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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]

The Google Books Ngram Viewer (Google Ngram) is a search engine that charts word frequencies from a large corpus of books and thereby allows for the examination of cultural change as it is reflected in books. While the tool's massive corpus of data (about 8 million books or 6% of all books ever published) has been used in various scientific studies, concerns about the accuracy of results have simultaneously emerged. This paper reviews the literature and serves as a guideline for improving Google Ngram studies by suggesting five methodological procedures suited to increase the reliability of results. In particular, we recommend the use of (I) different language corpora, (II) cross-checks on different corpora from the same language, (III) word inflections, (IV) synonyms, and (V) a standardization procedure that accounts for both the influx of data and unequal weights of word frequencies. Further, we outline how to combine these procedures and address the risk of potential biases arising from censorship and propaganda. As an example of the proposed procedures, we examine the cross-cultural expression of religion via religious terms for the years 1900 to 2000. Special emphasis is placed on the situation during World War II. In line with the strand of literature that emphasizes the decline of collectivistic values, our results suggest an overall decrease of religion's importance. However, religion re-gains importance during times of crisis such as World War II. By comparing the results obtained through the different methods, we illustrate that applying and particularly combining our suggested procedures increase the reliability of results and prevents authors from deriving wrong assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Cultural changes faced by immigrants and ethnic minorities after moving to a host country may have a detrimental or beneficial influence on their oral health and oral health-related behaviors. Therefore, this paper reviews the literature to see the impact of acculturation on immigrants and ethnic minorities’ oral health outcomes. Methods: We searched seven electronic databases up to January 2018. All cross-sectional and longitudinal quantitative studies that examined associations between acculturation and oral health status and/or oral health behaviors among ethnic minority and immigrant population[s] were included. Study selection, data extraction, and risk of bias assessment were completed in duplicate. The Newcastle-Ottawa checklist was used to appraise the methodological quality of the quantitative studies. A meta-analytic approach was not feasible. Results: A total of 42 quantitative studies were identified. The studies showed a positive association between acculturation and oral health status/behaviors. The most frequently used acculturation indicators were language spoken by immigrant and ethnic minorities and length of stay at the host country. High-acculturated immigrant and ethnic minority groups demonstrated better oral health outcomes, oral health behaviors, dental care utilization, and dental knowledge. Conclusions: According to existing evidence, a positive effect of acculturation on oral health status and behaviors was found. Practical implications: Dental practitioners should be culturally competent to provide the appropriate services and treatments to immigrant and ethnic minorities. Policymakers should also be sensitive to cultural diversities and properly address the unique needs of each group in order to maintain oral health equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the foods we eat and the houses we construct, to our religious practices and political organization, to who we can marry and the types of games we teach our children, the diversity of cultural practices in the world is astounding. Yet, our ability to visualize and understand this diversity is limited by the ways it has been documented and shared: on a culture-by-culture basis, in locally-told stories or difficult-to-access repositories. In this paper we introduce D-PLACE, the Database of Places, Language, Culture, and Environment. This expandable and open-access database (accessible at ) brings together a dispersed corpus of information on the geography, language, culture, and environment of over 1400 human societies. We aim to enable researchers to investigate the extent to which patterns in cultural diversity are shaped by different forces, including shared history, demographics, migration/diffusion, cultural innovations, and environmental and ecological conditions. We detail how D-PLACE helps to overcome four common barriers to understanding these forces: i) location of relevant cultural data, (ii) linking data from distinct sources using diverse ethnonyms, (iii) variable time and place foci for data, and (iv) spatial and historical dependencies among cultural groups that present challenges for analysis. D-PLACE facilitates the visualisation of relationships among cultural groups and between people and their environments, with results downloadable as tables, on a map, or on a linguistic tree. We also describe how D-PLACE can be used for exploratory, predictive, and evolutionary analyses of cultural diversity by a range of users, from members of the worldwide public interested in contrasting their own cultural practices with those of other societies, to researchers using large-scale computational phylogenetic analyses to study cultural evolution. In summary, we hope that D-PLACE will enable new lines of investigation into the major drivers of cultural change and global patterns of cultural diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]