THE STANFORD HEART DISEASE PREVENTION PROGRAM

This afternoon I want to tell you about the results of a major study we have been doing as a part of the Stanford Heart Disease Prevention Program. The Stanford Heart Disease Prevention Program is an interdisciplinary project directed by Dr. John W. Farquhar, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University and I am co-director. This paper was really co-authored by fifteen people as part of an interdisciplinary team. With a group of different people like this, we had to spend a significant amount of time trying to teach each other our respective professional languages. Initially, communication within our group was a terrible problem. We have worked through this stage and now we have, among other things, a post doctoral training program in which both young M.D.\u27s or young Ph.D.\u27s can become involved in cardiovascular work in its various aspects. This project has a psychlogical component, a pathological component, a biochemical component, a behavioral component and a communications component. This afternoon I want to talk about our major community study. The gradual rise in age-adjusted cardiovascular disease mortality in industrialized countries has considerably diminished what would otherwise be seen as striking gains in health in the last 75 years. These gains, due primarily to increased and improved practices in modern medicine, have occurred mainly in the prevention of infant and early childhood mortality and in the improvement in crisis intervention techniques after the onset of disease symptoms. Unfortunately, much cardiovascular disease is apparently unresponsive to anything but pre-crisis preventive intervention. The U.S. male who has survived to age 45 now has only a slightly greater life expectancy than did his forebear in 1900. Table I shows comparative rates of coronary heart disease, treating the U.S. rate as base 100. That is not the actual figure but shows, by comparison, for example, that Japan and Greece and Yugoslavia have considerably lower rates and that only Finland is worse off than we are

Peasant Village in Mexico - a study of character

The author of this article starts with stating that social scientists have observed that peasants from all over the world seem more like each other in many ways than like their urban compatriots. This is manifested in Mexico by the fact that when townsman enters the peasant village he feels himself a stranger. The townsman, generally speaking, looks at the peasant either as a symbol of the worst or the best in human nature, depending on his feelings about the modern world. It means that the peasant remains unknown. To understand him, we must grasp his view of life, his goals, his problems as he feels them, and the factors which set him at odds with the developing world. In this sense the author undertakes an analysis of character in one of Mexico villages, which before the Revolution of 1910. had lived in the frame od hacienda, according to economic characteristics capitalistic but to social relations feudal plantation. In the village traits can be found common to peasants everywhere, but also aspects of character that bear the stamp of Mexican history and traditions. In fact the analysis is based on the investigation of a group whose leader was Erich Fromm. In the village there are many economical and social problems, social differentiation and differentiation of character. There are also many signs of change, but a lot of influences of hacienda system on the character of peasants have remained. Passive characters are prevailing who sometimes express the total fatalims. People are distrustfull and do not accept innovations willingly. There is a need to seek a patron like former hacendado. The author thinks that all this is a consequence of the near history when hacienda had dominated, and the factors which nowdays in the nature and the society cause unsecurity and resignation of peasants. The author particularly analyses: the peasants view of love, the war between sexes and authority and family, basing his analysis on lengthy interviews of peasants and observations of investigators. Examples of peasants views of love show that the large majority of villagers have a passive orientation, not an active. In fact they reflect the feeling that all good things of life lie autside ol oneself, beyond reach. The roots of domination of these receptive orientation lie in cultural tradition, family life and social limitation of life experience, knowledge and opportunities. The superficial observer quickly concludes that Mexican men dominate their women in family and in the society, too. But in the Mexican village, like everywhere, the u^ar between the sexes rages, which assume many hidden forms and contents. While in families with both mother and father, a subtle but continual struggle for power rages, in the families of many alcoholics one finds a wife who deeply enjoys the role of martyred victim, trying to turn the children away from their father. Some men show traits of machismo, the cult of tough — acting, hard drinking promiscuous men, whose background is their unindependence and infatility. Women want to keep their husband, children and family. The reason that the Mexican villager avoids accepting authority and responsibility lies in the fact that parents demand from their children strict obedience. Therefore in the games of children everything is subjected to the central authority, similar to the authority of parents. The behaviour of parents is historically planted by the long tradition of hacienda system and its residues. Child rearing in the i context of the whole cultural and social conditions in the village, had, for instance, a consequence that adolescent boys of the village treated investigators, who tryed to organize an agricultural club for them, as their patrons to whom they must remain submissive, awaiting orders. The author concludes that fatalism, distrust and hopelessness in this Mexican village were born in the experience of the hacienda and reinforced by the scarcity of land and living, common to peasants everywhere. At the same time he directs attention to ways of possible changes

New perspectives on language and gender: Linguistic prescription and compliance in call centres

Despite a shift to service-based economies, male-dominated, high-status workplaces have been the predominant focus of research into language and gender in the workplace. This study redresses this shortcoming by considering one female-dominated, low-status, highly regimented workplace that is emblematic of the globalized service economy: call centres. Drawing on 187 call centre service interactions, institutional documents, interviews, and observations from call centres in two national contexts, the study employs an innovative combination of quantitative and qualitative discourse-analytic techniques to compare rule compliance of male and female workers. Female agents in both national contexts are found to comply more with the linguistic prescriptions despite managers and agents emphatically denying the relevance of gender. The study offers a new perspective on language and gender, pointing to the need to expand the methodologies and theories currently favoured to understand how language perpetuates occupational segregation in twenty-first-century workplaces

Peasant Village in Mexico - a study of character

The author of this article starts with stating that social scientists have observed that peasants from all over the world seem more like each other in many ways than like their urban compatriots. This is manifested in Mexico by the fact that when townsman enters the peasant village he feels himself a stranger. The townsman, generally speaking, looks at the peasant either as a symbol of the worst or the best in human nature, depending on his feelings about the modern world. It means that the peasant remains unknown. To understand him, we must grasp his view of life, his goals, his problems as he feels them, and the factors which set him at odds with the developing world. In this sense the author undertakes an analysis of character in one of Mexico villages, which before the Revolution of 1910. had lived in the frame od hacienda, according to economic characteristics capitalistic but to social relations feudal plantation. In the village traits can be found common to peasants everywhere, but also aspects of character that bear the stamp of Mexican history and traditions. In fact the analysis is based on the investigation of a group whose leader was Erich Fromm. In the village there are many economical and social problems, social differentiation and differentiation of character. There are also many signs of change, but a lot of influences of hacienda system on the character of peasants have remained. Passive characters are prevailing who sometimes express the total fatalims. People are distrustfull and do not accept innovations willingly. There is a need to seek a patron like former hacendado. The author thinks that all this is a consequence of the near history when hacienda had dominated, and the factors which nowdays in the nature and the society cause unsecurity and resignation of peasants. The author particularly analyses: the peasants view of love, the war between sexes and authority and family, basing his analysis on lengthy interviews of peasants and observations of investigators. Examples of peasants views of love show that the large majority of villagers have a passive orientation, not an active. In fact they reflect the feeling that all good things of life lie autside ol oneself, beyond reach. The roots of domination of these receptive orientation lie in cultural tradition, family life and social limitation of life experience, knowledge and opportunities. The superficial observer quickly concludes that Mexican men dominate their women in family and in the society, too. But in the Mexican village, like everywhere, the u^ar between the sexes rages, which assume many hidden forms and contents. While in families with both mother and father, a subtle but continual struggle for power rages, in the families of many alcoholics one finds a wife who deeply enjoys the role of martyred victim, trying to turn the children away from their father. Some men show traits of machismo, the cult of tough — acting, hard drinking promiscuous men, whose background is their unindependence and infatility. Women want to keep their husband, children and family. The reason that the Mexican villager avoids accepting authority and responsibility lies in the fact that parents demand from their children strict obedience. Therefore in the games of children everything is subjected to the central authority, similar to the authority of parents. The behaviour of parents is historically planted by the long tradition of hacienda system and its residues. Child rearing in the i context of the whole cultural and social conditions in the village, had, for instance, a consequence that adolescent boys of the village treated investigators, who tryed to organize an agricultural club for them, as their patrons to whom they must remain submissive, awaiting orders. The author concludes that fatalism, distrust and hopelessness in this Mexican village were born in the experience of the hacienda and reinforced by the scarcity of land and living, common to peasants everywhere. At the same time he directs attention to ways of possible changes

The early childhood generalized trust belief scale

The study was designed to develop and evaluate the Early Childhood Generalized Trust Belief Scale (ECGTBS) as a method of assessing 5-to-8-year-olds’ generalized trust. Two hundred and eleven (103 male and 108 female) children (mean age 6 years and 2 months at Time 1) completed the ECGTBS twice over a year. A subsample of participants completed the ECGTBS after two weeks to assess the scale’s test-retest reliability. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirmed that the ECGTBS assessed the expected three factors: reliability, emotional trust, and honesty with item-pairs loading most strongly on their corresponding factor. However, the ECGTBS demonstrated low to modest internal consistency and test-retest reliability which indicates a need for further development of this instrument. As evidence for the convergent validity of the ECGTBS, the reliability and emotional trust items were associated with the children’s trust in classmates at Time 2. Concurrent asymmetric quadratic relationships indicated the importance of midrange generalized trust. Specifically, children with very high generalized trust experienced greater loneliness and children with very low generalized trust had fewer friendships than children with midrange trust

Young children's interpersonal trust consistency as a predictor of future school adjustment

Young children’s interpersonal trust consistency was examined as a predictor of future school adjustment. One hundred and ninety two (95 male and 97 female, M age = 6 years 2 months, SD age = 6 months) children from school years 1 and 2 in the United Kingdom were tested twice over one-year. Children completed measures of peer trust and school adjustment and teachers completed the Short-Form Teacher Rating Scale of School Adjustment. Longitudinal quadratic relationships emerged between consistency of children’s peer trust beliefs and peer-reported trustworthiness and school adjustment and these varied according to social group, facet of trust, and indictor of school adjustment. The findings support the conclusion that interpersonal trust consistency, especially for secret-keeping, predicts aspects of young children’s school adjustment