Romantic and sexual behavior in young adolescents : repeated surveys in a population-based cohort

Adverse outcomes of teenage sexual activity are common in the United Kingdom. We used a computer-assisted interview to ask young adolescents aged 11-12 years (N = 6856) and 12 -13 years (N = 6801) who were part of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children about romantic and intimate behaviors. 24% of 11-12 year olds and 41% of 12-13 year olds reported holding hands and 17% and 32% respectively reported having been kissed on the mouth. A minority of 12-13 year olds reported sexual behavior including intercourse. The majority of participants who reported intimate sexual behavior did not regret it. Boys reported all activities more than girls and were less likely to express regret. Our findings suggest that the timing and content of sex education should take into account the frequency with which young people are experimenting with sexual behaviors

A qualitative exploration of attitudes to walking in the retirement life change

BACKGROUND: Walking is a simple activity that could help to reduce the prevalence of chronic diseases in all populations. Furthermore, an inverse dose–response relationship exists between steps taken and risk of premature death and cardiovascular events in middle-aged and older adults. There is a lack of information on how to effectively engage older adults around retirement age in walking. This qualitative study explored attitudes towards walking in older people with regard to habits, intensity, preferences and strategies for increasing walking behaviour. METHODS: In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 26 older adults who were either close to retirement or recently retired. An inductive thematic analysis was conducted. RESULTS: Three themes were identified from the data; 1) Engagement and perceived value of walking; was focused on the meaning of walking for the participant and the attributes they associate with their walking practice. 2) Integration and connectivity of walking; was focused on how participants integrate walking in their daily lives and whether walking can be practiced as a viable means of connectivity. 3) Strategies to increase walking; was focused on what factors motivate participants in their walking practice and what strategies they perceived to be beneficial to increase walking distance and intensity at an individual level. DISCUSSION: The views of walking in people of retirement age were represented within 3 key themes. The factors contained in these themes that may influence future walking practice are discussed with regard to future strategies to promote walking in the retirement life change. CONCLUSION: It may be beneficial to promote qualitative aspects of walking practice and strive for regularity rather than intensity of walking to accrue the social, psychological and intellectual benefits reported by individuals in the retirement life change. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-022-12853-2

Can scenario-planning support community-based natural resource management? Experiences from three countries in latin america

Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) is a concept critical to managing socio-ecological systems, but whose implementation needs strengthening. Scenario-planning is one approach that may offer benefits relevant to CBNRM, but whose potential is not yet well understood. We therefore designed, trialled and evaluated a scenario-planning method intended to support CBNRM at three cases, located in Colombia, Mexico and Argentina. Implementing scenario-planning was judged as worthwhile in all three cases, although aspects of it could be challenging to facilitate. The benefits generated were relevant to strengthening CBNRM: encouraging the participation of local people and using their knowledge; enhanced consideration and adaption of future change; and supporting the development of systems thinking. Tracing exactly when and how these benefits arise is challenging, but two elements of the method seemed particularly useful. Firstly, using a systematic approach to discuss how drivers of change may affect local socio-ecological systems helped to foster systems thinking and identify connections between issues. Secondly, explicitly focusing on how to use and respond to scenarios helped identify specific practical activities ('response options') that would support CBNRM despite the pressures of future change. Discussions about response options also highlighted the need for support by other actors (e.g. policy groups): this raises the question of when and how other actors and other sources of knowledge should be involved in scenario-planning, so as to encourage their buy-in to actions identified by the process. We suggest other CBNRM initiatives may benefit from adapting and applying scenario-planning. However, these initiatives should be carefully monitored since further research is required to understand how and when scenario-planning methods may produce benefits, and their strengths and weaknesses versus other methods

Automated Software Testing of Relational Database Schemas

Relational databases are critical for many software systems, holding the most valuable data for organisations. Data engineers build relational databases using schemas to specify the structure of the data within a database and defining integrity constraints. These constraints protect the data's consistency and coherency, leading industry experts to recommend testing them. Since manual schema testing is labour-intensive and error-prone, automated techniques enable the generation of test data. Although these generators are well-established and effective, they use default values and often produce many, long, and similar tests --- this results in decreasing fault detection and increasing regression testing time and testers inspection efforts. It raises the following questions: How effective is the optimised random generator at generating tests and its fault detection compared to prior methods? What factors make tests understandable for testers? How to reduce tests while maintaining effectiveness? How effectively do testers inspect differently reduced tests? To answer these questions, the first contribution of this thesis is to evaluate a new optimised random generator against well-established methods empirically. Secondly, identifying understandability factors of schema tests using a human study. Thirdly, evaluating a novel approach that reduces and merge tests against traditional reduction methods. Finally, studying testers' inspection efforts with differently reduced tests using a human study. The results show that the optimised random method efficiently generates effective tests compared to well-established methods. Testers reported that many NULLs and negative numbers are confusing, and they prefer simple repetition of unimportant values and readable strings. The reduction technique with merging is the most effective at minimising tests and producing efficient tests while maintaining effectiveness compared to traditional methods. The merged tests showed an increase in inspection efficiency with a slight accuracy decrease compared to only reduced tests. Therefore, these techniques and investigations can help practitioners adopt these generators in practice

Centralization of services for children born with orofacial clefts in the United Kingdom: A cross-sectional survey

© 2014 American Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association. Objective: To examine current provision of cleft lip and/or palate services in the U.K. and compliance with recommendations made by the Clinical Standards Advisory Group (CSAG) in 1998.Design: Cross-sectional questionnaire survey.Setting: All 11 services within the U.K. providing care for children born with a cleft lip and palate.Participants: Members from each healthcare specialty in each U.K. cleft team.Interventions: Self-administered postal questionnaires enquired about the provision of cleft services. Data were collected about the overall cleft service, team coordination, hearing, orthodontics, pediatric dentistry, primary cleft surgery, psychology, restorative dentistry, secondary surgery, specialist cleft nursing, and speech and language therapy.Results: Questionnaires were returned from members of 130/150 cleft teams (87%) and these showed that U.K. cleft services have been restructured to 11 centralized services with 17 primary operative sites and 61 peripheral sites. All services provide care through a multidisciplinary (MDT) model, but the composition of each team varies. Primary cleft surgery and orthodontics were the only specialties that were represented in all cleft teams. Specialties may be represented in a team but their attendance at MDT clinics is variable. Only one team met all of the CSAG recommendations.Conclusions: Our survey shows that cleft services have centralized over the last 10 years, and an MDT model of care has been adopted. Further research is needed to show how this has influenced outcomes and to see whether some models of centralized care are associated with better outcomes

Cross-sectional association between smoking depictions in films and adolescent tobacco use nested in a British cohort study

OBJECTIVE: To assess associations between exposure to smoking depictions in films and adolescent tobacco use in a British population cohort. METHODS: Data on exposure to smoking in films and smoking behaviour were collected from 5166 15-year-old adolescents in the UK. Main outcome measures were smoking initiation (ever tried a cigarette) and current smoking status. Social, family and behavioural factors were adjusted for, together with alcohol use and peer smoking as potential mediators. Data from all existing cross-sectional studies examining the effects of exposure to smoking in films were summarised in a meta-analysis. RESULTS: Higher exposure to smoking in films was associated with a dose-response increase in the risk of smoking initiation even after adjusting for confounders. Adolescents in the highest exposure quartile were 1.73 (95% CI 1.55 to 1.93) times (RR) more likely to initiate smoking than those in the lowest quartile. They were more likely to report current smoking after adjusting for social and familial factors (RR 1.47 (95% CI 1.07 to 2.02)), but the association attenuated after including behavioural factors (RR 1.34 (95% CI 0.95 to 1.87)). The meta-analysis shows that, after aggregation of all relevant data, viewing smoking in films increases the risk of smoking onset by over 100% (combined RR 2.13 (95% CI 1.76 to 2.57)) and the risk of current or established smoking behaviour by 68% (combined RR 1.68 (95% CI 0.40 to 2.01)). CONCLUSIONS: This study provides evidence that adolescents in the UK and elsewhere who are exposed to smoking depictions in films are more likely to initiate smoking. Given the association between smoking and poor health outcomes, these data justify a review of film ratings

Perceptions of team members working in cleft services in the United Kingdom:A pilot study

Background Cleft care provision in the United Kingdom has been centralized over the past 15 years to improve outcomes for children born with cleft lip and palate. However, to date, there have been no investigations to examine how well these multidisciplinary teams are performing. Methods In this pilot study, a cross-sectional questionnaire surveyed members of all health care specialties working to provide cleft care in 11 services across the United Kingdom. Team members were asked to complete the Team Work Assessment (TWA) to investigate perceptions of team working in cleft services. The TWA comprises 55 items measuring seven constructs: team foundation, function, performance and skills, team climate and atmosphere, team leadership, and team identity; individual constructs were also aggregated to provide an overall TWA score. Items were measured using five-point Likert-type scales and were converted into percentage agreement for analysis. Results Responses were received from members of every cleft team. Ninety-nine of 138 cleft team questionnaires (71.7%) were returned and analyzed. The median (interquartile range) percentage of maximum possible score across teams was 75.5% (70.8, 88.2) for the sum of all items. Team performance and team identity were viewed most positively, with 82.0% (75.0, 88.2) and 88.4% (82.2, 91.4), respectively. Team foundation and leadership were viewed least positively with 79.0% (72.6, 84.6) and 76.6% (70.6, 85.4), respectively. Conclusions Cleft team members perceive that their teams work well, but there are variations in response according to construct. </jats:sec