Dirgha J. Ghimire

Social change, premarital nonfamily experience, and spouse choice in an arranged marriage society

This article examines the influences of nonfamily experiences on participation in the selection of a first spouse in an arranged marriage society. The authors developed a theoretical framework to explain how a broad array of nonfamily experiences may translate into greater participation in the choice of a spouse. Analyses show that premarital nonfamily experiences, in general, and media exposure and participation in youth clubs, in particular, have strong positive effects on individual participation in the choice of a spouse. These findings suggest new ways of thinking about the relationship between social change and the transition away from arranged marriage. Overall, changes in these nonfamily experiences can account for a substantial fraction of the historical increase of youth involvement in mate selection.

The neighborhood history calendar: a data collection method designed for dynamic multilevel modeling.

This paper presents a new data collection method, called the Neighborhood History Calendar, designed to collect event histories of community-level changes over time. We discuss the need for and the uses of this method. We describe issues related to the design of instruments, collection of data, and data entry. We provide detailed examples from an application of this method to the study of marriage, contraception, and fertility in rural Nepal. The paper addresses applications of this same technique to other settings and research problems. We also extend the technique to collection of other forms of contextual-history data, including school histories and health service histories. Finally, we discuss how Geographic Information System (GIS) technology can be used to link together multiple sources of contextual-history data.

Coupled human and natural systems approach to wildlife research and conservation

Conserving wildlife while simultaneously meeting the resource needs of a growing human population is a major sustainability challenge. As such, using combined social and environmental perspectives to understand how people and wildlife are interlinked, together with the mechanisms that may weaken or strengthen those linkages, is of utmost importance. However, such integrated information is lacking. To help fill this information gap, we describe an integrated coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) approach for analyzing the patterns, causes, and consequences of changes in wildlife population and habitat, human population and land use, and their interactions. Using this approach, we synthesize research in two sites, Wolong Nature Reserve in China and Chitwan National Park in Nepal, to explicate key relationships between people and two globally endangered wildlife conservation icons, the giant panda and the Bengal tiger. This synthesis reveals that local resident characteristics such as household socioeconomics and demography, as well as community-level attributes such as resource management organizations, affect wildlife and their habitats in complex and even countervailing ways. Human impacts on wildlife and their habitats are in turn modifying the suite of ecosystem services that they provide to local residents in both sites, including access to forest products and cultural values. These interactions are further complicated by human and natural disturbance (e.g., civil wars, earthquakes), feedbacks (including policies), and telecouplings (socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances) that increasingly link the focal systems with other distant systems. We highlight several important implications of using a CHANS approach for wildlife research and conservation that is useful not only in China and Nepal but in many other places around the world facing similar challenges.

Social Organization, Population, and Land Use

A new approach to investigation of human influences on the environment identifies social organization as an influence independent of population size, affluence, and technology. The framework also identifies population events, such as births, that influence the environment. The authors use longitudinal, multilevel, mixed-method measures of local land use changes, population dynamics, and social organization to test this framework. These tests reveal that changes in social organization are strongly associated with changes in land use independent of measures of population size, affluence, and technology. Also, local birth events shape local land use changes and key proximate determinants of land use change.

International Fertility Change: New Data and Insights From the Developmental Idealism Framework

Many scholars have offered structural and ideational explanations for the fertility changes occurring around the world. This paper focuses on the influence of developmental idealism—a schema or set of beliefs endorsing development, fertility change, and causal connections between development and fertility. Developmental idealism is argued to be an important force affecting both population policy and the fertility behavior of ordinary people. We present new survey data from ordinary people in six countries—Argentina, China, Egypt, Iran, Nepal, and the United States—about the extent to which developmental idealism is known and believed. We ask individuals if they believe that fertility and development are correlated, that development is a causal force in changing fertility levels, and that fertility declines enhance the standard of living and intergenerational relations. We also ask people about their expectations concerning future trends in fertility in their countries and whether they approve or disapprove of the trends they expect. The data show widespread linkage in the minds of ordinary people between fertility and development. Large fractions of people in these six settings believe that fertility and development are correlated, that development reduces fertility, and that declines in fertility foster development. Many also expect and endorse future declines in fertility.

The Spread of Health Services and Fertility Transition

We use detailed measures of social change over time, increased availability of various health services, and couples’ fertility behaviors to document the independent effects of health services on fertility limitation. Our investigation focuses on a setting in rural Nepal that experienced a transition from virtually no use of birth control in 1945 to the widespread use of birth control by 1995 to limit fertility. Changes in the availability of many different dimensions of health services provide the means to evaluate their independent influences on contraceptive use to limit childbearing. Findings show that family planning as well as maternal and child health services have independent effects on the rate of ending childbearing. For example, the provision of child immunization services increases the rate of contraceptive use to limit fertility independently of family planning services. Additionally, new Geographic Information System (GIS)-based measures also allow us to test many alternative models of the spatial distribution of services. These tests reveal that complex, geographically defined measures of all health service providers outperform more simple measures. These results provide new information about the consequences of maternal and child health services and the importance of these services in shaping fertility transitions.

Determinants of Marital Quality in an Arranged Marriage Society

Drawing on a uniquely large number of items on marital quality, this study explores the determinants of marital quality in Chitwan Valley, Nepal. Marital quality is measured with five dimensions identified through exploratory factor analysis, comprising satisfaction, communication, togetherness, problems, and disagreements. Gender, education, spouse choice, and marital duration emerge as the most important determinants of these dimensions of marital quality. Specifically, men, those with more schooling, those who participated in the choice of their spouse, and those who have been married longer have higher levels of marital quality. By contrast, caste, occupation, age at marriage, and number of children have little to no association with marital quality. However, while we identify key determinants of marital quality in this context, the majority of variation in marital quality remains unexplained.

A Micro-Level Event-Centered Approach to Investigating Armed Conflict and Population Responses

In this article, we construct and test a micro-level event-centered approach to the study of armed conflict and behavioral responses in the general population. Event-centered approaches have been successfully used in the macro-political study of armed conflict but have not yet been adopted in micro-behavioral studies. The micro-level event-centered approach that we advocate here includes decomposition of a conflict into discrete political and violent events, examination of the mechanisms through which they affect behavior, and consideration of differential risks within the population. We focus on two mechanisms: instability and threat of harm. We test this approach empirically in the context of the recent decade-long armed conflict in Nepal, using detailed measurements of conflict-related events and a longitudinal study of first migration, first marriage, and first contraceptive use. Results demonstrate that different conflict-related events independently shaped migration, marriage, and childbearing and that they can simultaneously influence behaviors in opposing directions. We find that violent events increased migration, but political events slowed migration. Both violent and political events increased marriage and contraceptive use net of migration. Overall, this micro-level event-centered approach yields a significant advance for the study of how armed conflict affects civilian behavioral responses.

The Effect of Parents’ Attitudes on Sons’ Marriage Timing

Theories of family stability and change, demographic processes, and social psychological influences on behavior all posit that parental attitudes and beliefs are a key influence on their children’s behavior. We have evidence of these effects in Western populations, but little information regarding this social mechanism in non-Western contexts. Furthermore, comparisons of mothers’ and fathers’ independent roles in these crucial intergenerational mechanisms are rare. This article uses measures from a 10-year family panel study featuring independent interviews with mothers and fathers in rural Nepal to investigate these issues. We test the association of specific attitudes, rather than broad ideational domains, about childbearing and old-age care with sons’ subsequent marriage behavior. Our results indicate that both mothers’ and fathers’ attitudes have important and independent influences on sons’ marriage behavior. Simultaneous study of both parents’ attitudes reveals that gender-specific parenting contexts can shape the relationship between parental attitudes and children’s behaviors. This crucial mechanism of intergenerational continuity and change is strong in this non-Western setting, with substantial implications for studies of intergenerational influences on behavior in all settings.

Modifying and validating the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) for use in Nepal

Background: Efforts to develop and validate fully‐structured diagnostic interviews of mental disorders in non‐Western countries have been largely unsuccessful. However, the principled methods of translation, harmonization, and calibration that have been developed by cross‐national survey methodologists have never before been used to guide such development efforts. The current report presents the results of a rigorous program of research using these methods designed to modify and validate the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) for an epidemiological survey in Nepal. Methods: A five‐step process of translation, harmonization, and calibration was used to modify the instrument. A blinded clinical reappraisal design was used to validate the instrument. Results: Preliminary interviews with local mental health expert led to a focus on major depressive episode, mania/hypomania, panic disorder, post‐traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and intermittent explosive disorder. After an iterative process of multiple translations‐revisions guided by the principles developed by cross‐national survey methodologists, lifetime DSM‐IV diagnoses based on the final Nepali CIDI had excellent concordance with diagnoses based on blinded Structured Clinical Interview for DSM‐IV (SCID) clinical reappraisal interviews. Conclusions: Valid assessment of mental disorders can be achieved with fully‐structured diagnostic interviews even in low‐income non‐Western settings with rigorous implementation of replicable developmental strategies. Copyright