers whether one or more acts can be described as retaliatory during the observation periods. The sample consists of 640 individuals involved with the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club or with non-biker street gangs–both of which are present in Copenhagen. Statistical models are used to predict 143 violent events committed by 196 outlaw bikers. The results suggest that violence committed by gang members predicts violence committed by outlaw bikers. This indicates that violent acts committed by outlaw bikers are at least partly a form of retaliation carried out on behalf of their club. The paper expands the literature on the kinds of inter-group, micro-level processes that can lead to reciprocal violence by including outlaw bikers in a literature that has previously focused on non-biker street gangs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we aim to establish a mathematical model to design a maximizing social welfare intervention mechanism of healthcare service goods in China. The intervention mechanism is helpful to facilitate the adoption of the healthcare service goods. We consider a research problem that regulates the supply chain system for healthcare service goods by an intervention mechanism, and two intervention strategies composed of demand-growth strategy and subsidy strategy are used to the combination of intervention mechanism. Then this paper presents a new method based on fuzzy set and bilevel programming to design the intervention mechanism. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model, we conduct a case study for Wudang personalized health package and verify our model by the specific result analysis, the result indicates that our joint intervention mechanism is helpful to achieve the target and increase social welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) universities are important bases for science and technology research and play a critical role in China’s National Innovation System. Based on the Web of Science (WoS), this article analyzes the statistics of paper published by MIIT universities and universities from across China including MIIT universities. The results are as follows: (1) Both the MIIT universities and universities nationwide in China have increased their international academic publications, and MIIT have shown a greater increase for the past decade. (2) In terms of U-I-G interaction, for UG relations, the Tug value of MIIT universities has remained stable, while that of universities in China has become declined. For UI relations, the Tui value of both MIIT universities and universities in China has shown steady growth. For UIG relations, MIIT universities have a greater synergistic effect of Triple Helix relationship than universities in China. (3) For more details in seven MIIT universities, universities elected into “Project 985”, including HIT, BUAA, BIT and NPU, have published more papers, and been more synergistic with government and industry (UIG relations) than other three universities, including NUAA, NUST and HEU. Based on the empirical results, we discuss our findings, and make certain suggestions regarding policy incentives, reasonable administrative system and U-I-G interaction mode, which is significant not only for Chinese universities but also for universities in other developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) is high (54%) in Bangladesh. Moreover, female garment workers report higher rates of IPV and are also vulnerable to workplace violence (WPV). Experience of violence puts women at increased risk of developing depressive symptoms, which are related with low self-esteem, lower life satisfaction and lower productivity. To our knowledge, there has been no previous research on depression among female garment workers and its connections to IPV and WPV in Bangladesh. This paper aims to address this gap by studying the relationship of IPV, WPV and depression among female garment workers. Methods: The data for this paper comes from a cross-sectional survey of female garment workers (n = 800) conducted as baseline survey of a quasi-experimental study known as HERrespect. Survey data were collected during September-December, 2016 among randomly selected female garment workers from eight garment factories in and around Dhaka city. Structural equation modelling was conducted to explore the relationship among IPV, WPV and depression. Results: The findings show high rates of any IPV (69%); WPV (73%, experienced or witnessed) and depressive symptomatology (40%) among female garment workers. The analysis of pathways shows that IPV impacts a woman’s experience of WPV and work related stress leading to the development of depression; while WPV had direct and mediated pathways to depression. Experience of controlling by their husband leads to WPV and increased work related stress, and thus leads to depression. It also reveals that a worker’s ability to mobilize resources in emergency, however, increased self-esteem and reduced work related stress. Conclusion: This study shows the pathways through which experience of IPV and WPV lead to development of depressive symptoms among female garment workers. The link between women’s ability to mobilize resources with self-esteem and work related stress indicates the need for socio-economic empowerment of women and may suggest that combined intervention to address IPV and women’s empowerment could be successful in dealing with WPV and mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last several decades have witnessed a shift in the way in which news is delivered and consumed by users. With the growth and advancements in mobile technologies, the Internet, and Web 2.0 technologies users are not only consumers of news, but also producers of online content. This has resulted in a novel and highly participatory cyber-physical news awareness ecosystem that fosters digital activism, in which volunteers contribute content to online communities. While studies have examined the various components of this news awareness ecosystem, little is still known about how news media coverage (and in particular digital media) impacts digital activism. In order to address this challenge and develop a greater understanding of it, this paper focuses on a specific form of digital activism, that of the production of digital geographical content through crowdsourcing efforts. Using refugee camps from around the world as a case study, we examine the relationship between news coverage (via Google news), search trends (via Google trends) and user edit contribution patterns in OpenStreetMap, a prominent geospatial data crowdsourcing platform. In addition, we compare and contrast these patterns with user edit patterns in Wikipedia, a well-known non-geospatial crowdsourcing platform. Using Google news and Google trends to derive a measure of thematic public awareness, our findings indicate that digital activism bursts tend to take place during periods of sustained build-up of public awareness deficit or surplus. These findings are in line with two prominent mass communication theories: agenda setting and corrective action, and suggest the emergence of a novel stimulus-awareness-activism framework in today’s participatory digital age. Moreover, these findings further complement existing research examining the motivational factors that drive users to contribute to online collaborative communities. This paper brings us one step closer to understanding the underlying mechanisms that drive digital activism in particular in the geospatial domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: There is a need for structure to achieve functional patient engagement within mental healthcare organizations, and for clarification on how to proceed on a strategic level. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the implementation of a strategic organizational structure for patient engagement in mental health by examining why and how to implement a structure, the organizational and environmental factors that facilitate or limit the process, and the perceived consequences of the implementation. Method: This paper evaluates the implementation of a strategic committee for patient engagement in a mental healthcare organization in Montreal (Quebec, Canada). The research was designed as a qualitative single case study using a deductive approach by means of a conceptual framework. Data sources consisted in ten semi-structured interviews, three focus groups, and organizational documents. Results: The strategic committee for patient engagement was implemented as a means to formalize patient partner participation, following the introduction of a vision of full citizenship. Important aspects of its implementation included its composition and role, the elaboration of a framework for patient partner participation, and finally, ongoing application and evaluation of the framework. Several facilitating factors were identified, including executive management support, leadership, and a vision behind the participation. Limiting factors mainly consisted of resistance towards patient participation and the existence of stigma. Consequences included increased and improved patient engagement, as well as reduced stigma within the organization. Conclusion: This study shows that the implementation of a strategic organizational structure for patient engagement is comprehensive. It further shows the importance of a vision and an articulate leadership involving several actors. Further research is needed regarding the impact of this type of strategic structure on a clinical level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To explore intersections of social determinants of maternal healthcare utilization using the Classification and Regression Trees (CART) algorithm which is a machine-learning method used to construct prediction models. Methods: Institutional review board approval for this study was granted from Public Health Service—Ethical Review Board (PHS-ERB) and from the Health Ministry Screening Committee (HMSC) facilitated by Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR). IRB review and approval for the current analyses was obtained from University of California, San Diego. Cross-sectional data were collected from women with children aged 0–11 months (n = 5,565) from rural households in 25 districts of Uttar Pradesh, India. Participants were surveyed on maternal healthcare utilization including registration of pregnancy (model-1), receipt of antenatal care (ANC) during pregnancy (model-2), and delivery at health facilities (model -3). Social determinants of health including wealth, social group, literacy, religion, and early age at marriage were captured during the survey. The Classification and Regression Tree (CART) algorithm was used to explore intersections of social determinants of healthcare utilization. Results: CART analyses highlight the intersections, particularly of wealth and literacy, in maternal healthcare utilization in Uttar Pradesh. Model-1 documents that women who are poorer, illiterate and Muslim are less likely to have their pregnancies registered (71.4% vs. 86.0% in the overall sample). Model-2 documents that poorer, illiterate women had the lowest ANC coverage (37.7% vs 45% in the overall sample). Model-3, developed for deliveries at health facilities, highlighted that illiterate and poor women have the lowest representation among facility deliveries (59.6% vs. 69% in the overall sample). Conclusion: This paper explores the interactions between determinants of maternal healthcare utilization indicators. The findings in this paper highlights that the interaction of wealth and literacy can play a very strong role in accentuating or diminishing healthcare utilization among women. The study also reveals that religion and women’s age at marriage also interact with wealth and literacy to create substantial disparities in utilization. The study provides insights into the effect of intersections of determinants, and highlights the importance of using a more nuanced understanding of the impact of co-occurring forms of marginalization to effectively tackle inequities in healthcare utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Digital spaces, and in particular social networking sites, are becoming increasingly present and influential in the functioning of our democracies. In this paper, we propose an integrated methodology for the data collection, the reconstruction, the analysis and the visualization of the development of a country’s political landscape from Twitter data. Method: The proposed method relies solely on the interactions between Twitter accounts and is independent of the characteristics of the shared contents such as the language of the tweets. We validate our methodology on a case study on the 2017 French presidential election (60 million Twitter exchanges between more than 2.4 million users) via two independent methods: the comparison between our automated political categorization and a human categorization based on the evaluation of a sample of 5000 profiles descriptions; the correspondence between the reconfigurations detected in the reconstructed political landscape and key political events reported in the media. This latter validation demonstrated the ability of our approach to accurately reflect the reconfigurations at play in the off-line political scene. Results: We built on this reconstruction to give insights into the opinion dynamics and the reconfigurations of political communities at play during a presidential election. First, we propose a quantitative description and analysis of the political engagement of members of political communities. Second, we analyze the impact of political communities on information diffusion and in particular on their role in the fake news phenomena. We measure a differential echo chamber effect on the different types of political news (fake news, debunks, standard news) caused by the community structure and emphasize the importance of addressing the meso-structures of political networks in understanding the fake news phenomena. Conclusions: Giving access to an intermediate level, between sociological surveys in the field and large statistical studies (such as those conducted by national or international organizations) we demonstrate that social networks data make it possible to qualify and quantify the activity of political communities in a multi-polar political environment; as well as their temporal evolution and reconfiguration, their structure, their alliance strategies and their semantic particularities during a presidential campaign through the analysis of their digital traces. We conclude this paper with a comment on the political and ethical implications of the use of social networks data in politics. We stress the importance of developing social macroscopes that will enable citizens to better understand how they collectively make society and propose as example the “Politoscope”, a macroscope that delivers some of our results in an interactive way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Homebirths are common in low and middle income countries and are associated with poor child survival. We assessed the feasibility of using smartphones by village health workers for pregnancy registration and the effectiveness of health text messages (SMS) sent to pregnant women through village health workers in reducing homebirths in rural Uganda. Methods: A non-randomised intervention study was undertaken in 26 villages. In the intervention arm, village health workers registered pregnant women (n = 262) in 13 villages using a smartphone app (doForm) and paper forms and gestation age-timed SMS were sent through village health workers to the pregnant women. In 13 control villages, (n = 263) pregnant women were registered on paper forms only and no SMS was sent. The main outcome was place of birth measured through a self-report. Logistic regression with generalised estimating equations was used to explore the effect of the intervention. Results: Comparing 795 corresponding data fields on phone and paper revealed that numeric variable fields were 86%-95% similar while text fields were 38%-48% similar. Of the 525 pregnant women followed, 83 (15.8%) delivered at home. In the adjusted analysis, the intervention was associated with lower odds of homebirths [AOR = 0.38, 95%CI (0.15–0.97)]. Muslim religion [AOR = 4.0, 95%CI (1.72–9.34)], primary or no maternal education [AOR = 2.51, 95%CI (1.00–6.35)] and health facility distance ≥ 2 km [AOR = 2.26, 95%CI (0.95–5.40)] were independently associated with homebirths. Conclusion: Village health workers can register pregnant women at home using phones and relay gestation age specific SMS to them to effectively reduce homebirths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs) have been playing an increasing role in interventions aiming to generate and scale innovations in agricultural systems. However, the contribution of MSPs in achieving innovations and scaling has been varied, and many factors have been reported to be important for their performance. This paper aims to provide evidence on the contribution of MSPs to innovation and scaling by focusing on three developing country cases in Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Rwanda. Through social network analysis and logistic models, the paper studies the changes in the characteristics of multi-stakeholder innovation networks targeted by MSPs and identifies factors that play significant roles in triggering these changes. The results demonstrate that MSPs do not necessarily expand and decentralize innovation networks but can lead to contraction and centralization in the initial years of implementation. They show that some of the intended next users of interventions with MSPs–local-level actors–left the innovation networks, whereas the lead organization controlling resource allocation in the MSPs substantially increased its centrality. They also indicate that not all the factors of change in innovation networks are country specific. Initial conditions of innovation networks and funding provided by the MSPs are common factors explaining changes in innovation networks across countries and across different network functions. The study argues that investigating multi-stakeholder innovation network characteristics targeted by the MSP using a network approach in early implementation can contribute to better performance in generating and scaling innovations, and that funding can be an effective implementation tool in developing country contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the trends in today’s tourism sector is the development of environmentally-friendly tourism activities which rely on natural resources of cultural heritage and on biodiversity. This is definitely the case for agritourism, a form of rural tourism. The purpose of this paper is to identify the development aspects of Polish agritourism with particular emphasis on natural and cultural attractiveness. To demonstrate the relationship between agritourism activities of Polish farms and the cultural and natural attractiveness, the Hellwig’s synthetic development indicator was used. As shown by research, the cultural and natural attractiveness of a destination is an important exogenous development factor. Another finding was that the intensified efforts undertaken by the farmers to access EU funds were not focused on areas with valuable natural or cultural resources and an untapped agritourism potential; instead, they were oriented at regions dominated by semi-subsistence or family farms. For a large part of farmers, the new form of support is about to become a source of additional incomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the process of adapting the Stanford Coreference resolution module to the Basque language, taking into account the characteristics of the language. The module has been integrated in a linguistic analysis pipeline obtaining an end-to-end coreference resolution system for the Basque language. The adaptation process explained can benefit and facilitate other languages with similar characteristics in the implementation of their coreference resolution systems. During the experimentation phase, we have demonstrated that language-specific features have a noteworthy effect on coreference resolution, obtaining a gain in CoNLL score of 7.07 with respect to the baseline system. We have also analysed the effect that preprocessing has in coreference resolution, comparing the results obtained with automatic mentions versus gold mentions. When gold mentions are provided, the results increase 11.5 points in CoNLL score in comparison with results obtained when automatic mentions are used. The contribution of each sieve is analysed concluding that morphology is essential for agglutinative languages to obtain good performance in coreference resolution. Finally, an error analysis of the coreference resolution system is presented which have revealed our system’s weak points and help to determine the improvements of the system. As a result of the error analysis, we have enriched the Basque coreference resolution adding new two sieves, obtaining an improvement of 0.24 points in CoNLL F1 when automatic mentions are used and of 0.39 points when the gold mentions are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical studies show that discrimination by identity found in offline markets also prevails online. This paper reveal that in a competitive market, buyers that intend to discriminate exist but they are prevented from influencing the market outcome. To this end, we construct a field experiment on eBay, where half of the sellers disclose their names in their usernames while the other half do not. eBay, however, automatically discloses the seller’s names to the buyer after the auction. In the anonymous auctions, winning bidders thus learn the identity of the seller after the auction ends, and here we find buyers to discriminate against sellers with foreign-sounding names by leaving them feedback less often. However, there is no such discrimination in feedback provision when the seller name was known to the buyer before the auction. When bidders know the names of the sellers, the bidders with animus towards individuals with specific names can select out of auctions from these sellers, leaving winners that do not discriminate. One would expect that the auctions of for example sellers with foreign-sounding names would receive fewer bidders and thus lower auction prices. However, we observe no such differences: there are no statistically significant differences in the number of bids or auction prices received by sellers with foreign or domestic sounding names. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Honour killing’, the murder of women to preserve family reputation, is well recognised but infrequently systematically researched. This paper has three hypotheses. First, in families where women report an ‘honour killing’ there is more violence against women and girls, second these women are more likely to report more patriarchal gender attitudes than others, and third these families are exposed to higher levels of poverty. We asked (n = 1461) women enrolled in a trial in Afghanistan, and (n = 535) in a population-based sample in the occupied Palestinian Territories (oPT) if there had ever been an ‘honour killing’ in their family. In Afghanistan, 2.3% (n = 33), and the oPT 7.7% (n = 41), reported this. We built separate multivariable logistic regression models for each country, and for married and unmarried women in each country. Among Afghan married women, ‘honour killing’ was associated with borrowing because of hunger (adjusted odds ratio [aOR]8.71, 95%CI 2.27–33.40), easier access to money in emergency (aOR11.39, 95%CI 3.05–42.50), and violence within the family; intimate partner violence (IPV) (aOR3.73, 95%CI 1.12–12.36), and IPV and mother-in-law violence (aOR10.52, 2.60–42.56). For unmarried women in Afghanistan, ‘honour killing’ was associated with easier access money in an emergency (aOR4.06, 95%CI 0.85–19.37), household violence (hit by parent or sibling, or parent and sibling [aOR5.47, 95%CI 0.82–36.70; aOR7.37, 95%CI 1.24–43.86, respectively]); more childhood traumas (aOR1.24, 1.11–1.38), and more patriarchal personal gender attitudes (aOR1.24, 1.00–1.54). In the oPT experiencing IPV (aOR3.07, 1.02–9.23) and borrowing and experiencing IPV (aOR5.89, 1.84–18.79) were risks for married women. For unmarried women borrowing because of hunger was associated with higher risk (aOR2.33, 95%CI 1.18–4.85). Despite limitations–specifically the potential women were reporting the same ‘honour killing’—our analysis suggests ‘honour killings’ are associated with violence, patriarchy, and poverty. Research is needed for the prevention of ‘honour killing’, which must address the root causes. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institution-centered accounts of generalized trust rely on the idea that law-breaking and state’s unfairness lower individuals’ propensity to trust fellow citizens because of a weaker confidence in the state. Despite the theoretical relevance attributed to this mediation mechanism, no empirical analysis in the literature has focused on examining its correlational validity. Using data from the European Social Survey (2010), the Quality of Government EU Regional data, and EUROSTAT, this paper assesses the intervening role of institutional trust on the relationship between crime rates, state’s fairness, and generalized trust. Results from a Multilevel SEM (MSEM) mediation analysis indicate that trust in institutions strongly mediates the relationship between violent crimes (i.e. homicide) and generalized trust but not the one between property crimes (i.e. vehicle thefts and robberies) and generalized trust. On the other hand, indicators of fairness (i.e. impartiality and corruption) are all mediated by institutional trust, though impartiality maintains a significant direct effect. Overall, findings support the institutional approach, confirming that the negative relationship between ineffective and unfair institutions and generalized trust passes mostly through people’s lost faith in the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Against a backdrop of more than four decades of war, conflict and insecurity, Afghanistan is recognised as suffering from endemic violence and children are exposed to multiple forms of violence, including at the family and school levels. This paper presents the results of an evaluation of school-based peace education and a community-based intervention to change harmful social norms and practices related to gender and the use of violence in conflict resolution, implemented in Afghanistan with the aim of reducing violence against and between children. Methods: The evaluation consisted of a cross-sectional, interrupted time series design with three data collection points over 12 months. Data was collected from students in 11 secondary schools (seven girls’ and four boys’ schools) in Jawzjan province of Afghanistan, with a total of 361 boys and 373 girls sampled at endline. All children were interviewed with a questionnaire developed for the study. Key outcomes included children’s experience of peer violence (both perpetration and victimization) at school, corporal punishment both at home and at school, and observation of family violence. Other outcomes included children’s gender equitable attitudes, attitudes towards child punishment, depression and school performance. Results: Between baseline and endline evaluation points, there were significant reductions in various forms of violence at the school level, including both boys’ and girls’ past month experience of peer violence victimization, peer violence perpetration, and corporal punishment by teachers. There were also significant reductions in boys’ and girls’ experience of corporal punishment at home and observation of family violence, with a particularly strong effect observed among girls. Both boys and girls had significantly more equitable gender attitudes and significantly less violence-supportive attitudes in relation to children’s punishment, and significantly fewer symptoms of depression. Girls’ school attendance was also significantly higher at endline. Discussion: To our knowledge this is the first time that a peace education program has been evaluated in Afghanistan, with or without a community intervention to change harmful social norms and practices related to gender and the use of violence for conflict resolution. The evaluation suggests that the intervention may have led to a reduction in various forms of violence, including children’s peer violence, corporal punishment of children both at school and at home, and in children’s reports of domestic violence against women at the household level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: In connection to food insecurity, adaptation of new techniques or alteration of regular behavior is executed that translates to coping strategies. This paper has used data from food security and nutrition surveillance project (FSNSP), which collects information from a nationally representative sample in Bangladesh on coping behaviors associated with household food insecurity. To complement the current understanding of different coping strategies implemented by the Bangladeshi households, the objective of this paper has been set to examine the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the food insecure households which define their propensity towards adaptation of different types of coping strategies. Methodology: FSNSP follows a repeated cross-sectional survey design. Information of 23,374 food insecure households available from February 2011 to November 2013 was selected for the analyses. Coping strategies were categorized as financial, food compromised and both. Multinomial logistic regression was employed to draw inference. Results: Majority of the households were significantly more inclined to adopt both multiple financial and food compromisation coping strategies. Post-aman season, educational status of the household head and household women, occupation of the household’s main earner, household income, food insecurity status, asset, size and possession of agricultural land were found to be independently and significantly associated with adaptation of both financial and food compromisation coping strategies relative to only financial coping strategies. The relative risk ratio of adopting food compromisation coping relative to financial coping strategies when compared to mildly food insecure households, was 4.54 times higher for households with moderate food insecurity but 0.3 times lower when the households were severely food insecure. Whereas, households were 8.04 times and 4.98 times more likely to adopt both food compromisation and financial relative to only financial coping strategies if moderately and severely food insecure respectively when compared to being mildly food insecure. Conclusion: Households suffering from moderate and severe food insecurity, are more likely to adopt both financial and food compromisation coping strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TB is rated as one of the world’s deadliest diseases and South Africa ranks 9th out of the 22 countries with hardest hit of TB. Although many pieces of research have been carried out on this subject, this paper steps further by inculcating past knowledge into the model, using Bayesian approach with informative prior. Bayesian statistics approach is getting popular in data analyses. But, most applications of Bayesian inference technique are limited to situations of non-informative prior, where there is no solid external information about the distribution of the parameter of interest. The main aim of this study is to profile people living with TB in South Africa. In this paper, identical regression models are fitted for classical and Bayesian approach both with non-informative and informative prior, using South Africa General Household Survey (GHS) data for the year 2014. For the Bayesian model with informative prior, South Africa General Household Survey dataset for the year 2011 to 2013 are used to set up priors for the model 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to describe the prevalent forms of intimate partner violence (IPV), and the factors associated with IPV among women and men living in the two migrant communities of Baglung district, Nepal. 357 adult women and men were enrolled following a family model, interviewing young married women with daughter-in-law status in the home, their husbands, and mothers-in-law and fathers-in-laws using an electronic questionnaire. Random effects regression modelling compared men and women, as well as young married women with daughter-in-law status and older women with mothers-in-law with status. 28.6% of women had ever experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner compared to 18.2% of men ever perpetrated these forms of violence against their wives. Being older, male controlling behaviour and poor relations with husband increased women’s IPV in their lifetime while perceptions that the mother-in-law is kind were protective. Being ashamed of being unemployed and childhood trauma were associated with men perpetrating IPV in their lifetime. Borrowing money or food increased young married women’s lifetime IPV risk while mother-in-law cruelty and male control increased older married women’s lifetime IPV exposure. Factors associated with IPV in the past year among men were being younger, job seeking, experiences of childhood trauma and depression exposure among men while difficulty accessing money for emergencies, holding inequitable gender attitudes, and depression was associated with women’s increased IPV exposure. Unemployment stress, holding inequitable gender attitudes and mother-in-law kindness were associated with young women’s increased IPV risk and hunger, mother-in-law cruelty and depression with older women’s IPV risk. There is a need to critically challenge harmful social and gender norms by using approaches that are sensitive to young married women’s position and unequal gender relations in the family. IPV prevention interventions need to employ a holistic approach that combines changing social and gender norms and improving socioeconomic conditions of women living in migrant communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing critical global health issues, such as antimicrobial resistance, infectious disease outbreaks, and natural disasters, requires strong coordination and management across sectors. The One Health approach is the integrative effort of multiple sectors working to attain optimal health for people, animals, and the environment, and is increasingly recognized by experts as a means to address complex challenges. However, practical application of the One Health approach has been challenging. The One Health Systems Mapping and Analysis Resource Toolkit (OH-SMART) introduced in this paper was designed using a multistage prototyping process to support systematic improvement in multi-sectoral coordination and collaboration to better address complex health concerns through an operational, stepwise, and practical One Health approach. To date, OH-SMART has been used to strengthen One Health systems in 17 countries and has been deployed to revise emergency response frameworks, improve antimicrobial resistance national action plans and create multi agency infectious disease collaboration protocols. OH-SMART has proven to be user friendly, robust, and capable of fostering multi-sectoral collaboration and complex system-wide problem solving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent study shows that 617 million children and adolescents–or six out of 10 globally- are not acquiring minimum levels in literacy and mathematics, indicating the magnitude of the learning acquisition problem. For children with disabilities in context of conflict, the situation is arguably even worse: the literature shows that they face difficulties to access the education system due to multiple barriers, and when they do access, they are not learning. Our paper examines if an active education policy promoting inclusion since 2005 in Afghanistan, a protracted crisis context, has been effective. Using two cross sectional household surveys carried out eight years apart (2005–2013), our study shows that access to school and literacy did not improve between 2005 and 2013 for children and youth with disabilities. Both access and literacy outcomes were worse for girls with disabilities, those with a mental, learning or associated disability and those living in household where the head was uneducated. Finally, odds of being mentally distressed significantly declined between 2005 and 2013 indicating that schools might play a protective role for children with disabilities in Afghanistan. Our findings suggest that a multilevel multi-pronged adaptation of the existing system to improve the learning experience and promote children’s resilience, particularly for children with disabilities, in conflict context such as Afghanistan, is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns about the use of child labor in West African cocoa production became widespread in the early 2000s in many high-income countries. In 2015 in Ghana, 91.8% (or a total of 878,595) of the children working in the cocoa sector were involved in a form of hazardous work. Child labor in cocoa production is not just a symptom of poverty but also a contributing factor, as children often forgo a formal education to work in cocoa orchards. Current Ghanaian law prohibits child labor, but, with many cocoa households living in poverty, child labor becomes a necessity for survival, and as such, current child labor laws are rarely enforced. Therefore, an effective policy that eliminates child labor could compensate farmers by providing an economic incentive. In this paper, we develop and calibrate a farm household model to estimate the cocoa price premium necessary to eliminate child labor from cocoa production while leaving the farm household welfare unchanged. This welfare-neutral price premium removes the negative effects of eliminating child labor for the farm household. Varying degrees of child labor exists, with certain forms posing a greater risk to children’s wellbeing. The results show that eliminating the worst forms of child labor would require a cocoa price premium of 2.81% and eliminating regular work (non-hazardous work but over the maximum hours allowed for a child) and the worst forms would require an 11.81% premium, which could be paid for by the well-established Ghanaian Cocoa Marketing Board. An incentive for the Cocoa Marketing Board to pay the price premium and monitor and enforce this policy would be the ability to differentiate their cocoa as child-labor free and not lose market share to countries who cannot currently certify this practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This paper focuses on the issue of intimate partner violence and, specifically, on the distribution of femicides over time and the existence of copycat effects. This is the subject of an ongoing debate often triggered by the social alarm following multiple intimate partner homicides (IPHs) occurring in a short span of time. The aim of this research is to study the evolution of IPHs and provide a far-reaching answer by rigorously analyzing and searching for patterns in data on femicides. Methods: The study analyzes an official dataset, provided by the system VioGén of the Secretaría de Estado de Seguridad (Spanish State Secretariat for Security), including all the femicides occurred in Spain in 2007-2017. A statistical methodology to identify temporal interdependencies in count time series is proposed and applied to the dataset. The same methodology can be applied to other contexts. Results: There has been a decreasing trend in the number of femicides per year. No interdependencies among the temporal distribution of femicides are observed. Therefore, according to data, the existence of copycat effect in femicides cannot be claimed. Conclusions: Around 2011 there was a clear change in the average number of femicides which has not picked up. Results allow for an informed answer to the debate on copycat effect in Spanish femicides. The planning of femicides prevention activities should not be a reaction to a perceived increase in their occurrence. As a copycat effect is not detected in the studied time period, there is no evidence supporting the need to censor media reports on femicides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: For countries to contribute to Sustainable Development Goal 3.1 of reducing the global maternal mortality ratio (MMR) to less than 70 per 100,000 live births by 2030, identifying the drivers of maternal mortality is critically important. The ability of countries to identify the key drivers is however hampered by the lack of data sources with sufficient observations of maternal death to allow a rigorous analysis of its determinants. This paper overcomes this problem by utilising census data. In the context of Indonesia, we merge individual-level data on pregnancy-related deaths and households’ socio-economic status from the 2010 Indonesian population census with detailed data on the availability and quality of local health services from the Village Census. We use these data to test the hypothesis that health service access and quality are important determinants of maternal death and explain the differences between high maternal mortality and low maternal mortality provinces. Methods: The 2010 Indonesian Population Census identifies 8075 pregnancy-related deaths and 5,866,791 live births. Multilevel logistic regression is used to analyse the impacts of demographic characteristics and the existence of, distance to and quality of health services on the likelihood of maternal death. Decomposition analysis quantifies the extent to which the difference in maternal mortality ratios between high and low performing provinces can be explained by demographic and health service characteristics. Findings: Health service access and characteristics account for 23% (CI: 17.2% to 28.5%) of the difference in maternal mortality ratios between high and low-performing provinces. The most important contributors are the number of doctors working at the community health centre (8.6%), the number of doctors in the village (6.9%) and distance to the nearest hospital (5.9%). Distance to health clinics and the number of midwives at community health centres and village health posts are not significant contributors, nor is socio-economic status. If the same level of access to doctors and hospitals in lower maternal mortality Java-Bali was provided to the higher maternal mortality Outer Islands of Indonesia, our model predicts 44 deaths would be averted per 100,000 pregnancies. Conclusion: Indonesia has employed a strategy over the past several decades of increasing the supply of midwives as a way of decreasing maternal mortality. While there is evidence of reductions in maternal mortality continuing to accrue from the provision of midwife services at village health posts, our findings suggest that further reductions in maternal mortality in Indonesia may require a change of focus to increasing the supply of doctors and access to hospitals. If data on maternal death is collected in a subsequent census, future research using two waves of census data would prove a useful validation of the results found here. Similar research using census data from other countries is also likely to be fruitful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The main aims of this paper are to analyse the monetary value of informal care time using different techniques and to identify significant variables associated with the number of caregiving hours. Data and methods: A multicentre study in two Spanish regions in adult caregivers was conducted. A total sample of 604 people was available. A multivariate analysis was performed to identify the variables associated with the number of hours of caregiving time. In the monetary valuation of informal care provided, three approaches were used: replacement cost method, opportunity cost and contingent valuation (willingness to pay and willingness to accept). Results: The main determinants of the amount of time of informal care provided were age, gender, the level of care receiver´s dependence and the professional care services received (at home and out of home). The value estimated for informal care time ranges from EUROS 80,247 (replacement cost method) to EUROS 14,325 (willingness to pay), with intermediate values of EUROS 27,140 and EUROS 29,343 (opportunity cost and willingness to accept, respectively). Several sensitivity analyses were performed over the base cases, confirming the previous results. Conclusions: Time of informal care represents a great social value, regardless of the applied technique. However, the results can differ strongly depending on the technique chosen. Therefore, the choice of technique of valuation is not neutral. Among the determinants of informal care time, the professional care received at home has a complementary character to informal care, while the formal care outside the home has a substitute character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: A community’s cultural beliefs, attitudes and discourse can affect their responses in surveys. Knowledge of these cultural factors and how to comply with them or adjust for them during data collection can improve data quality. Objective: This study describes implications of features of Gambian culture related to women’s reproductive health, and mortality, when collecting data in surveys. Methods: 13 in-depth interviews of female interviewers and a focus group discussion among male interviewers were conducted in two rural health and demographic surveillance systems as well as three key informant interviews in three regions in The Gambia. Results: From the fieldworker’s viewpoint, questions relating to reproduction were best asked by women as culturally pregnancies should be concealed, and menstruation is considered a sensitive topic. Gambians were reluctant to speak about decedents and the Fula did not like to be counted, potentially affecting estimation of mortality. Asking about siblings proved problematic among the Fula and Serahule communities. Proposals made to overcome these challenges were that culturally-appropriate metaphors and symbols should be used to discuss sensitive matters and to enumerating births/deaths singly instead of collecting summary totals, which had threatening connotations. This was as opposed to training interviewers to ask standardised and precise verbatim questions. Contribution: This paper presents indigenous Gambian solutions by fieldworkers to culturally sensitive topics when collecting pregnancy outcomes and mortality data in demographic and health surveys. For researchers collecting maternal mortality data, it highlights the potential shortcomings of the sibling history methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: NEETs (young people not in employment, education or training) are at higher risk for poorer mental and physical health. In France, the Missions locales (MLs) are the only social structures dedicated to this population. We sought to determine whether the systematic offer of a social and preventive medicine consultation at a ML might increase NEET participants’ access to training in the 12 months following the intervention. Methods: This intervention research was a parallel randomised controlled interventional study conducted at five MLs in mainland France in 2011–2012. It included 976 NEETs aged 18 to 25 years who attended one of the five MLs. At inclusion, participants were randomly assigned (1:1:1) to three groups: those in the first group were invited to see a social worker (not studied in this paper), those in the second group were invited to see a doctor and a social worker (intervention group), and the third was a control group. The primary outcome was participation in at least one training session during the year following study inclusion. Results: Among the 976 participants, 504 were randomly assigned to the intervention group and 472 to the control group; 704 (72.1%) were included in the analyses. A significantly higher proportion of the participants in the intervention group participated in a training session in the 12 months following the intervention than of those in the control group (63.3% vs 55.6%; p = 0.04). This difference was significantly greater for women, those less than 21 years of age, those unstably housed and those with a lower level of education. Conclusions: Social and preventive medicine consultations that are fully integrated into the social services for NEETs have an impact on their access to training and contribute to changing some of their health-related behaviours. This may improve their access to the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the centrality of regions in social movements, politics and public administration, here we aim to quantitatively study regional identity, cross-region communication and sentiment. This paper presents a new methodology to study social interaction within and between social-geographic regions, and then applies the methodology to a case study of England and Wales. We use a social network, built from geo-located Twitter data, to identify contiguous geographical regions with a shared social identity and then investigate patterns of communication within and between them. In contrast to other approaches (e.g. using phone call data records or online friendship networks), use of Twitter data provides message contents as well as social connections. This allows us to investigate not only the volume of communication between locations, but also the sentiment and vocabulary used in the messages. For example, our case study shows: a significant dialect difference between England and Wales; that regions tend to be more positive about themselves than about others, with the South being more ‘self-regarding’ than the North; and that people talk politics much more between regions than within. This study demonstrates how social media can be used to quantify regional identity and inter-region communications and sentiment, exposing these previously hard-to-observe geographic concepts to analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A project named PERSISTAH (Projetos de Escolas Resilientes aos SISmos no Território do Algarve e de Huelva, in Portuguese) is being developed. It aims to cooperatively assess and improve the seismic vulnerability of primary schools in the Algarve (Portugal) and Huelva (Spain). A large number of schools have to be analysed. In order to determine which seismic retrofitting technique is optimal, an index-based method is presented in this paper. It considers three parameters: first, the efficiency of the seismic retrofitting technique in relation to the structural improvement obtained; second, the cost of the implementation of the retrofitting technique; and third, the architectural impact. It should be mentioned that a specific measurement for each solution according to its geometry has been performed. Also, coefficients to consider the singularities of each analysis and the importance of the parameters (number of buildings, typology, available funds, etc.) in the study are considered. The most representative primary school of Huelva has been chosen to test the index-based method. The most suitable retrofitting techniques for this type of buildings have been tested. The retrofitting technique which most increased the seismic performance has been the addition of X and V bracings within the building’s bays. Furthermore, the analyses have revealed that adding the retrofitting elements in the most vulnerable direction of the building provides a high efficiency. The results have also shown that implementing techniques of lower architectural impact gives acceptable results. The analysis of the mean damage level index has shown that the building would experiment a severe damage. All the retrofitting techniques applied have reduced it, at least, up to moderate damage. Finally, it should be noted that the position of the retrofitting elements is also paramount for providing an optimal retrofitting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies have shown that childhood circumstances can have long term consequences that persist until old age. To better understand the transmission of early life circumstances, this paper analyses the effects of health and financial situation during childhood on quality of life after retirement as well as the mediating role of later life health, educational level, and income in this association. Moreover, this study is the first to compare these pathways across European regions. The analyses are based on data of 13,092 retirees aged ≥ 60 and ≤ 85 years from the fifth wave of the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) with full information on childhood and later life measures of health, educational level, financial situation, and quality of life as well as relevant covariates. Five European regions are studied: Central-Western Europe (Austria, Germany), Central-Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Estonia, Slovenia), Northern Europe (Denmark, Sweden), Southern Europe (Italy, Spain), and Western Europe (Belgium, France, The Netherlands). Path analysis is used to identify the direct and indirect effects of childhood measures on quality of life. We find retirees’ quality of life to be associated with childhood finances and health in all five European regions. While both the direct and indirect effects of childhood health are rather moderate and homogeneous across regions, especially the direct effects of childhood finances on quality of life after retirement display a distinct North-South gradient being strongest in Southern Europe. Potential explanations for the regional variations are differences in the countries’ welfare systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are public officials more responsive to requests from affluent or poor constituents? A growing body of evidence suggests that lawmakers are more responsive to the rich when they craft policy. However, some scholars theorize that officials also exhibit a corresponding bias in favor of the poor when they handle casework, essentially giving policy to the rich and services to the poor. In this paper, we test this casework prediction using four experiments in which confederates sent simple requests to state or local officials. In each, our confederates’ reported social classes were randomly assigned and signaled with a brief introductory statement mentioning the sender’s occupation or economic situation. Across our samples, we find precisely-estimated null effects of social class biases: the officials we studied were equally likely to respond regardless of the constituent’s class. These findings raise doubts about whether casework is really a class-biased process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the link between reliance on Facebook for news, political knowledge, and political engagement in the Philippines. We tested five hypotheses using data gathered from an online survey of 978 Filipinos conducted from February 1 to March 31, 2016. Findings support the hypothesis that those who rely less on social media as a news source exhibit higher levels of perceived knowledge about politics than those who rely more on it for news. Controlling for traditional news use, following political officials or institutions on social media is associated with higher levels of political interest and engagement, those with more politically active friends on Facebook have higher levels of exposure to political content online, and there is a positive correlation between Facebook being a source of information about politics and discussing politics more often with others. However, the hypothesis that those with more friends on their network who are politically active, will have greater political knowledge and more political engagement than those who have few politically active friends on their Facebook network is not supported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The overall goal of the Saleema Initiative in Sudan is to promote long-term abandonment of female genital mutilation and cutting (FGM) through a contribution to changing social norms, attitudes, and intentions related to the practice. The initiative aims to create positive cultural associations with a girl remaining uncut, a new social norm. Saleema hypothesizes that branding the alternative to FGM (abandonment) will promote social norms change. In 2014, the lead author designed a monitoring and evaluation framework for Saleema in partnership with UNICEF, the National Council for Child Welfare (NCCW), and local organizations. Methods: The Saleema evaluation aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the campaign in reducing pro-FGM social norms. A quasi-experimental design controlled for dosage of campaign messages delivered across the 18 states in Sudan to measure a dose-response effect. We operationalized social norms through a 4-item scale validated in previous research. Results: This paper reports on quantitative evaluation findings based on data gathered in from 2015–2017 and focuses on the dose-response relationship between Saleema exposure and changes in FGM social norms. We found that self-reported exposure was associated with reduced pro-FGM social norms (coeff. = -0.329, p < .001). Additionally, higher doses of Saleema, measured through an exogenous measure of campaign event exposure from an independent monitoring system was associated with reduced pro-FGM social norms (coeff. = -0.146, p < .001). Conclusions: Saleema was effective in reducing pro-FGM social norms. It is a promising strategy and findings contribute to the growing literature on social norms approaches to behavior change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Due to changes in Polish society resulting from a significant inflow of immigrants to Poland, the need to develop the cultural competences of various professional groups who have contact with immigrants in their work has increased. These groups should include healthcare professionals, especially because of the significant increase in the number of culturally diverse patients. Therefore, medical education in Poland has had to rapidly adapt to this novel situation. For instance, the teaching process should be now more focused on the development and evaluation of the cultural competences of prospective health care workers. However, there is still a lack of standardized, valid and reliable instruments to assess cross-cultural competences among healthcare professionals. The purpose of the present paper was to describe, for the first time, the translation, adaptation, and psychometric evaluation of the Polish version of the Cross-Cultural Competence Inventory. Methods: Across two studies, we examined psychometric properties of the Cross-Cultural Competence Inventory (CCCI) such as reliability (i.e. internal consistency, test-retest reliability, factor structure) and validity (i.e. theoretical, criteria, convergent). In the first study, 408 participants (75% were healthcare professionals) completed the Polish version of the CCCI and the Positive/Negative Attitude Towards Culturally Divergent People Questionnaire. In the second study, 317 participants (97% were healthcare professionals) completed the CCCI twice, with an interval of at least 22 days. In addition, across two study sessions, participants completed questionnaires constructed to measure (a) cultural intelligence, (b) need for cognitive closure, (c) emphatic sensitiveness, (d) emotional intelligence, (e) self-esteem, (f) social desirability, and (g) personality. Finally, to additionally examine the theoretical validity, 36 professional cross-cultural competence trainers completed the CCCI during a one-session study. Results: Our findings confirm the reliability and validity of the CCCI. More precisely, in study 1 we proved the theoretical validity and reliability (i.e. internal consistency) of the CCCI. While the assumed structure did not fit the data well, all items were significantly related to the general factor, thus providing strong support for the usage of the total score of the CCCI. In study 2, we additionally estimated the test-retest reliability and theoretical, criterion and convergent validity. Across two studies we were able to successfully confirm these psychometric properties. The reliability was satisfactory and ranged from .83 to .86. We also observed a high and significant positive correlation between CCCI and the Cultural Intelligence Scale, which measures a concept similar to the one measured by CCCI. In addition, a significant relationship between intercultural competences (CCCI) and other variables such as personality, empathic sensitivity, emotional intelligence, self-esteem (positive correlations) and the need for cognitive closure (mainly negative correlation) were demonstrated. Conclusions: The obtained results support the usage of the CCCI questionnaire in scientific research, such as, for example, among healthcare professionals (nurses, doctors) and students of medical fields (nursing, medicine). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Nutrition outcomes among young children in Nigeria are among the worse globally. Mother’s limited knowledge about food choices, feeding, and health care seeking practices contributes significantly to negative nutrition outcomes for children in most developing countries. Much less is known about the relationship between mother’s nutrition-related knowledge and child nutritional outcomes in rural Nigeria. This paper investigates therefore: (i) the association of mother’s nutrition-related knowledge with nutrition outcomes of young children living in rural Nigeria, where access to education is limited, and (ii) whether mother’s education has a complementary effect on such knowledge in producing positive child nutrition outcomes in such settings. Methods: Using the Demographic and Health Survey data for Nigeria, we employ both descriptive and regression analyses approaches in analyzing the study’s objectives. In particular, we apply ordinary least square (OLS) to investigate the association of mother’s nutrition-related knowledge with child HAZ and WHZ while controlling for maternal, child, household and regional characteristics. An index was constructed for mother’s nutrition-related knowledge using information on dietary practices, disease treatment and prevention, child immunization, and family planning. Results: We found that mother’s knowledge is independently and positively associated with HAZ and WHZ scores in young children. Higher levels of mother’s education, typically above primary, have a significant, positive association with child HAZ and WHZ scores. We argue that mother’s knowledge of health and nutrition may substitute for education in reducing undernutrition in young children among populations with limited access to formal education. However, the present level of mother’s education in rural Nigeria appears insufficient to reinforce knowledge in producing better nutrition outcomes for children. Conclusions: This study suggests promotion of out-of-school (informal) education, such as adult literacy and numeracy classes where women without formal education can gain health and nutrition knowledge, and practices that could enhance child nutrition outcomes in Nigeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earthworms are primary candidates for national soil health monitoring as they are ecosystem engineers that benefit both food production and ecosystem services associated with soil security. Supporting farmers to monitor soil health could help to achieve the policy aspiration of sustainable soils by 2030 in England; however, little is known about how to overcome participation barriers, appropriate methodologies (practical, cost-effective, usefulness) or training needs. This paper presents the results from a pilot #60minworms study which mobilised farmers to assess over >1300 ha farmland soils in spring 2018. The results interpretation framework is based on the presence of earthworms from each of the three ecological groups at each observation (20 x 20 cm x 20 cm pit) and spatially across a field (10 soil pits). Results showed that most fields have basic earthworm presence and abundance, but 42% fields may be over-worked as indicated by absence/rarity of epigeic and/or anecic earthworms. Tillage had a negative impact (p < 0.05) on earthworm populations and organic matter management did not mitigate tillage impacts. In terms of farmer participation, Twitter and Farmers Weekly magazine were highly effective channels for recruitment. Direct feedback from participants included excellent scores in trust, value and satisfaction of the protocol (e.g. 100% would do the test again) and 57% would use their worm survey results to change their soil management practices. A key training need in terms of earthworm identification skills was reported. The trade-off between data quality, participation rates and fieldwork costs suggests there is potential to streamline the protocol further to #30minworms (5 pits), incurring farmer fieldwork costs of approximately £1.48 ha-1. At national scales, £14 million pounds across 4.7 M ha-1 in fieldwork costs per survey could be saved by farmer participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: In many sub-Saharan African countries, confronting the dual epidemic of HIV and NCDs is a public health priority especially in high HIV burden countries such as South Africa. Evidence shows that poor health as a consequence of NCDs and HIV among the workforce increases absenteeism and leads to decrease in productivity. However, the prevalence of these co-occurring chronic conditions and associated factors is unknown in the educator workforce. Improved understanding has implications for their management and wellbeing of educators. This paper reports the prevalence of selected NCDs and associated factors among HIV positive educators in South Africa using the 2015/6 survey of Educators in Public Schools in South Africa. Methods: This was a second-generation surveillance undertaken among educators in selected public schools in all nine provinces in South Africa. A multi-stage stratified cluster design with probability proportional to size sampling was used to draw a random sample of schools. Factors associated with presence of NCDs were determined using a multivariate backward stepwise logistic regression analysis. Results: A total of 1 365 schools were sampled within which 21 495 (85.5%) educators were interviewed. Out of 2691, HIV Positive educators that responded to the questions on NCDs, 36.9% reported having NCDs. The most commonly reported NCDs were high blood pressure (17.4%), and stomach ulcers (13.5%). The increased odds of reporting the presence of NCDs was significantly associated with being female than male [aOR = 1.5: 95% CI (1.1–1.9), p<0.002], age 45 to 54 years [aOR = 1.8: 95% CI (1.4–2.2), p = p<0.001], and age 55 years and older than those 18 to 24 years [aOR = 2.7: 95% CI (1.8–3.9), p<0.001). The decreased odds of reporting the presence of NCDs was significantly associated with not being absent from school for health reasons [aOR = 0.7: 95% CI (0.6–0.9), p = 0.003]. Conclusion: NCDs care and active screening should be an integral part of HIV programmes including interventions such as prevention, treatment, care and support amongst public school educators in SA. The education department will need to invest in health promotion intervention programmes to prevent and mitigate the negative impact of NCDs and HIV on the sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Metal Road Safety Barriers (MRSB) are one of the devices implemented in roadsides to mitigate the consequences of run-off crashes. In Europe, they have to meet the requirements of the European Standard EN-1317-2. This article analyzes a set of run-off crashes against MRSB, for which an in-depth investigation has been performed, comparing them with the standard tests. It has been observed that in many of these real crashes, the barriers have not worked properly in spite of having passed these standard tests. This paper demonstrates which variables may be responsible for this, with the objective of helping to improve the current test standard through the analysis of new test variables. Methods: Multidimensional Scaling, a dimension reduction multivariate statistical technique, has been used to better understand how real crashes compare to standard tests, using several impact variables at the same time. Then, a statistical analysis has been developed to show the influence of the “Relative orientation impact angle” on the performance of the MRSB. Results: Most of the real crashes analyzed are close to “TB11” and “TB32” standard tests. In many of these real crashes, the “Relative orientation impact angle” is very different from the “Impact angle”, and in these situations, the vehicle is not safely redirected to the road concerning the so-called “Exit-Box”. Conclusions: MRSB are not working properly in some situations that are not far from the standard tests. To handle this, it could be interesting to include the “Relative orientation impact angle” as a control variable in new versions of the EN-1317-2 tests to guarantee the behavior of the MRSB. These results can help to adapt some test variables from the EN-1317-2 to what is happening in crashes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new public-use dataset for community-level life satisfaction in Canada, based on more than 500,000 observations from the Canadian Community Health Surveys and the General Social Surveys. The country is divided into 1216 similarly sampled geographic regions, using natural, built, and administrative boundaries. A cross-validation exercise suggests that our choice of minimum sampling thresholds approximately maximizes the predictive power of our estimates. The resulting dataset reveals robust differences in life satisfaction between and across urban and rural communities. We compare aggregated life satisfaction data with a range of key census variables to illustrate some of the ways in which lives differ in the most and least happy communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose an agent-based model leading to a decrease or an increase of hostility between agents after a major cultural threat such as a terrorist attack. The model is inspired from the Terror Management Theory and the Social Judgement Theory. An agent has a cultural identity defined through its acceptance segments about each of three different cultural worldviews (i.e., Atheist, Muslim, Christian) of the considered society. An agent’s acceptance segment is composed from its acceptable positions toward a cultural worldview, including its most acceptable position. An agent forms an attitude about another agent depending on the similarity between their cultural identities. When a terrorist attack is perpetrated in the name of an extreme cultural identity, the negatively perceived agents from this extreme cultural identity point of view tend to decrease the width of their acceptance segments in order to differentiate themselves more from the threatening cultural identity. We generated a set of populations with cultural identities compatible with data from a survey on attitudes among a large sample representative of the population of France; we then simulated the reaction of these agents facing a terrorist attack from Muslim extremists. For most populations, the average attitude toward Muslims becomes more negative. However, for some specific populations, we noticed the opposite effect as the average attitude of the population toward Muslims becomes less negative. In these populations, the Muslim agents strongly differentiate themselves from the terrorists’ extreme cultural identity, and the other agents are aware of these changes. These reactions are due to particular properties of their cultural identities that are identified in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The burden of late presentation is well established in women presenting with advanced breast cancer in Africa. This paper aims to explore the reasons for delayed presentation in Ghanaian women with breast cancer. Method: Eleven (11) women diagnosed with advanced breast cancer were purposively sampled within three years of diagnosis at the palliative care clinic of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, Ghana. Participation was voluntary. Data was collected through in-depth interviews using a self-devised semi-structured interview guide. The interviews were conducted in “Twi” (local language), audio-tape recorded and covered the women’s journey from symptom discovery to their intention to seek help. All audio-taped interviews were transcribed based on the meaning of the respondents’ comments. The data was managed using Nvivo version 11 qualitative software. Data was analyzed concurrently with data collection applying the principles of thematic analysis. Key findings: All the women delayed presentation due to overlapping reasons. Symptom appraisal among the women occurred in two main stages: individual understanding of breast symptom and interactive understanding of the breast symptom. These stages were based on cognitive, psycho-cultural and social factors. The five main themes generated from the data were: symptom experience, knowledge of breast cancer, role of social life and network, coping with a breast symptom and lastly intent to seeking health care. A conceptual model was developed to illustrate the relationships among the key factors and concepts emanated from this study. Conclusion: Recognition and appraisal of breast cancer symptom in the eleven (11) Ghanaian women interviewed in this study was poor. For instance, a painless breast lump was considered not serious until a sensory symptom appears. This led women to experience appraisal and time point intervals. To minimize the incidence of late presentation of breast cancer cases in Ghana, adequate educational intervention should be provided for Ghanaian women and their social network, and other stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agent-based models are a tool that can be used to better understand the dynamics of an infectious disease outbreak. An infectious disease outbreak is influenced by many factors including vaccination or immunity levels, population density, and the age structure of the population. We hypothesize that these factors along with interactions of factors and the actions of individuals would lead to outbreaks of different size and severity even in two towns that appear similar on paper. Thus, it is necessary to implement a model that is able to capture these interactions and the actions of individuals. Using openly available data we create a data-driven agent-based model to simulate the spread of an airborne infectious disease in an Irish town. Agent-based models have been known to produce results that include the emergence of patterns and behaviours that are not directly programmed into the model. Our model is tested by simulating an outbreak of measles that occurred in Schull, Ireland in 2012. We simulate the same outbreak in 33 different towns and look at the correlations between the model results and the town characteristics (population, area, vaccination rates, age structure) to determine if the results of the model are affected by interactions of those town characteristics and the decisions on the agents in the model. As expected our results show that the outbreaks are not strongly correlated with any of the main characteristics of the towns and thus the model is most likely capturing such interactions and the agent-based model is successful in capturing the differences in the outbreaks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Vaccine hesitancy has been little studied in low- and middle-income countries but is a potential concern because vaccine refusal may increase the burden of infectious diseases and impede control efforts. The aim of this study was to compare vaccine hesitancy between locals, long-time city residents, and non-locals, who have more recently moved to the city from either other urban or rural areas, in Shanghai, China. Methods: Parents of infants ≤3 months of age were surveyed at immunization clinics in Shanghai, China. Participants completed a paper questionnaire utilizing the 10-item Vaccine Hesitancy Scale, which was developed by the World Health Organization Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization. Items were grouped based on internal consistency, and regressed onto demographic variables using a negative binomial model. Results: In total, 1,188 (92.5%) individuals participated. For most items on the scale, parents expressed positive beliefs about vaccines. However, about half of parents somewhat or strongly agreed that new vaccines carried more risks than older vaccines, and 71.6% somewhat or strongly agreed that they were concerned about serious adverse effects. Seven items from the Vaccine Hesitancy Scale were highly correlated and mapped onto “lack of confidence”; the other three items were analysed separately. Compared to mothers, fathers had less lack of confidence (β: -0.06, 95% CI: -0.12, -0.01), and individuals living in the outer suburbs (β: 0.13, 95% CI: 0.01, 0.25) and rural non-locals (β: 0.10, 95% CI: 0.02, 0.18) had greater lack of confidence in vaccines compared to their urban or local counterparts, respectively. Discussion: Shanghai parents professed confidence in certain vaccine benefits, but vaccine messaging could focus on addressing misconceptions about vaccines for diseases no longer common, newer vaccines, and adverse effects associated with vaccination. These messages may need to be separately tailored to locals and non-locals, who have differing concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To describe level of education and work participation among adults with congenital unilateral upper limb deficiency (CUULD) in Norway and to explore associations between work participation and demographic and clinical factors. Methods: Cross-sectional study. In 2012, a postal questionnaire was sent to 186 persons with congenital limb deficiency (CLD), age ≥ 20 years, registered at the TRS National Resource Center for Rare Disorders. In the original CLD study, 77 persons with CUULD responded. In this paper 64 persons with CUULD of working age (20–67 years) are included. Data on demographic factors as education level and work participation, and clinical factors including limb deficiency characteristics, chronic pain (Standardized Nordic Questionnaire), fatigue (Fatigue Severity Scale), physical and mental health (SF-36) were analyzed through descriptive and comparable statistics and logistic regression analyses. Results: Sixty-four persons participated, mean age 43.4 (SD 13.7; range 20–67 years), 45 were women. Education level >13 years was reported by 34. Forty- three of the 64 participants were employed, 21 were prematurely retired (disability benefits). 11 of the 43 employed, and 6 of the 21 prematurely retired had completed vocational education. Physically demanding occupations (work activities that required standing, walking and lifting) were reported by 25 of the 43 employed and 13 of the 21 prematurely retired. 17 of the 64 reported need for further adaptions in their workplaces. The strongest predictors of work participation were younger age (OR 0.86) and good physical health (OR 1.21). Conclusion: Two thirds of persons with CUULD were employed; while one third was prematurely retired and had left work earlier than expected. This suggests that persons with CUULD may experience challenges in work participation. Although levels of education were relatively high, several had chosen careers that required physical strain. Younger age and good physical health were the most important factors mediating work participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]