A social insight into bereavement and reproductive loss

Abstract not available

The social dimensions of reproductive loss

Abstract not available

The Benefits of Music Education on Academic, Behavioral, and Communicative Skills with Middle School Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Music education has an important place for students with special needs. Through community based arts education programs, student benefits range from social to academic. The problem is that too often music education, among arts programs, is not taught in special education classrooms. The purpose of this study was to identify benefits that music education has on students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), focusing specifically on academic, behavioral, and communicative skills. A review of the literature revealed that music is beneficial to students in a variety of ways, when they are provided the opportunity to engage in music education. Through this qualitative study, data were collected from teachers, community based master teachers, and middle school students, over a 9-week residency art programs in a public elementary/middle school in Northern California. Preliminary findings identified that music education is beneficial to students with ASD in the areas of academics, behavior, and communicative skills. Key Words: music education, academics, behavior, communication, special education, Autism Spectrum Disorde

Youth in Arts: Evidence of Effectiveness Their Music Program Has On Communication and Social Aspects of Students With Special Needs

Music education has an important place for students with special needs. Through the Youth in Arts program, student benefits range from social to academic. The problem is that too often music education, among arts programs, is not taught in special education classrooms. The purpose of this study is to measure the impact that music education has on students with special needs, focusing specifically on socialization and communication aspects. A review of the literature revealed that music is beneficial to students in a variety of ways, when they are provided the opportunity to engage in music education. Through this qualitative study, data are collected from teachers, Youth in Arts master teachers, and elementary school students, over a 10-week residency art program in a public elementary school in northern California. Key Words: music education, Youth in Arts, socialization, communication, special educatio

The Benefits of Music Education on Academic, Behavioral, and Communicative Skills with Middle School Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Music education has an important place for students with special needs. Through community based arts education programs, student benefits range from social to academic. The problem is that too often music education, among arts programs, is not taught in special education classrooms. The purpose of this study was to identify benefits that music education has on students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), focusing specifically on academic, behavioral, and communicative skills. A review of the literature revealed that music is beneficial to students in a variety of ways, when they are provided the opportunity to engage in music education. Through this qualitative study, data were collected from teachers, community based master teachers, and middle school students, over a 9-week residency art programs in a public elementary/middle school in Northern California. Results identified that music education is beneficial to students with ASD in the areas of academics, behavior, and communicative skills

Music Education and Its Impact on Students with Special Needs

Using music in a setting that includes students with special needs can have an effect on student communication and socialization. A review of the literature indicates that little is known about the effect of music on student\u27s academic performance and behavior. Overall the research indicates that using music in a classroom, particularly with children with special needs has a positive effect on communication and socialization. Additional studies are needed to document the effect of music on student learning

Essays on Early Marriage Across Sub-Saharan Africa: An Economic Perspective

Rates of early marriage, here defined as any legal or customary union involving a male or female below the age of 18, have declined significantly over the last decade. However, progress has not been equitable, and rates of early marriage remain extraordinarily high in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. There is widespread consensus that early marriage causes a significant disruption in a child’s accumulation of human capital and has significantly negative intergenerational repercussions. Using a combination of secondary data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and experimental data from the field, this thesis will empirically explore the phenomenon of early marriage across Sub-Saharan Africa. Chapter 1 of this thesis explores associations between adolescent nuptiality and fertility patterns using the most recent Demographic and Health Survey datasets for thirty countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. Unlike previous studies examining marriage and fertility trends, we expand the adolescent period to more refined age categories to better capture age-specific variations in female sexual, marital, and reproductive trajectories. Overall, results suggest that among middle adolescents (ages 15 to 17), marriage-specific fertility levels are 4% higher than the fertility levels of women marrying as adults. However, variations between countries are substantial, and some results significantly contradict the assumptions of the aggregate fertility model. We speculate that some differences between countries are due to inconsistencies in domestic marriage laws. In addition to examining fertility levels, we also investigate precise marriage-birth sequences and find that most adolescent births result from marital conception. However, we find some evidence of middle adolescent premarital sexual activity that led to birth within the first eight months of marriage. The chapter concludes with a case study on Ghana, examining whether a domestic law criminalising underage marriage effectively reduced its incidence, and whether this law had an overall demographic effect. Using a multi-stage regression discontinuity design, results indicate that early marriage reduced by approximately 6% due to Ghana’s 1998 Children’s Act. This reduction simultaneously increased the age of women at first birth by delaying marriage. Furthermore, our results found an overall welfare-improving effect, with reduced reports of emotional, sexual, and physical domestic violence against women. In Chapter 2, using lab-in-the-field experimental and comprehensive survey data, we examine whether age at first marriage affects the willingness of husbands and wives to cooperate to maximise household gains. Among the Bagisu of East Uganda, we find that women who marry older are more cooperative with their husbands. In a series of corresponding inter-household games, we conclude that female behaviour is not driven by the selection of more cooperative women into progressively later union, but by the marriage institutions’ effect. As an extension to the core analysis, we further examine the role of education and the cultural practice of Bridewealth on rates of cooperation. This chapter concludes by evaluating the linkages between the behaviour exhibited in our intrahousehold games and spousal behaviour in everyday lives. We find that pre-existing cooperative behaviours positively correlated to in-game contributions, particularly for husbands. Here, we add to the recent literature that focuses on correlates between behaviour in the lab and real-life behaviour. In Chapter 3, using an original, multi-stage sampling strategy, we further investigate intrahousehold behaviour using a modified version of the Trust Game. Data gathered via an initial census allowed us to assign households to early and later marriage stratifications, based on the wife’s age at marriage. As in previous studies, our results appear inconsistent with the assumption of Pareto efficiency in household decision-making. We reject the unitary and collective household models and identify early marriage as a channel through which trust and reciprocity can affect low household efficiency levels. Specifically, we find that women married as a ‘child’ exhibit less trust to their husbands than women who marry as adults. In a series of interactions with education, we observe that the negative effect of early marriage on female trust is the same, even with increased levels of education. By employing a within-subject design to our lab-in-the-field experiment, we directly compare intrahousehold behaviour with stranger counterfactuals. We find weak evidence suggesting that women married under 18 trust men from other households less. Similarly, men who married a bride under 18 exhibit significantly less trust to women from different households. We do not, however, observe any significant behaviour from men in our intrahousehold treatment. Throughout, our results are robust to a wide variety of control variables, and we find evidence suggesting that lab behaviour roughly mirrors analogous real-life household behaviou