Helen Johnson

Loneliness and life satisfaction of boys with developmental coordination disorder: the impact of leisure participation and perceived freedom in leisure.

A theoretical model linking motor ability with perceived freedom in leisure, participation in team sports, loneliness, and global life satisfaction was tested using linear confirmatory path analysis. Participants were 173 boys aged 10-13 years who filled in self-report questionnaires about perceived freedom in leisure, loneliness, and global life satisfaction. Parents of boys completed 7-day diaries and 12-month retrospective recall questionnaires about their sons leisure-time activity participation. Results of path analyses confirmed that the fit of the hypothetical model was consistent with predictions. The inferred direct pathways of influence between both total loneliness and global life satisfaction on motor ability were in the expected directions (i.e., inverse and positive relationships, respectively). Perceived Freedom in Leisure (PFL) and participation in team sports were two intermediate variables indirectly influencing these relationships. Although PFL was identified as a motivational process influencing participation levels in team sports it was noted that other psychological and environmental factors must also be considered when evaluating child-activity-environment fit for boys with developmental coordination disorder.

Pornographic eroticism and sexual grotesquerie in representations of African American sportswomen

Sport is used as a lens through which ‘white’ people are encouraged to analyse how they construct and view ‘black’ people. Sport is linked to an analysis of the ways that sections of the media have framed tennis champions Serena and Venus Williams as threats. This article examines how key media spokespeople use disparaging racist and sexist stereotypes that no longer focus on female passivity and weakness to denigrate their physical power and mental strength. It argues for a new critical race consciousness that can inform sporting commentary and media narratives to enable African American women and men to envision and achieve equality within a broader framework of social justice.

Participation, self‐concept and motor performance of boys with developmental coordination disorder: A classification and regression tree analysis approach

AIM Identification of relationships between participation, psycho-social adjustment and motor performance factors in boys with developmental coordination (DCD) using a classification and regression tree approach to determine patterns of potential vulnerability. METHODS A quantitative cross-sectional design investigating a cohort of 60 boys aged 10-13 years with DCD was employed. Classification and regression tree analysis of: (i) fundamental movement skill performance on tests of balance, ball skills and manual dexterity, (ii) self-concept perceptions and (iii) leisure-time activity participation, was used to define different risk groups. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION Five meaningful groups of boys were identified. Poor manual dexterity was the strongest discriminator of group membership in the three most severely affected groups confirming the significance of fine motor difficulties as a key grouping variable and supporting previous research using cluster analyses. Low participation in out-of-school informal social-physical activities was found to be a new grouping factor alongside poor peer relations self-concept. A final group describing boys with poor motor performance across all fundamental movement skill areas who had high participation in structured social non-physical activities, such as choir or band, was identified. The potential for future classification and regression tree analyses to inform clinical decision making was discussed.

The Efficacy of the Sortino Ratio and Other Benchmarked Performance Measures Under Skewed Return Distributions

This paper will investigate the suitability of existing performance measures under the assumption of a clearly defined benchmark. A range of measures are examined including the Sortino Ratio, the Sharpe Selection ratio (SSR), the Students t-test and a decay rate measure. A simulation study is used to assess the power and bias of these measures based on variations in sample size and mean performance of two simulated funds. The Sortino Ratio is found to be the superior performance measure exhibiting more power and less bias than the SSR when the distribution of excess returns are skewed.

Relationships between blood levels of fat soluble vitamins and disease etiology and severity in adults awaiting liver transplantation.

Background and Aims:  Although malnutrition is common in liver disease, there are limited data on fat soluble vitamins in various diseases. The aims of this study were to: (i) determine fat soluble vitamin levels in patients assessed for liver transplantation; (ii) compare levels between different disease etiologies (hepatocellular and cholestatic) and between subgroups of hepatocellular disease; and (iii) assess the multivariate contribution to vitamin levels of etiology and various indicators of disease severity.

Birthing Practices of Traditional Birth Attendants in South Asia in the Context of Training Programmes

Traditional Birth Attendants (TBA) training has been an important component of public health policy interventions to improve maternal and child health in developing countries since the 1970s. More recently, since the 1990s, the TBA training strategy has been increasingly seen as irrelevant, ineffective or, on the whole, a failure due to evidence that the maternal mortality rate (MMR) in developing countries had not reduced. Although, worldwide data show that, by choice or out of necessity, 47 percent of births in the developing world are assisted by TBAs and/or family members, funding for TBA training has been reduced and moved to providing skilled birth attendants for all births. Any shift in policy needs to be supported by appropriate evidence on TBA roles in providing maternal and infant health care service and effectiveness of the training programmes. This article reviews literature on the characteristics and role of TBAs in South Asia with an emphasis on India. The aim was to assess the contribution of TBAs in providing maternal and infant health care service at different stages of pregnancy and after-delivery and birthing practices adopted in home births. The review of role revealed that apart from TBAs, there are various other people in the community also involved in making decisions about the welfare and health of the birthing mother and new born baby. However, TBAs have changing, localised but nonetheless significant roles in delivery, postnatal and infant care in India. Certain traditional birthing practices such as bathing babies immediately after birth, not weighing babies after birth and not feeding with colostrum are adopted in home births as well as health institutions in India. There is therefore a thin precarious balance between the application of biomedical and traditional knowledge. Customary rituals and perceptions essentially affect practices in home and institutional births and hence training of TBAs need to be implemented in conjunction with community awareness programmes.

Traditional birth attendant training and local birthing practices in India

Training birth attendants (TBAs) provide essential maternal and infant health care services during delivery and ongoing community care in developing countries. Despite inadequate evidence of relevance and effectiveness of TBA training programmes, there has been a policy shift since the 1990s in that many donor agencies funding TBA training programmes redirected funds to providing skilled attendants during delivery. This study aimed to assess the ways in which a TBA training programme in India has been successful in disseminating evidence-based knowledge on birthing practices. TBAs practicing within 16 villages targeted by training programme initiatives were administered with structured questionnaires. The post training birthing practices of trained (24) and untrained (14) TBAs was compared and birthing practices adopted by women assisted by trained (16) and untrained (9) TBAs was analysed. Positive post training practices were hand washing, use of a clean blade for cutting the cord, immediate breastfeeding and weighing of babies. Nevertheless, the training could be further improved with up to date and evidence-based information and more comprehensive instructions. The findings suggest an integration of local and evidence-based knowledge is needed to improve the training. Raising community awareness of public health measures related to maternal and child health is also recommended.

Bayesian Truncated Poisson Regression with Application to Dutch Illegal Immigrant Data

This article presents a Bayesian approach to the regression analysis of truncated data, with a focus on zero-truncated counts from the Poisson distribution. The approach provides inference not only on the regression coefficients but also on the total sample size and the parameters of the covariate distribution. The theory is applied to some illegal immigrant data from The Netherlands. Several models are fitted with the aid of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods and assessed via posterior predictive p-values. Inferences are compared with those obtained elsewhere using other approaches.

Gender, Technology, and the Potential for Social Marginalization: Kuala Lumpur and Singapore

Abstract My paper describes a study that links gender with technology use in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. It argues that technology use is a significant 21st century social phenomenon due to the rise of consumption-based economies and government plans for technologically-led recoveries in the Asia-Pacific. It describes how gender interacts with other cultural differences to shape the social use and effects of technology.

Interpreting white goods: Kunie women's perceptions of progress in New Caledonia

Acknowledging and describing the ways that women shape relations of power and property can add to understandings of how local communities create and experience globalisation. In this paper I examine how relations of power are actively and discursively constructed within Kunié households in New Caledonia, how they are inscribed by gender, and link them to local narrativisations of progress.