Function Of Demographic Factors Research Articles

Demographic and mental health assessments in the adolescent brain and cognitive development study: Updates and age-related trajectories

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study of 11,880 youth incorporates a comprehensive range of measures assessing predictors and outcomes related to mental health across childhood and adolescence in participating youth, as well as information about family mental health history. We have previously described the logic and content of the mental health assessment battery at Baseline and 1-year follow-up. Here, we describe changes to that battery and issues and clarifications that have emerged, as well as additions to the mental health battery at the 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-year follow-ups. We capitalize on the recent release of longitudinal data for caregiver and youth report of mental health data to evaluate trajectories of dimensions of psychopathology as a function of demographic factors. For both caregiver and self-reported mental health symptoms, males showed age-related decreases in internalizing and externalizing symptoms, while females showed an increase in internalizing symptoms with age. Multiple indicators of socioeconomic status (caregiver education, family income, financial adversity, neighborhood poverty) accounted for unique variance in both caregiver and youth-reported externalizing and internalizing symptoms. These data highlight the importance of examining developmental trajectories of mental health as a function of key factors such as sex and socioeconomic environment.

Studying Away and Well-Being: A Comparison Study Between International and Home Students in the UK

The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of being away from home on the well-being of international and domestic UK university students as a function of demographic factors, course load, support, personality, healthy lifestyle, and their employment of pre-planning and being at university strategies. A total of 510 students (n = 391 international and 117 British) completed an on-line survey to record demographic details and measure their well-being, quality of university life, and their being away from home strategies. The findings showed that International students reported greater quality of university life and used more pre-departure strategies; the female students reported a significantly more negative well-being and higher course demand than their male peers. A regression analysis showed that positive well-being was predicted by a positive personality, a healthy lifestyle, control and support for academic work, quality of university life and employing well-being strategies (using technology without over-reliance on it and the ability to unwind from study). Negative well-being, on the other hand, was predicted by a less positive personality and a less healthy lifestyle, a higher course demand, less control and support for academic work and less quality of university life. Moreover, the regression analysis showed that international students who employed more pre-departure strategies showed less negative well-being.

Condom use by South African construction workers

Consistent and proper condom use is pivotal in preventing HIV infection. HIV prevalence in South Africa is among the highest in the world, with the construction industry especially affected, yet little is known about condom use by construction workers and the determinants thereof. Data were gathered from 512 site-based workers in the Western Cape. A theoretical model explaining condom use as a function of demographic factors, HIV knowledge, substance usage and risky sexual behaviour (excluding condom use) was proposed and tested using regression and structural equations modelling. The findings indicated that age, gender and level of education were indirect determinants of condom use, with higher levels of education predicting better AIDS-related knowledge. Higher levels of risky sexual behaviour were associated with more frequent use of condoms, suggesting greater awareness of risk. Condom use was adversely affected by greater alcohol and drug use, probably as a result of diminished capacity to assess risk. Finally, lower and not higher levels of AIDS-related knowledge were associated with better condom use, suggesting that improved knowledge of HIV transmission may work contrary to safe sex practice if it lulls the person into a false sense of confidence. Recommendations for targeted workplace interventions are proposed.

Older adult awareness of the influence of cardiovascular disease risk factors on cognitive function.

The aims of the current study were to (i) assess older people's awareness of the association between CVD risk factors and cognitive function; and (ii) examine whether awareness varies as a function of demographic factors. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors have been linked to subtle deficits in cognitive function. CVD risk factors increase the risk of cognitive decline and dementia. The association between cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors and cognitive decrements has been well documented among older people; however, we are unaware of any studies that have measured older people's awareness of this relationship in an effort to assess educational needs. A descriptive, cross-sectional survey design was employed. Community-based older adults aged 60 and older completed a survey that assessed their knowledge of the association between CVD risk factors and cognitive function. One hundred fifty older adults, with a mean age of 72.88years, completed the survey. Results showed that over 75% of the sample was aware that CVD risk factors affect cognitive function. White older adults and older adults with greater perceived financial well-being tended to be more aware of these relationships than non-White participants with less perceived financial well-being. Results suggest that many, but not all older people have awareness of this relationship. As such, there is a need for increased education about the cognitive effects of CVD risk factors, particularly among older people who are already at risk for developing CVD and those with lesser financial well-being. Appropriate educational strategies can expose older patients to the importance of healthy lifestyle and self-care to maintain cognitive function. Nurses can incorporate education into care by identifying patients that would benefit from tailored interventions and providing information to at-risk patients about how to maintain their cognitive function through management of specific CVD risk factors.

First-year undergraduate induction: Who attends and how important is induction for first year attainment?

The first year of study in higher education is a time of major transition for students. While the importance of induction has been widely demonstrated, there is evidence to suggest that not all students benefit equally from participation in induction. This study examined attendance rates at induction, the relationship between induction attendance and first-year attainment and, finally, whether this relationship differed as a function of demographic factors, entry qualifications and the number of credits attempted. Data from students enrolled in the first year of full-time undergraduate study in a UK metropolitan institution of higher education in 2011–12 was collected from an internal cross-sectional survey and from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service. Results showed that attendance at induction differed as a function of a number of demographic characteristics. In line with and extending previous research, ethnicity and previous entry qualifications predicted unique variance in attainment, as did the number of credits attempted and attendance at induction. The attainment gap related to attendance at induction was greater for students who attempted fewer than 120 credits. Overall, the results emphasise the importance of attendance at induction and the need for early engagement with new students, which may be particularly beneficial to those unable to attend induction.

Household response to environmental incentives for rain garden adoption

AbstractA decentralized approach to encourage the voluntary adoption of household stormwater management practices is increasingly needed to mitigate urban runoff and to comply with more stringent water quality regulations. We analyze the household response to a hypothetical rebate program to incentivize rain garden adoption using household survey data from the Baltimore‐Washington corridor. We asked respondents whether the household would adopt a rain garden without a rebate or when offered a randomly assigned rebate. An interval‐data model is used to estimate household demand on the willingness to pay (WTP) for a rain garden as a function of demographic factors, gardening activities, environmental attitudes, and other household characteristics. Estimation results indicate that mean WTP for a rain garden in our sample population is approximately $6.72 per square foot, corresponding to almost three‐fourths of the installation cost. The expected adoption rate more than tripled when comparing no rebate versus a government rebate set at one‐third of the installation cost, indicating that economic incentives matter. There is substantial heterogeneity in the WTP among households. Higher levels of WTP are estimated for households with higher environmental concern for the Chesapeake Bay and local streams, garden experience, higher income, and non‐senior citizen adults. We conclude that a cost‐share rebate approach is likely to significantly affect household adoption decisions, and the partial contributions paid by households can assist with lowering the substantial compliance costs for local governments to meet water quality requirements.

Demographic correlates of attenuated positive psychotic symptoms

It is now well established that the utilization of standardized clinical criteria can enhance prediction of psychosis. These criteria are primarily concerned with the presence and severity of attenuated positive symptoms. Because these symptom criteria are used to derive algorithms for designating clinical high risk (CHR) status and for maximizing prediction of psychosis risk, it is important to know whether the symptom ratings vary as a function of demographic factors that have previously been linked with symptoms in diagnosed psychotic patients. Using a sample of 356 CHR individuals from the NAPLS-II multi-site study, we examined the relation of three sex, age, and educational level, with the severity of attenuated positive symptom scores from the Scale of Prodromal Symptoms (SOPS). Demographic factors accounted for little of the variance in symptom ratings (5–6%). Older CHR individuals manifested more severe suspiciousness, and female CHR participants reported more unusual perceptual experiences than male participants. Contrary to prediction, higher educational level was associated with more severe ratings of unusual thought content, but less severe perceptual abnormalities. Overall, sex, age and education were modestly related to unusual thought content and perceptual abnormalities, only, suggesting minimal implication for designating CHR status and predicting psychosis-risk.

Pre-Service Teachers’ Internet Usage a Function of Demographic Factors: The Case of a Nigerian College of Education

With the overreaching acceptance of ICT in education and access to Internet occasioned by advancement in technology, this paper investigates pre-service teachers’ use of Internet in a college of education. The study was a descriptive survey. Data was collected using a researcher designed instrument tagged “Student Internet Use Scale” (SIUS). The population comprised of all NCE pre-service teachers in Alvan Ikoku Federal College of Education Owerri Nigeria. Findings show that mobile phones remains the most widely used mode of internet access with social networking, searching for information on school assignments, chatting forming the major reasons why they surf the net. Social networking is the major purpose for Internet use by female pre-service teachers while school related activities are of priority to males. The difference in purpose of internet use according to gender is however not statistically significant; similarly, there is no statically significant difference between male and female pre-service teachers in the frequency of Internet usage. The result has far reaching implication for provision and use of Internet facilities to enhance teaching and learning in the College and colleges of education in Nigeria.

Patient-Centered Outcomes Composites

The field of medicine is rushing headlong into a new, information-intensive era of practice and research. As medicine learns to wield the tools of big data, there is growing confidence that physicians and researchers will be able to obtain, measure, and analyze information from multiple sources—including the directly solicited views and preferences of patients. In this week's issue of Circulation , Stolker and colleagues provide insight into where this major trend may be headed.1 Using a simple questionnaire administered to cardiovascular clinic patients, they uncovered several intriguing findings. First, they noted a difference between clinical trialists and patients regarding the importance ascribed by each group to preventing different specific outcomes that comprise the classical major adverse cardiovascular event (MACE) endpoints used to assess the safety and efficacy of cardiovascular therapies. Second, they found that among the patient respondents to their survey, these weightings also varied as a function of demographic factors. On the basis of these findings, Stolker and colleagues propose that weighted composites could be used to personalize evidence assessment to inform healthcare delivery based on these differences.

Assessing Patterns of Human-Wildlife Conflicts and Compensation around a Central Indian Protected Area

Mitigating crop and livestock loss to wildlife and improving compensation distribution are important for conservation efforts in landscapes where people and wildlife co-occur outside protected areas. The lack of rigorously collected spatial data poses a challenge to management efforts to minimize loss and mitigate conflicts. We surveyed 735 households from 347 villages in a 5154 km2 area surrounding Kanha Tiger Reserve in India. We modeled self-reported household crop and livestock loss as a function of agricultural, demographic and environmental factors, and mitigation measures. We also modeled self-reported compensation received by households as a function of demographic factors, conflict type, reporting to authorities, and wildlife species involved. Seventy-three percent of households reported crop loss and 33% livestock loss in the previous year, but less than 8% reported human injury or death. Crop loss was associated with greater number of cropping months per year and proximity to the park. Livestock loss was associated with grazing animals inside the park and proximity to the park. Among mitigation measures only use of protective physical structures were associated with reduced livestock loss. Compensation distribution was more likely for tiger related incidents, and households reporting loss and located in the buffer. Average estimated probability of crop loss was 0.93 and livestock loss was 0.60 for surveyed households. Estimated crop and livestock loss and compensation distribution were higher for households located inside the buffer. Our approach modeled conflict data to aid managers in identifying potential conflict hotspots, influential factors, and spatially maps risk probability of crop and livestock loss. This approach could help focus allocation of conservation efforts and funds directed at conflict prevention and mitigation where high densities of people and wildlife co-occur.

Teachers’ ICT Skills and ICT Integration in the Classroom: The Case of Vocational and Technical Teachers in Malaysia

This study was to determine the levels of ICT skills and ICT usage in the classroom among technical and vocational teachers in Malaysia. The data of this study were collected using quantitative techniques, whereby the questionnaire was administered to 329 technical and vocational teachers who were teaching engineering subjects in Malaysian technical and vocational schools. The questionnaire included items related to teachers’ ICT skills, ICT use and their demographic factors. The study has shown that teachers’ ICT skills were at moderate levels, and that a vast majority of teachers who participated in this study were moderate users of ICT in classroom teaching. There were significant differences of teachers’ ICT skills as a function of demographic factors: gender, age, years of teaching experience, and type of ICT training. Also, there were significant correlations between ICT skills and ICT integration in classroom. Teachers’ demographic factors (age, gender, teaching experience, except level of education) did not influence ICT integration in classroom.

Demography and weak selection drive patterns of transposable element diversity in natural populations of Arabidopsis lyrata

Transposable elements (TEs) are the major component of most plant genomes, and characterizing their population dynamics is key to understanding plant genome complexity. Yet there have been few studies of TE population genetics in plant systems. To study the roles of selection, transposition, and demography in shaping TE population diversity, we generated a polymorphism dataset for six TE families in four populations of the flowering plant Arabidopsis lyrata. The TE data indicated significant differentiation among populations, and maximum likelihood procedures suggested weak selection. For strongly bottlenecked populations, the observed TE band-frequency spectra fit data simulated under neutral demographic models constructed from nucleotide polymorphism data. Overall, we propose that TEs are subjected to weak selection, the efficacy of which varies as a function of demographic factors. Thus, demographic effects could be a major factor driving distributions of TEs among plant lineages.

Illness-related factors, stress and coping strategies in relation to psychological distress in HIV-infected persons in Hong Kong

This study examined the relationships among illness-related factors, stress, coping strategies and psychological distress in HIV-infected persons in Hong Kong (N=118). Multiple regression analyses were used to examine the models of psychological distress as a function of demographic factors, illness-related factors, psychosocial stressors and coping. Results showed that positive thinking was inversely related to psychological distress and avoidance was associated with higher level of anxiety. However, the use of problem solving was found to be inversely related to anxiety. Results are discussed in the context of Chinese culture and the service in Hong Kong.

The Relationship Between Pre-Employment Expectations, Experiences, and Length of Stay in Public Accounting

This study examines the relationship between work-family conflict, employment expectations, and length of stay in public accounting. Length of stay is modeled as a function of demographic factors and job characteristics associated with work-family balance, measured in terms of the extent to which the employees' expectations matched their actual employment experiences. Results indicated that gender, the presence of children in the household, flexible schedules, and the presence of mentors were related to length of stay in public accounting.

On prediction of the cesarean delivery risk in a large private practice

This study was undertaken to develop an easily usable integrated formula for predicting the probability of cephalopelvic disproportion/failure to progress (CPD) and cesarean delivery (CS) as a function of demographic factors in a middle-class private practice, and to evaluate risk factors for CS in a low-risk primiparous population. We studied 3355 primiparous women who delivered singleton births between February 1993 and July 2001 in a large private practice. We calculated body mass index (BMI) and weight gain during pregnancy by using clinical data from a comprehensive clinical database. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was used to estimate the relationship between the probability of CS and CS carried out for CPD and 6 demographic factors: maternal age, maternal height, initial pregnancy BMI, pregnancy weight gain, gestational age, and birth weight. Three methods were used to assess the accuracy of the model: the Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit statistic, association of predicted probabilities, and direct comparison of the formula to the actual data. Odds ratios with a 95% CI are also calculated for each of these factors. The overall rate of primiparous CS for the practice is 21.7%, with 11.7% carried out for CPD. Formulas were developed to predict the probability of CS and the probability of CS caused by CPD. Our analysis shows that both the risk of CS and the risk of CS caused by CPD are significantly associated with all 6 demographic factors. We also develop an easily usable Web page-based calculator to instantly estimate any woman's probability of a CS or CPD at the beginning or at the end of her pregnancy. The probability of CS and CS performed for CPD is higher for shorter, older, more obese women with large pregnancy weight gains, larger fetal birth weights, and longer gestation ages. Accurate formulas that predict the probabilities of CS and CS performed for CPD in this large private practice have been developed.

The prevalence of emotional disorder in children.

This report presents data from the Ontario Child Health Study on the prevalence of individual emotional symptoms, the variation of prevalence rates of emotional disorders as a function of demographic factors, and the rates of service utilization for children with these disorders. To survey Ontario children from 4 to 16 years of age, a stratified random sample of 3,294 children was drawn from all household dwellings listed in the 1981 Census. The prevalence rates for emotional disorders in male and female children aged 4 to 11 years were 10.1% and 10.7%, respectively. For adolescents aged 12 to 16 years, the prevalence rate rose to 13.7% for females and fell to 5.0% for males. Children with emotional disorders were frequently found to meet criteria for more than one disorder. Only one in five children with emotional disorders had received mental health or social services in the 6 months prior to the survey.

A construct validity study of the Missouri Children's Behavior Checklist with developmentally disabled children.

Evaluated the construct validity of the MCBC scales and behavior profiles by determining the relationship between the MCBC and the clinical findings and recommendations that resulted from an interdisciplinary evaluation of children (N = 217) referred to a clinic for developmental disabilities. There were few differences in MCBC scale means and percentage occurrences of behavior profiles as a function of demographic factors and broad diagnostic categories. Substantial association was found between the MCBC and clinical findings of behavior problems. The association of the MCBC and clinical findings suggestive of affective problems was not as substantial, which suggests a need to augment the sensitivity of the MCBC in this area. The findings also suggested both the potential and the need for evolving additional MCBC behavior profiles that would reflect additional clinically meaningful subgroups among developmentally disabled children.