Sex differences in money pathology in the general population

This study examined sex differences in money beliefs and behaviours. Over 100,000 British participants completed two measures online, one of which assessed “money pathology” (Forman in Mind over money, Doubleday, Toronto, 1987), and the other four “money types”, based on the emotional associations of money (Furnham et al. in Personal Individ Differ, 52:707–711, 2012). Nearly all measures showed significant sex differences with medium to large effect sizes, and with females exhibiting more “money pathology” than males. The biggest difference on the money types was on money being associated with generosity (money representing love) where men scored much lower than females, and autonomy (money representing freedom) where men scored higher than women. For men, more than women, money represented Power and Security. Men were more likely to be Hoarders while women did more emotional regulatory purchasing. Implications and limitations of this study are discussed

Attitudes and perceptions of Australian pharmacy students towards Complementary and Alternative Medicine – a pilot study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>With the increased usage of CAM worldwide comes the demand for its integration into health professional education. However, the incorporation of CAM into health professional curricula is handled quite differently by different institutions and countries. Furthermore, the evaluation of CAM curricula is complicated because students' ability to learn about CAM may be influenced by factors such as student's prior knowledge and motivation, together with the perceptions and attitudes of clinical preceptors.</p> <p>The study aimed to describe the attitudes, perceptions and beliefs of second, third and fourth year pharmacy students towards complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and to explore factors that might affect attitudes such as learning, preceptors and placements.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Pharmacy students from a University in South East Queensland, Australia participated in the study. The study consisted of a cross-sectional survey (n = 110) and semi-structured interviews (n = 9).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The overall response rate for the survey was 75%, namely 50% (36/72) for second year, 77.3% (34/44) for third year and 97.6% (40/41) for fourth year students. Overall, 95.5% of pharmacy students believe that pharmacists should be able to advise patients about CAM and most (93.7%) have used CAM prior to course enrolment. Students' attitudes to CAM are influenced by the use of CAM by family, friends and self, CAM training, lecturers and to a lesser degree by preceptors. The majority of pharmacy students (89.2%) perceive education about CAM as a core and integral part of their professional degree and favour it over an additional postgraduate degree. However, they see a greater need for education in complementary medicines (such as herbal medicines, vitamins and minerals) than for education in complementary therapies (such as acupuncture, meditation and bio-magnetism). Knowledge and educational input rationalised rather than marginalised students' attitudes towards CAM.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Pharmacy students perceive education about CAM as a core and integral part of their professional degree. Students' attitudes towards CAM can be influenced by learning, lecturers, preceptors and practice experience. The content and focus of CAM education has to be further investigated and tailored to meet the professional needs of our future health professionals.</p

Understanding why adult participants at the World Senior Games choose a healthy diet

BACKGROUND: Identifying those seniors most likely to adopt a healthy diet, the relative importance they place on certain perceived benefits associated with a healthy diet, and whether these perceived benefits are associated with selected demographic, lifestyle, and health history variables is important for directing effective dietary health promotion programs. METHODS: Analyses are based on a cross-sectional convenience sample of 670 seniors aged 50 years and older at the 2002 World Senior Games in St. George, Utah. Data are assessed using frequencies, bivariate analysis, analysis of variance, and multiple logistic regression analysis. RESULTS: Fruit and vegetable consumption was significantly higher in individuals aged 70–79, in women, in those not overweight or obese, and in those with excellent overall health. Dietary fiber consumption was significantly higher in former or never smokers, current and previous alcohol drinkers, in those not overweight or obese, and in those with excellent health. The strongest motivating factors identified for adopting a healthy diet were to improve the quality of life, to increase longevity, and to prevent disease. Of intermediate importance were the need to feel a sense of control and to satisfy likes or dislikes. Least important were the desire to experience a higher level of spirituality, social reasons, and peer acceptance. CONCLUSION: Seniors who have adopted a healthy diet are more likely to have chosen that behavior because of perceived health benefits than for personal and social benefits. Overweight or obese individuals and those in poor health were less likely to be engaged in healthy eating behavior and require special attention by dieticians and public health professionals

Implications of Training in Incremental Theories of Intelligence for Undergraduate Statistics Students

This chapter documents the effects of training in incremental theories of intelligence on students in introductory statistics courses at a liberal arts university in the US. Incremental theories of intelligence examine the beliefs individuals hold of knowledge and how it is attained. An individual with an incremental theory of intelligence believes that intelligence can be developed. The research examined differences by gender in mastery of statistics and attitudes toward statistics for students who received growth mind-set training. A pre-test, post-test design utilised the Students’ Attitudes Toward Statistics© instrument and the Comprehensive Assessment of Outcomes in a first Statistics course. An ANCOVA revealed that females gained more than males on their value of statistics (F(1, 63) 9.40, MSE 3.79, p .003, η2 P 0.134) and decreased less for effort expended to learn statistics (F(1, 63) 4.41, MSE 4.07, p .040, η2 P 0.067). Females also gained mastery of statistical concepts at a greater rate (F(1, 63) 5.30, MSE 0.06, p .025, η2 P 0.080) indicating a possible path to alleviate the under-representation of females in STEM

Different patient subgroup, different ranking? Which quality indicators do patients find important when choosing a hospital for hip- or knee arthroplasty?

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Patients are increasingly expected to become active, critical consumers in healthcare. They can use comparative healthcare information presented on websites to make informed choices for healthcare providers. However, the use of this information has been limited so far. An obstacle can be that the information is not perceived as relevant by patients. Presenting only the most important quality indicators might improve the usefulness of this information. The aim of this study was to explore which quality indicators different subgroups of patients find important when choosing a hospital for total hip arthroplasty (THA) or total knee arthroplasty (TKA).</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In this explorative, cross-sectional study, questionnaires were distributed to 265 patients who underwent or had to undergo THA/TKA. Participants were asked to rank the importance of three types of quality indicators: patient experience indicators, clinical performance indicators, and indicators about hospital services. We used random effects regression analyses to assess the relative importance of the indicators in different subgroups of patients.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>110 patients (response rate 41.5%) who underwent or had to undergo THA/TKA participated. Conduct of doctors, the presence of procedures to prevent adverse effects of thrombosis and information about the specialist area of orthopaedists were the most important patient experience indicator, clinical performance indicator and indicator about hospital services, respectively. We found a few differences between patient subgroups in the importance attached to the quality indicators.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This study provides a first insight into which quality indicators patients find important when choosing a hospital for THA/TKA, and shows that subgroups of patients differ in the value they attach to these indicators. More extended research is needed to establish the indicators that should at least be presented in succinct overviews of comparative healthcare information for patients choosing a hospital for THA/TKA.</p

A Mathematical Framework for Protein Structure Comparison

Comparison of protein structures is important for revealing the evolutionary relationship among proteins, predicting protein functions and predicting protein structures. Many methods have been developed in the past to align two or multiple protein structures. Despite the importance of this problem, rigorous mathematical or statistical frameworks have seldom been pursued for general protein structure comparison. One notable issue in this field is that with many different distances used to measure the similarity between protein structures, none of them are proper distances when protein structures of different sequences are compared. Statistical approaches based on those non-proper distances or similarity scores as random variables are thus not mathematically rigorous. In this work, we develop a mathematical framework for protein structure comparison by treating protein structures as three-dimensional curves. Using an elastic Riemannian metric on spaces of curves, geodesic distance, a proper distance on spaces of curves, can be computed for any two protein structures. In this framework, protein structures can be treated as random variables on the shape manifold, and means and covariance can be computed for populations of protein structures. Furthermore, these moments can be used to build Gaussian-type probability distributions of protein structures for use in hypothesis testing. The covariance of a population of protein structures can reveal the population-specific variations and be helpful in improving structure classification. With curves representing protein structures, the matching is performed using elastic shape analysis of curves, which can effectively model conformational changes and insertions/deletions. We show that our method performs comparably with commonly used methods in protein structure classification on a large manually annotated data set

As cold as a fish? Relationships between the Dark Triad personality traits and affective experience during the day: A day reconstruction study

The Dark Triad of personality is a cluster of three socially aversive personality traits: Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy. These traits are associated with a selfish, aggressive and exploitative interpersonal strategy. The objective of the current study was to establish relationships between the Dark Triad traits (and their dimensions) and momentary affect. Machiavellianism, grandiose narcissism, vulnerable narcissism and the dimensions of the Triarchic model of psychopathy (namely, boldness, meanness and disinhibition) were examined. We used the Day Reconstruction Method, which is based on reconstructing affective states experienced during the previous day. The final sample consisted of 270 university students providing affective ratings of 3047 diary episodes. Analyses using multilevel modelling showed that only boldness had a positive association with positive affective states and affect balance, and a negative association with negative affective states. Grandiose narcissism and its sub-dimensions had no relationship with momentary affect. The other dark traits were related to negative momentary affect and/or inversely related to positive momentary affect and affect balance. As a whole, our results empirically demonstrated distinctiveness of the Dark Triad traits in their relationship to everyday affective states. These findings are not congruent with the notion that people with the Dark Triad traits, who have a dispositional tendency to manipulate and exploit others, are generally cold and invulnerable to negative feelings. The associations between the Dark Triad and momentary affect were discussed in the contexts of evolutionary and positive psychology, in relation to the role and adaptive value of positive and negative emotions experienced by individuals higher in Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy