Strand organiser: Daniel Vickers, University of Leeds
The availability and use of internet-based sex and relationships education (SRE): evidence from the Young People's Health project in North West England
Clare Thetford, Bethan Evans, Bill Gould
University of Liverpool
The Government's White Paper, Choosing Health (2004), identifies internet-based resources on sex and relationships as a priority area for interventions to improve the health of young people. This poster reports on a project developed to consult young people, teachers and health education professionals in North West England about the use of internet-based learning resources for Sex and Relationships Education (SRE). The main findings from the project are that, whilst there is a range of high-quality resources available, they are rarely used for a variety of reasons relating to technical issues of access and teachers' lack of training, and to the position of SRE in the formal school curriculum.
Department of Geography, The University of Liverpool, L69 3BX
Email: clare.thetford@liv.ac.uk
Intergenerational relations and support for the elderly in Pakistan
Kaveri Harriss
Centre for Population Studies, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Pakistan is in the early stages of its demographic transition and only 6% of the population is over the age of 60. It will be a long time before the country faces the Western problem of broadly ageing populations. Indeed, the received wisdom is that there is no 'ageing problem' in Pakistan, in that there are relatively few old people, and they don't have any problems as they are well looked after by their families. Using interview material from rural Punjab, this research examines intergenerational relations and family support in Pakistan, focussing on how families strategise to maintain 'traditional' systems of support and keep their family honour (izzat) in the face of considerable uncertainty and constraint. Despite the salience of this powerful normative discourse on filial piety, intra-household biases against the elderly emerge in circumstances of severe economic shortage. Elderly people themselves acquiesce in the biases against them, drawing on elements of renunciation in the social construction of ageing.
Email: kaveri.harriss@lshtm.ac.uk
A comparison of the socio-economic predictors of infant anthropometrics in South Africa and the Philippines
Laura L. Jones, Paula L. Griffiths, Noël Cameron
Centre for Human Development and Ageing, Department of Human Sciences, Loughborough University
OBJECTIVE: To determine if there is a difference in the socio-economic predictors of early growth patterns from birth to two years.
METHODS: The data from two longitudinal birth cohorts were utilised in this study. An urban South African black sample (n = 1253) was selected from the Birth to Twenty (Bt20) study which was established in 1990 to determine the impact of complex social and economic change on child growth and development. An urban sample (n = 2555) of children was selected for the CEBU Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey (CEBU) which was designed to investigate the social, economic, and demographic outcomes of a cohort of children born in the Philippines in 1983 and 1984. Growth and demographic data were used to determine the prevalence of small for gestational age (SGA) and stunting (height-for-age z-score <-2 SDs from the median of the NCHS/CDC/WHO 1977 reference population) at 6 months, 1 year, and 2 years. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to create a socio-economic status (SES) index for both cohorts. Logistic regression analyses were then applied to the data to identify socio-economic determinants of the growth outcomes at each time point.
RESULTS: The prevalence of SGA was similar in the CEBU cohort (13.7%) and the Bt20 cohort (14.0%). There was a significantly higher percentage of CEBU children stunted at 1 year and 2 years (32.6 and 48.9% compared to 9.4 and 15.9%), but not at 6 months (12.5 vs.18.5%), compared to the Bt20 sample. Measures of SES were much stronger predictors of all of the early growth outcomes examined for the CEBU cohort in comparison to the Bt20 sample.
CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of stunting was significantly higher in Filipino infants compared to South African infants. Preliminary analysis of the SES data indicates that household SES measures at birth predict CEBU infant growth more strongly than South African infant growth.
Email: l.l.jones@lboro.ac.uk
HIV Risk behaviour in context: The impact of socioeconomic disadvantage on unsafe behaviours among high-risk populations in West Java, Indonesia
Dewi Ismajani Puradiredja
London School of Economics
Existing evidence suggests that the highest incidence and prevalence of HIV infection in Indonesia is currently concentrated among certain high-risk sub-populations, such as sex workers and their clients. Although AIDS knowledge among surveyed high-risk populations appears to have increased over the past few years, such knowledge does not always seem to be acted upon. The aim of this research is to explore the mechanisms and extent to which local contexts of relative socio-economic disadvantage influence the HIV risk-taking behaviour of these women and men.
In particular, my research aims to contextualise individual HIV risk-taking behaviour by investigating ways in which structural socio-economic variables influence the probability that young women from a specified rural location (Indramayu, West Java) will move to the capital Jakarta in pursuit of income opportunities; how these variables drive the decisions of such women to engage in sex work in North Jakarta's red light district and the decisions of male labour migrants stationed at the nearby harbour to seek their services; and ultimately how they affect the incidence and likelihood of HIV risk-behaviours among both groups, including a variety of unsafe sexual behaviours and experiences.
This poster will depict contextual background information based on an extensive review of literature from a variety of disciplines, including demography, social policy, development economics and anthropology, and a brief analysis of raw survey data drawn from DHS 1987 - 2002. Additionally, a multi-level conceptual framework will be presented developed on the basis of existing studies that recognise that HIV risk-taking behaviours are not solely determined by individual health knowledge, attitudes and beliefs, but are also affected by exogenous factors, such as livelihood options. In accordance with this conceptual framework fieldwork will be conducted at a later
stage of the research process to collect both qualitative and quantitative data which will be analysed to explore the issues described in the previous paragraph.
Email: d.i.puradiredja@lse.ac.uk
British retirees in the Costa Blanca, Spain
Vicente Rodríguez, Maria Casado, Paloma Taltavull, José Manuel Casado
Institute of Economics and Geography (CSIC), University of the West of England, University of Alicante, Spain.
As known, north European retirees have established in Spain as residents since several decades, being mostly British. Official data are showing a diverse picture regarding their European origin and destination in Spain, both in different geographical scales. In the opposite, recent research has demonstrated that climate is seen as the most general reason for people to move when retired, with cost of living, healthier lifestyle and local amenities running second.
Despite these well-known features, a general picture of British in the Costa Blanca can be seen in the poster, derived of the analysis of the official and survey data, to refer not only to personal data (origin at UK, pyramids, sex balance, household composition, main areas of destination), but also to reasons to move to Spain, expectations to spend time either in Spain or in UK or to move to get the best locations, taking advantages of their personal and family organization, and disenchantments of being established, permanent or temporarily, in a country other their own (bureaucratic problems, different lifestyle, Spanish idiosyncrasy).
Official data are taken from the Population and Housing Census, carried out in 2001, and from the Municipal Residents Variations, since 1998 to date, for the geographical and demographic characteristics, and from the REVIcVAL survey run in the Costa Blanca to detect their impact in the regional house market.
Email: rodri@ieg.csic.es
Rebecca Sear1, Nadine Allal2, Ruth Mace2, IA McGregor3
1London School of Economics, London, UK 2University College London, London, UK 3MRC Gambia
Life history theory predicts that a trade-off between growth and reproduction will be seen, so that women who begin reproducing early should end up as shorter adults than those who delay their first births. These early reproducing women will gain an advantage over their peers, in terms of extra time to reproduce. But tall women may have other reproductive advantages, which could outweigh their later start to reproduction. They may have lower mortality and higher fertility rates, and their offspring may also survive better. An additional complication is that height may affect marriage patterns. In the West, tall women seem to be at a disadvantage on the marriage market, which may lower the reproductive success of tall women.
We investigate the relationships between height, marriage, mortality and fertility in a population of Gambian subsistence farmers. We observe the predicted trade-off between adult height and age at first birth: women who are tall in adulthood have later first births than short women. But tall women have reproductive advantages during the rest of their reproductive careers, primarily in the lower mortality rates of their children. This ultimately leads to higher fitness for taller women, despite their delayed start to reproduction. The higher reproductive success of tall women appears to be entirely due to the physiological benefits of being tall. There is no evidence that female height is related to patterns of marriage or divorce in this population.
Dr. Rebecca Sear, Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics,
Houghton St, London WC2A 2AE. Tel: 020 7955 7348
Email: r.sear@lse.ac.uk