Marriage and mobility in Britain—Secular trends in a nationwide sample

A nationwide sample survey of 2338 married couples provides information on the birthplaces and residences at meeting of couples first married between 1920 and 1960. Four measures of marital mobility are analysed according to year of marriage and year of first meeting. In their original form all measures show the expected increase in mobility from the 1920s to the 1930s with an exceptionally steep rise in the 1940s and a decline after the Second World War. The role of the war in promoting migration both of civilians and of soldiers is briefly reviewed. Women show rather different migration patterns from those of men.

Age at marriage is positively correlated with movement in this sample, but a stronger association is provided by age at first meeting. Mobility averages for each cohort are adjusted for the changes in age at marriage, both real and peculiar to this sample, which have occurred since 1920, and also for variation in the population sizes of birthplaces in the sample over time, and changes in the relative frequencies of different socio-economic classes. After adjustment, little change is seen in material mobility over the four decades covered by the survey and many of the differences which do remain after adjustment lack statistical significance. Some socio-economic explanations are offered for these conclusions.     

Books

Abstract

Epidemiology and Health Policy Michel A. Ibrahim Rockville, Md., Aspen Publications, 1985. 197 pp., $29.95 Reviewd by Berton H. Kaplan, PhD

Stress, Appraisal, and Coping Richard S. Lazarus and Susan Folkman New York, Springer, 1984. 464 pp. $19.95 Reviewd by David S. Strogatz, PhD     

Assessment of postural sway with a pendant-mounted wearable sensor

BackgroundBody-worn inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensors have been widely used in postural stability and balance studies because of their low cost and convenience. In most of these studies, a single IMU sensor is attached to a waist belt near the body’s center of mass. Some populations such as pregnant women, however, may find a waist belt challenging in terms of fit and comfort. For this reason it may be useful to identify an alternative location for placement of an IMU and a more comfortable means for attaching the sensor to the body.Research questionDoes placing an IMU sensor in a pendant worn around the neck permit discrimination between conditions with varying postural stability?MethodsTwenty-six healthy participants performed three standing tasks (double-leg, tandem, and single-leg standing) under eyes-open and eyes-closed vision conditions to preliminarily assess the ability of the pendant sensor to discriminate between balance conditions. Discrimination based upon data from a belt-mounted IMU was assessed in the same trials. Differences in standard deviation of acceleration components, sway area, and jerkiness due to trial condition and sensor were evaluated using analysis of variance followed by post hoc comparisons. These data were also incorporated into receiver-operator characteristic (ROC) curve analysis to assess the effectiveness of each sensor at discriminating between conditions.ResultsStability was found to vary across conditions, but there was no interaction between stability and sensor location (all p ≥ 0.323). ROC curve analysis showed that sensors in both locations were good discriminators between conditions.SignificancePlacing an IMU in a pendant may be feasible for studying and monitoring postural instability. This approach may be especially valuable when considering populations for which wearing a belt is uncomfortable.     

脑卒中患者恐惧疾病进展的研究现状

脑卒中患者在面对复杂的治疗期、漫长的康复期及难以预测的病情变化时容易产生对疾病或疾病进展的恐惧。恐惧疾病进展会损害脑卒中患者的身心健康和社会功能,最终影响患者的康复和预后。从恐惧疾病进展的定义、测量工具、国内外研究现状及影响因素几个方面进行综述,为临床护理人员深入了解脑卒中患者恐惧疾病进展现状、开展相关护理实践和临床研究提供依据。     

Measurement errors in control risk regression: A comparison of correction techniques

Control risk regression is a diffuse approach for meta-analysis about the effectiveness of a treatment, relating the measure of risk with which the outcome occurs in the treated group to that in the control group. The severity of illness is a source of between-study heterogeneity that can be difficult to measure. It can be approximated by the rate of events in the control group. Since the estimate is a surrogate for the underlying risk, it is prone to measurement error. Correction methods are necessary to provide reliable inference. This article illustrates the extent of measurement error effects under different scenarios, including departures from the classical normality assumption for the control risk distribution. The performance of different measurement error corrections is examined. Attention will be paid to likelihood-based structural methods assuming a distribution for the control risk measure and to functional methods avoiding the assumption, namely, a simulation-based method and two score function methods. Advantages and limits of the approaches are evaluated through simulation. In case of large heterogeneity, structural approaches are preferable to score methods, while score methods perform better for small heterogeneity and small sample size. The simulation-based approach has a satisfactory behavior whichever the examined scenario, with no convergence issues. The methods are applied to a meta-analysis about the association between diabetes and risk of Parkinson disease. The study intends to make researchers aware of the measurement error problem occurring in control risk regression and lead them to the use of appropriate correction techniques to prevent fallacious conclusions.