Elena S. H. Yu

Methodological problems and policy implications in Vietnamese refugee research.

This article is written with two objectives: First, to describe some of the critical methodological problems encountered in our research with Vietnamese refugees in San Diego, California, about which few studies have been conducted previous to their arrival in 1975. Second, to discuss the policy implications of research beset with these difficulties, some of which are unique to studies of refugee populations per se, while others are common to research on small ethnic minorities in general. This article focuses on four major issues: the quality of refugee studies; the purpose and functions of such research; the ethical dilemmas of studying refugees; and public policy implications of refugee research. Recommendations are offered to resolve some of these issues which would call for policy changes both in the ways refugee research are conducted, and in the training of researchers themselves.

Fertility and kinship in the Philippines

The objective in this book is to describe how the people from 1 area of central Philippines (Cebu Province) have coped with the realities of large family size i.e. what have they done to limit their number of births; what do they know about contraceptive methods; how successful have they been in using contraceptive methods; and how do people of lower socioeconomic status deal with the psychic and economic burden of raising children. Focus is on how the family serving as an intermediary between the cultural system and the individual shapes the individuals perception of kinship duties and obligations assists her/him in coping with the exigencies of sheer survival and reproduction and in turn influences his/her family building processes. The attempt is made to identify some of the social institutions and value systems that encourage the propagation of large families and to provide a preliminary understanding of the patterns of interaction between husband and wife families and relatives friends and neighbors. The data presented come from 22 unstructured intensive interviews and a total of more than 2000 cases obtained through sample surveys conducted in the city and in the barrios. Of the total 1521 cases were from the metropolitan area of Cebu City. The Filipinos regardless of their socioeconomic standing and educational attainments were found to be enmeshed in a web of kinship which impinged on and is impinged upon by conjugal relationships and childbearing. There was a fair amount of ignorance regarding family planning yet it is erroneous to believe that Filipinos are without aspirations toward the ideal of a smaller family. It is simply that in the daily lives of the Cebuanos the ideal must take its place in a hierarchy of priorities of which economic survival is highest. Modern medicine and western contraceptive technology were found to have little functional significance in the lives of the humble residents in the central Philippines. The policy implication is that the dissemination of modern contraceptives goes beyond the mere transplantation of new methods.

Cross-cultural studies of dementia: Use of a Chinese version of the Blessed-Roth Information-Memory-Concentration test in a Shanghai dementia survey.

A culturally adapted Chinese version of the Blessed-Roth Information-Memory-Concentration test (CIMC) was used in a dementia screening survey of a probability sample of 5,055 elderly Shanghai residents. The individual items on the CIMC that best predicted the overall score were similar to the best predictor of an American version of the IMC. Performance on the CIMC was markedly affected by the level of education or lack thereof. In a subsample for whom clinical diagnoses were obtained, it was possible to establish cutoff values on the CIMC by stratifying the sample according to education.