bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Challenges and Predicaments of Doing Embedded Fieldwork in Sociology: Shifting Roles of a Researcher in the Study of Social Compliance Audit
Authors: Prasad Archana
Published: January 2022

This paper seeks to recount the challenges and predicaments of doing fieldwork in the discipline of sociology with the central focus on ethnographic techniques of data collection. The paper is based on the specific challenges encountered by the researcher while doing the study of Social Compliance Audit (SCA). This paper draws from two bouts of fieldwork; each very different from the other. My first encounter is with the practice of SCA as a graduate of sociology, working in the corporate sector as a social compliance auditor. My second as a scholar enrolled for PhD program researching on social compliance audit. The two locations offered very different vantage points of enquiry. As an auditor, my brief was laid out; a given whose protocols I had to follow. SCA was a known and necessary entity for the managerial staff in the garment industry. As a PhD scholar I realized it was virtually unknown in the academic community of sociology, even within studies on labor. There are two clear challenges that I faced while conducting fieldwork for my PhD. One, that SCA was relatively unfamiliar as an object for sociological enquiry. And two, the predicaments of doing qualitative research on sites and people who had their own ideas of how SCA ought to be studies. Here, the field encountered is analysed as a method of knowledge production and the ethnographer is placed at the centre of drama.
Citizenship and Minorities in the Constituent Assembly Debates: Making Sense of the Present
Authors: Judge Paramjit S.
Published: January 2022

The debate on citizenship in the Constituent Assembly was overshadowed by the partition of India, which created difficulties in making constitutional provision for citizenship on certain defined criteria. However, it was quite clear to most of the members of the Constituent Assembly that the criteria of citizenship could not be fixed beforehand, as it was not possible to anticipate future developments. Thus, the Constitution empowered the parliament to define citizenship from time to time in the light of changing conditions. Thus began the process of enactments revising the provisions for citizenship, which ultimately culminated into the violation of the Constitution through enactment.
Book review: A. M. Shah, The Legacy of M. N. Srinivas: His Contribution to Sociology and Social Anthropology in India
Authors: Thakur Manish
Published: January 2022

A. M. Shah, The Legacy of M. N. Srinivas: His Contribution to Sociology and Social Anthropology in India. Routledge, 2020, 90 pp., ₹495 (paperback). ISBN: 978-0-367-46258-1.
Book review: L. N. Venkataraman, The Social Construction of Capabilities in a Tamil Village
Authors: Bhardwaj Aditi
Published: January 2022

L. N. Venkataraman, The Social Construction of Capabilities in a Tamil Village. Orient Blackswan, 2021, 190 pp., ₹595 (paperback). ISBN: 978-81-948295-9-1.
Book review: Essays from The India Forum (Ed.), India and the Pandemic: The First Year
Authors: Krishnan Rakesh M.
Published: January 2022

Essays from The India Forum (Ed.), India and the Pandemic: The First Year. Orient Blackswan, 2021, 335 pp., ₹695 (paperback). ISBN: 978-93-5442-009-2.
Book review: M. V. Nadkarni (Ed.), Socio-Economic Change and the Broad-Basing Process in India
Authors: Somayaji Sakarama
Published: January 2022

M. V. Nadkarni (Ed.), Socio-Economic Change and the Broad-Basing Process in India. London and New York: Routledge, First South Asia Edition, 2020, ₹995. (Page range not stated).
Christian theology and school Religious Education (RE): exploring the relationship
Authors: Cooling Trevor , Bowie Robert A.
Published: January 2022

This article examines the place of theology in school RE in the light of the 2018 Commission on Religious Education (CoRE) report. We outline the history of theology’s ambivalent relationship with RE and then offer some positive implications and possibilities arising from CoRE’s new emphasis on worldview.
Economic models of church life: three ‘nudges’ towards better behaviour
Authors: Bullivant Stephen
Published: January 2022

Economic ideas have long shed light on diverse spheres of social and cultural life. Religion is no exception and has spawned a large and thriving subfield. However, whereas recent decades have famously witnessed a ‘behavioural’ turn in economics – with Nobel prizes going to two pioneers of the field, Daniel Kahneman in 2002 and Richard Thaler in 2017 – there has yet to be significant work done in the ‘behavioural economics of religion’. This is a shame; there are good reasons for thinking that behavioural-economic theories and findings might be particularly well suited to illumine several areas of practical church life. In what is hopefully a light and quasi-entertaining way, this article offers (wildly speculative!) applications of behavioural economic ideas to three live topics within the sociology of religion and/or pastoral theology: the ‘empty’ church, the success of US megachurches, and church planting.
Inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor of the maxillary sinus: A case report
Authors: Siddiqui Dua , Tukruna Alaa , Afzal Syed Shabbir , Tebha Sameer Saleem , Yusuf Farah Hafiz
Published: January 2022

Inflammatory myofibroblastic tumors (IMTs) are one of the most complex and rare neoplasms that have been discovered, with varying behavior in different cases. They mostly arise in the thoracic and abdominal cavity, the lungs, retroperitoneum, and extremities. They can also be detected in the head and neck area. IMTs have no age or gender preference which makes them tougher to anticipate. Head and neck IMTs are benign neoplasms with locally aggressive behavior and a low risk of metastatic spread. They have an unknown etiology, and they resemble malignant lesions radiologically. In this case report, we will review the case of a 40-year-old woman with an unusual IMT in the maxillary sinus that presented as a challenge in diagnosis and management.
The Tacit Knowledge of Productive Scholars in Education
Authors: Tschannen-Moran Megan , Nestor-Baker Nancy
Published: February 2022

This study investigates the tacit knowledge of prolific educational scholars. These scholars were motivated by a clear set of values that led them to make research a priority in the midst of competing demands and to persist through the more tedious or arduous parts of the research process. The participants learned to manage not only their time but also their emotions when coping with the pressures of academic life, the criticism inherent in the peer review process, and the politics of organizational life. They formed collaborative networks for both emotional support and intellectual challenge. By making these knowledge structures more explicit, others may benefit from the thinking behind these scholars’ success to improve scholarship in the field.
Promoting Effective Task Interpretation as an Important Work Habit: A Key to Successful Teaching and Learning
Authors: Butler Deborah L. , Cartier Sylvie C.
Published: February 2022

In this article we argue that to be successful in an academic arena, students must adopt a consistent approach to completing academic work (i.e., a work habit) that includes very carefully interpreting the demands of tasks that are presented to them in schools. To clarify why task interpretation is so critical to student success, and is thus an important instructional objective for teachers, we begin by presenting two vignettes illustrating links between task interpretation and students’ successful engagement in academic work. Then, we take a step back to describe what we mean by academic work and engagement and to explain how and why students’ knowledge about, conceptions of, and interpretations of tasks are so foundational to performance. We also describe how students’ task interpretation breaks down and why such breakdowns often occur. Finally, we close by advancing practical suggestions for teachers regarding how to structure activities, instruction, and evaluation to promote students’ adoption of task interpretation as an important work habit in the pursuit of effective learning.

Sally is teaching a ninth grade English class. Her goal is for students to learn how to write various kinds of paragraphs. After showing some examples and talking with the class about the structure of a narrative paragraph, Sally asks the students to write one themselves. She writes the assignment on the chalkboard as she explains it to the class but notices that quite a number of students start talking to each other while her back is turned. As students work on the assignment, Sally circulates around the room. She reexplains the task to some students and reminds others to focus on their work. She notices that many students seem lost and that only a few students are doing a good job of following her very detailed instructions.

Amy is an eighth grade student taking science. One day, Amy arrives home with her science textbook and instructions to answer the questions at the end of Chapter 6. Amy sits down, turns her book to the end of the chapter, finds the first question and looks for key words. She then searches for those key words in the chapter to find information relevant to the question. She copies the information word for word onto a piece of paper, then moves onto the remaining questions. When she is challenged by her teacher the next day, who asks if she has answered the questions in her own words, Amy replies that she does not need to understand the information. She shows her teacher how she has received 100% on each of her previous homework assignments, which she completed in the same way.
Teachers as Self-Regulated Learners
Authors: Randi Judi
Published: February 2022

This article describes how preservice teachers are afforded opportunities for developing self-regulation as they learn to transition to “the other side of the desk” in their teacher education program. The article focuses on self-regulated learning as it applies to teachers’ work in the classroom and distinguishes volitional work styles and student study habits from learning-oriented volitional strategies teachers engage to learn from teaching. To illustrate teachers’ strategy use and to reify volitional constructs as they are embodied in practice, this article presents practical examples from one teacher education program. Finally, the article considers ways that teacher preparation programs might structure learning environments, affording teachers opportunities to learn self-regulation and then apply those strategies to learn from their own teaching.
Seeking Equity in the Education of California's English Learners
Authors: Rumberger Russell W. , Gándara Patricia
Published: February 2022

The article provides an abridged version of a report prepared for the lawsuit, Williams v. State of California. The report first examines the achievement gap for English learners in California. Second, it reviews evidence in seven areas in which these students receive a substantially inequitable education vis-a-vis their English-speaking peers, even when those peers are similarly economically disadvantaged. Third, it documents the state's role in creating and perpetuating existing inequities. Finally, it describes a series of remedies that the state could pursue to reduce these inequities.
What Makes the Difference? A Practical Analysis of Research on the Effectiveness of Distance Education
Authors: Zhao Yong , Lei Jing , Lai Bo Yan Chun , Tan Hueyshan Sophia
Published: February 2022

This article reports findings of a meta-analytical study of research on distance education. The purpose of this study was to identify factors that affect the effectiveness of distance education. The results show that although the aggregated data of available studies show no significant difference in outcomes between distance education and face-to-face education as previous research reviews suggest, there is remarkable difference across the studies. Further examination of the difference reveals that distance education programs, just like traditional education programs, vary a great deal in their outcomes, and the outcome of distance education is associated with a number of pedagogical and technological factors. This study led to some important data-driven suggestions for and about distance education.
Descriptive Inquiry as Contemplative Practice
Authors: Kesson Kathleen , Traugh Cecelia , Perez Felix
Published: February 2022

This article draws upon and integrates a number of distinct but overlapping areas of inquiry in the literature on teaching: teacher inquiry, reflective practice, spirituality and education, and contemplative practice. In it, we examine the implementation of a particular phenomenological form of teacher inquiry, the Descriptive Review, in an urban teacher preparation program. The authors participated in a longitudinal study of graduates of the program and are engaged in the continual examination of student work to assess the efficacy of the inquiry process in helping students overcome bias and habitual thinking, become more mindful of the basis of their professional judgments, and develop a moral framework that might help them resist dehumanizing and ineffective policies and imposed practices. The article includes the authors’ autobiographical reflections about what brought them to this form of practice, a description of the theory and practice of the Descriptive Review as it is carried out in their teacher preparation graduate programs, a description of the urban context in which the work takes place, and a student narrative of practice, which is analyzed in relation to the theory of phenomenological inquiry. The conclusions are tentative; although the efficacy of the method is clearly demonstrated in the narratives that students produce about their inquiries into practice, the complex and challenging environments that new urban teachers are facing are problematic in terms of the capacity to develop contemplative practice.
Engendering Participation, Deliberating Dependence: Inner-City Adolescents’ Perceptions of Classroom Practice
Authors: Patchen Terri
Published: February 2022

This ethnographic study of high school students’ classroom practices and perceptions about participation reveals the extent to which students’ perceptions determine their understandings of practice, even when these understandings conflict with researcher observations and the bulk of the literature on gender and participation. This study shows, moreover, that although there were gender-stratified patterns of participation in the classroom between girls and boys, the underlying conceptualizations about what constituted a supportive environment for participation differed little between genders: Both girls and boys revealed themselves as dependent upon teachers, peers, and “knowing.” What did differ were the ways in which girls and boys described this dependence and the ways in which they understood what occurred in classrooms. Conducted at a large inner-city high school in California populated primarily by low-income, first-generation Latina/Latino students, classroom research took place over a period of 2 years in a series of Life Skills for the 21st Century classes. Dependent primarily upon formal interviews and participant observations, this research focus was on how particular participation strategies were understood and made manifest in the classroom. Beyond the contributions of new information on the importance of the relationship of perception to practice, this research shows that we need to be cautious when we think about gender issues, and how students, particularly ethnic minorities, understand the classroom dynamic.
How Language Proficiency Tests Mislead Us about Ability: Implications for English Language Learner Placement in Special Education
Authors: Macswan Jeff , Rolstad Kellie
Published: February 2022

The authors argue that English language learner (ELL) language assessment policy and poor language tests partly account for ELLs’ disproportionate representation in special education. Previous research indicates that many states routinely assess ELLs’ first language (L1) at initial enrollment and that ELLs identified as limited in both languages have relatively high rates of identification in special education. Two common tests, the Language Assessment Scales-Oral (LAS—O) Español and the Idea Proficiency Test I–Oral (IPT) Spanish, are shown to identify 74% and 90%, respectively, Spanish-background ELLs (N = 145) as limited L1 students, whereas a natural language measure found only 2% of participants to have unexpectedly high morphological error rates. Correlations are provided. The authors recommend changes in language testing policies and practices for ELLs.
Too Little, Too Late: The Illusive Goal of School Desegregation in Kansas City, Missouri, and the Role of the Federal Government
Authors: Moran Peter William
Published: February 2022

This article explores the twisting and complicated history of school desegregation in Kansas City, Missouri, as an example of how illusive meaningful racial integration was and still is in urban America. The goal of desegregation was difficult to achieve from the beginning, when the school district adopted its initial desegregation plan based on neighborhood schools. This article examines the impact of that plan and its many shortcomings, particularly the provision permitting students to transfer between schools and the manner in which massive demographic change in the city undermined desegregation. The role of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) is also examined in detail, especially the department's part in pressuring school officials in Kansas City to reform the original plan in the early 1970s. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Kansas City school district, like a great many other urban school districts, had experienced massive white and middle-class flight that left it with a smaller tax base and significant fiscal difficulties. Consequently, the Kansas City Public Schools grew increasingly reliant on federal funding. In compelling Kansas City to make changes to its desegregation plan, HEW officials used a “carrot and stick” approach. On one hand, HEW offered incentives to the school district in the form of large grants; on the other hand, HEW coerced the school district into making reforms by threatening to terminate the school district's federal funding. Ultimately, the desegregation that was accomplished in Kansas City was far too little and came far too late, after the school district had lost most of its white students to the predominantly white suburbs beyond. This historical analysis of school desegregation in Kansas City is important because it illustrates how race, inequality, and segregation profoundly affected an urban school district's willingness and ability to implement Brown, with or without federal funding. Similar stories echo through urban school districts across the United States.
Pre-entrepreneurship social status and research and development investment decision: Evidence from Chinese private enterprises
Authors: Niu Zhiyong , Yu Dianfan , Zhou Xiaoyan
Published: January 2022

Social status is seen as an important topic in management and organisational sciences. Despite the extensive research on the upper echelons of management, little is known about the influence of social status on R&D investment decisions. We examine the effects of pre-entrepreneurial social status on R&D investments based on imprinting theory, using 2000–2014 data for 20,177 Chinese private small- and medium-sized enterprises. The results reveal that entrepreneurs with an upper and lower social status show a stronger tendency to make R&D investments than middle-class counterparts. The findings are robust to various sensitivity tests. In addition, we explore the moderating influences of political capital and institutional environment, both of which enhance the positive relationship between social status and R&D investments. Our study finds that social status has a lasting and varying impact on decisions to engage in innovation behaviours. The findings contribute to research on Chinese firm innovation and offer key implications for social status and imprinting theorising.
Pedagogy and Diversity: Difference or Deficit
Authors: Sarangapani Padma M.
Published: January 2022

Schools—their curriculum and pedagogy—assume the middle-class child as the norm, effectively rendering other childhoods and life-worlds as being deficient. Shifting away from this assumption, and acknowledging diversity, is usually understood as requiring an ‘attitudinal’ shift on the part of teachers. Teachers are usually held ‘guilty’ of having negative attitudes towards children of the poor. Explanations for the pedagogy generally then refer to these attitudes, and ‘corrective action’ then attends to an attitudinal change. The idea of ‘multiple childhoods’ is gaining influence in the teacher education curricula as providing an alternative normative framework that can enable teachers to work with, and retain, diversity.

Some recent research into the manifestation of ‘difference’ in the primary school classroom indicates that differences are experienced by teachers as learning difficulty issues that need a curricular and pedagogic response. The child’s home culture, home support for schooling and home socialization seem to enter into the pedagogy in more ways than can be addressed by changing the ‘teachers’ attitudes’. ‘Educability’ is a central (folk) concept for teachers who engage with and try to address the learning requirements of children, particularly those from underprivileged backgrounds (and particularly social classes lower than themselves). Four studies on teachers’ experiences of ‘difference’ are drawn upon to engage with and to evolve an understanding of the specific implications of for pedagogy and educational aims.
Significance of Personal and Job Attributes for Managing Employee Wellbeing in the New Work from Home India
Authors: Kumar Navya , Alok Swati , Banerjee Sudatta
Published: January 2022

Indian employers rapidly adopted work from home (WFH) due to COVID. Now some contemplate long-term, also permanent WFH for select employee segments even post-pandemic, for productivity benefits. But employee wellbeing is critical for productivity. Therefore, this article examines effects of personal and job-related factors on wellbeing for 301 Indian employees placed under WFH during COVID lockdown of early-2020 and longer. Hierarchical linear regression demonstrated that demographically, the presence of elders at home and employment in manufacturing were negatively associated with wellbeing. Among personal attributes, the need for structure (routines) was negatively associated with wellbeing. But the need for autonomy (volition) and job crafting to increase structural job resources (proactively obtaining more responsibility and knowledge) were positively associated with wellbeing. Wellbeing was also positively associated with job-related factors of technology and supervisor support. These findings could inform customization of, and interventions under, organisations’ WFH approaches.
Book review: D. Buckingham, Youth on Screen. Representing Young People in Film and Television
Authors: Janson Malena
Published: January 2022

D. Buckingham, Youth on Screen. Representing Young People in Film and Television. Polity Press, 2021, 192 pp., 20.40€ (Paperback). ISBN: 9781509545254.
The acoustics of civil resistance: Summoning the spirit of the law with a smartphone
Authors: Sliwinski Sharon
Published: January 2022

Inspired by Diamond Reynolds’s radical gesture to open a live broadcast in the moments after Philando Castile was shot by police in 2016, this paper explores the ways smartphones have become a critical tool of civil resistance. The paper situates this tool in a historical context, tracking the role of visual testimony in the long struggle for Black liberation, drawing special attention to the acoustic dimension and posing questions about how attending to the sonic environment modifies our understanding of bearing witness as embodied practice and our understanding of civil resistance.
The Benefits and Supervisory Styles of Women Police Leaders
Authors: Beaton Blake , Todak Natalie , Shjarback John A.
Published: January 2022

While research has identified four main police supervisory styles, it is unclear whether the framework accurately represents the supervisory styles of women. We explored the benefits of promoting women in policing and examined their supervisory styles, drawing on interviews with 38 ranking women. Participants attributed three benefits to promoting women – diversity, people-orientation, and conscientiousness. All 34 who described their supervisory style fell into one of the four previously identified categories. Most common was innovative (50%), then supportive (32%), traditional (12%), and active (6%). We link findings to calls for gender diversity up the ranks of law enforcement.
Gender Matters: Reappraising the Issues of Equity, Participation and Ownership in Watershed Management
Authors: Kumar Dhananjay , Kumar Dhiraj
Published: January 2022

Equal share in governance of managing natural resources is one of the strategic aspects of neoliberal developmentalism. Additionally, this process of natural resource governance (NRG) considers communities as a homogeneous entity by ignoring the cultural politics of gender division to maintain the latency and equilibrium of the existing gendered order and regime. Watershed developmental project is no exceptional in this regard. The existing empirical literature shows that the gender governance (GG) issues in development projects such as watershed is disproportionate between men and women.

This article talks about GG by discussing the issues of equity, participation and ownership in NRG, and it argued that GG cannot be synonymous with gender mainstreaming. Watershed development in India has been taken to address the issues of conservation and production, but it doesn’t address the cultural politics of gendered division. Women are more inclined to be marginalized in the governance of watershed management due to the cultural politics of control and access over the ownership of the natural resource (land) which comes under the hegemonic control of their male counterparts. Women participation in watershed activities is merely for fulfilling the custom of the official quota. Considering the potential function of women participation in watershed activities, the present article seeks to explore the issues and approaches through which the participatory institutions must meet the emerging challenges. This study concludes that the role of women participation in NRG will help in the integration of various form of capital more effectively.
Historiography of Caste: The Notion of the ‘Declassed’ Castes in Michel Boivin’s ‘Sufi Paradigm’
Authors: Hussain Ghulam
Published: January 2022

The ethno-nationalist historiography in South Asia primarily emerged as the postcolonial critique of British colonialism. Alternatively, the anti-caste historiographers have criticized the postcolonial historiography for reflecting the similar hegemonic bias towards the possible pre-or-post colonial histories of the internally colonized classes and castes. In this article, while appreciating with epistemic humility the equally legitimate position of Michel Boivin, I interrogate the concept of the ‘declassed’ caste groups as it tends to relativize the erasure of caste, the structural aspect that is peripheral to Boivin’s avowed goal of capturing diversity instead of difference, but central to the contemporary critical anti-caste scholarship that I rely on as an alternative framework of reference. Contending his selective epistemic prioritizing of the privileged Amil, Khoja, Mirza castes, I argue that Boivin’s archival ethnography has not effectively attended to the embedded caste-based political orders. He has failed to adequately address the possible erasure of caste, thereby adding to the ahistorical portrayal of the underprivileged castes such as Kolhi, Bheel, Meghwar, and Jogi. Boivin’s rendering of the ‘Sufi Paradigm’, therefore, is in continuation with the scholarship on Sindh that undermines hierarchical differences based on caste discrimination, and facilitates Sindhi progressive intelligentsia to historicize the privileged caste myth of caste-neutral Sufi Sindh.
Dalit Bildungsroman: A Modernist Perspective into the Poetics of Self in Jhoothan
Authors: Jha Bhargavi , Mishra Vereendra Kumar
Published: January 2022

This article analyses the incompetency of Indian philosophy of ‘Absoluteness’ and Western genre of classical Bildungsroman to analyse the process of self-formation in an odyssey of a Dalit. The modern contemporary era negotiates post-colonial and postmodern approaches to provide a heuristic view to the subjected self of a Dalit. The modernist approach takes Dissensual Bildungsroman into consideration. Om Prakash Valmiki’s Jhoothan narrates an experience of a subjugated and unheard voice and his journey of self-acculturation. The paper pre-eminently concerns with unique and experimented form of self which can provide a tantamount status to the pariah community and their culture compared with the elite Hindu community and among its wide range of readers and audience.
Amphioxus muscle transcriptomes reveal vertebrate-like myoblast fusion genes and a highly conserved role of insulin signalling in the metabolism of muscle
Authors: Aase-Remedios Madeleine E. , Coll-Lladó Clara , Ferrier David E. K.
Published: February 2022

Background

The formation and functioning of muscles are fundamental aspects of animal biology, and the evolution of ‘muscle genes’ is central to our understanding of this tissue. Feeding-fasting-refeeding experiments have been widely used to assess muscle cellular and metabolic responses to nutrition. Though these studies have focused on vertebrate models and only a few invertebrate systems, they have found similar processes are involved in muscle degradation and maintenance. Motivation for these studies stems from interest in diseases whose pathologies involve muscle atrophy, a symptom also triggered by fasting, as well as commercial interest in the muscle mass of animals kept for consumption. Experimentally modelling atrophy by manipulating nutritional state causes muscle mass to be depleted during starvation and replenished with refeeding so that the genetic mechanisms controlling muscle growth and degradation can be understood.

Results

Using amphioxus, the earliest branching chordate lineage, we address the gap in previous work stemming from comparisons between distantly related vertebrate and invertebrate models. Our amphioxus feeding-fasting-refeeding muscle transcriptomes reveal a highly conserved myogenic program and that the pro-orthologues of many vertebrate myoblast fusion genes were present in the ancestral chordate, despite these invertebrate chordates having unfused mononucleate myocytes. We found that genes differentially expressed between fed and fasted amphioxus were orthologous to the genes that respond to nutritional state in vertebrates. This response is driven in a large part by the highly conserved IGF/Akt/FOXO pathway, where depleted nutrient levels result in activation of FOXO, a transcription factor with many autophagy-related gene targets.

Conclusion

Reconstruction of these gene networks and pathways in amphioxus muscle provides a key point of comparison between the distantly related groups assessed thus far, significantly refining the reconstruction of the ancestral state for chordate myoblast fusion genes and identifying the extensive role of duplicated genes in the IGF/Akt/FOXO pathway across animals. Our study elucidates the evolutionary trajectory of muscle genes as they relate to the increased complexity of vertebrate muscles and muscle development.
Health and study dropout: health aspects differentially predict attrition
Authors: Beller Johannes , Geyer Siegfried , Epping Jelena
Published: January 2022

Background

Participant dropout poses significant problems in longitudinal survey studies. Although it is often assumed that a participant’s health predicts future study dropout, only a few studies have examined this topic, with conflicting findings. This study aims to contribute to the literature by clarifying the relationship between different aspects of health and study dropout.

Methods

The 2008 baseline sample of the German Aging Survey was used to predict study dropout (N = 4442). Indicators of health included physical health using the number of chronic conditions, physical functioning using the SF-36 Physical Functioning subscale, cognitive functioning using the digit symbol substitution test, and depression using the CESD-15.

Results

It was found that different aspects of health had differential associations with survey dropout: Worse physical functioning and in part worse cognitive functioning predicted increased dropout rates; contrarily, worse physical health predicted decreased dropout when controlling for other health aspects and covariates. Depression was not significantly related to study dropout.

Conclusions

Therefore, participants with chronic conditions, but minimal physical and cognitive disability were most likely to participate in the future. These findings suggest that health has a complex relationship with survey dropout and must be accounted for in longitudinal studies. Neglecting this systematic attrition due to health problems bears the risk of severely under- or overestimating health-related effects and trends.
Comparisons of statistical distributions for cluster sizes in a developing pandemic
Authors: Faddy M. J. , Pettitt A. N.
Published: January 2022

Background

We consider cluster size data of SARS-CoV-2 transmissions for a number of different settings from recently published data. The statistical characteristics of superspreading events are commonly described by fitting a negative binomial distribution to secondary infection and cluster size data as an alternative to the Poisson distribution as it is a longer tailed distribution, with emphasis given to the value of the extra parameter which allows the variance to be greater than the mean. Here we investigate whether other long tailed distributions from more general extended Poisson process modelling can better describe the distribution of cluster sizes for SARS-CoV-2 transmissions.

Methods

We use the extended Poisson process modelling (EPPM) approach with nested sets of models that include the Poisson and negative binomial distributions to assess the adequacy of models based on these standard distributions for the data considered.

Results

We confirm the inadequacy of the Poisson distribution in most cases, and demonstrate the inadequacy of the negative binomial distribution in some cases.

Conclusions

The probability of a superspreading event may be underestimated by use of the negative binomial distribution as much larger tail probabilities are indicated by EPPM distributions than negative binomial alternatives. We show that the large shared accommodation, meal and work settings, of the settings considered, have the potential for more severe superspreading events than would be predicted by a negative binomial distribution. Therefore public health efforts to prevent transmission in such settings should be prioritised.
Stroke survivors’ preferences regarding study participation in rehabilitation research
Authors: Carlstedt Emma , Månsson Lexell Eva , Ståhl Agneta , Lindgren Arne , Iwarsson Susanne
Published: January 2022

Background

To pursue high quality research, successful participant recruitment is essential, but recruitment rates are often low. This is specifically true in target populations with impairments, for instance, among stroke survivors. Previous studies focusing on recruitment have mainly relied on information from professionals, and there is therefore a need to contribute with new methodological insights to how potential rehabilitation research participants describe their interest and preferences to participate in research. The purpose of this study was to generate knowledge about stroke survivors’ interest in participating in rehabilitation research, reasons for being interested or not, and preferred forms and foci of rehabilitation interventions. An additional aim was to describe preferences regarding survey administration modes and processes for recruitment to studies.

Method

This cross-sectional study recruited Swedish residents who had sustained a stroke, initially by using advertisement on the National Stroke Association’s website, flyers posted at local occupational and physical therapy offices and at local stroke/senior organization meetings. Secondly, participants were recruited through a local stroke register. The survey, administered either in a paper form returned by postal mail; online or as a phone interview with 128 stroke survivors.

Results

Most of the participants were interested in participating in rehabilitation research, particularly younger persons (p = 0.001) and those closer to stroke onset (p = 0.047). Contribution to research, possibility to try new rehabilitation interventions and meeting others in the same situation were reasons that attracted an interest to participate. Other important aspects were related to motivation, individual needs, as well as how skilled the people who provided the intervention were. Participants preferred group-based programs, and programs focusing on regaining lost functions were highly requested. A majority wanted to be contacted through postal mail (70%) and most of them (90%) used the paper form to respond to the survey.

Conclusions

A range of personal and external aspects, including challenges related to digitized administration modes, should be considered to achieve high participation rates in rehabilitation research targeting stroke survivors. The importance of addressing individual needs and prerequisites in an individualized manner should not be underestimated and might be a useful strategy to recruitment success.
Effect of disease duration on the association between C-reactive protein-albumin ratio and endoscopic activity in ulcerative colitis
Authors: Furukawa Shinya , Yagi Sen , Shiraishi Kana , Miyake Teruki , Tange Kazuhiro , Hashimoto Yu , Kitahata Shogo , Kawamura Tomoe , Ninomiya Tomoyuki , Mori Kenichirou , Suzuki Seiyuu , Shibata Naozumi , Murakami Hidehiro , Ohashi Katsuhisa , Hasebe Aki , Tomida Hideomi , Yamamoto Yasunori , Takeshita Eiji , Ikeda Yoshio , Hiasa Yoichi
Published: January 2022

Background

A simple serum biomarker for clinical outcome in patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) remains an unmet need. Some studies have shown an association between C-reactive protein (CRP)-albumin ratio (CAR) and prognosis in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), but evidence regarding the association between CAR and UC remains limited. We evaluated the association between CAR and clinical outcome in Japanese patients with UC.

Methods

Subjects were 273 Japanese patients with UC. Clinical remission was defined as absence of both abnormally high stool frequency (< 3 per day) and rectal bleeding. Mucosal healing (MH) was defined as Mayo endoscopic subscore (MES) 0. Moderate to severe endoscopic activity was defined as MES 2–3. Subjects were divided according to CAR into tertiles (low, moderate, and high).

Results

The proportions of patients with clinical remission, MH, and moderate to severe endoscopic activity were 57.9%, 26.0%, and 37.0%, respectively. High CAR was significantly positively associated with moderate to severe endoscopic activity but not MH or clinical remission after adjustment (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 2.18 [95% confidence interval (CI) (1.11–4.35)], p for trend 0.023), but only in patients with long disease duration (> 7 years) (adjusted OR 2.95 [95% CI (1.06–8.79)], p for trend 0.023). CAR was not associated with clinical remission or MH.

Conclusions

CAR may be significantly positively associated with moderate to severe endoscopic activity but not clinical remission or MH in Japanese patients with UC. In patients with long UC duration, CAR might be a useful serum marker for disease activity.
A CT-based radiomics model for predicting renal capsule invasion in renal cell carcinoma
Authors: Yang Lu , Gao Long , Arefan Dooman , Tan Yuchuan , Dan Hanli , Zhang Jiuquan
Published: January 2022

Background

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is a heterogeneous group of kidney cancers. Renal capsule invasion is an essential factor for RCC staging. To develop radiomics models from CT images for the preoperative prediction of capsule invasion in RCC patients.

Methods

This retrospective study included patients with RCC admitted to the Chongqing University Cancer Hospital (01/2011–05/2019). We built a radiomics model to distinguish patients grouped as capsule invasion versus non-capsule invasion, using preoperative CT scans. We evaluated effects of three imaging phases, i.e., unenhanced phases (UP), corticomedullary phases (CMP), and nephrographic phases (NP). Five different machine learning classifiers were compared. The effects of tumor and tumor margins are also compared. Five-fold cross-validation and the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) are used to evaluate model performance.

Results

This study included 126 RCC patients, including 46 (36.5%) with capsule invasion. CMP exhibited the highest AUC (AUC = 0.81) compared to UP and NP, when using the forward neural network (FNN) classifier. The AUCs using features extracted from the tumor region were generally higher than those of the marginal regions in the CMP (0.81 vs. 0.73) and NP phase (AUC = 0.77 vs. 0.76). For UP, the best result was obtained from the marginal region (AUC = 0.80). The robustness analysis on the UP, CMP, and NP achieved the AUC of 0.76, 0.79, and 0.77, respectively.

Conclusions

Radiomics features in renal CT imaging are associated with the renal capsule invasion in RCC patients. Further evaluation of the models is warranted.
The intergenerational relationship between conditional cash transfers and newborn health
Authors: Lucas Andreza Daniela Pontes , de Oliveira Ferreira Monaliza , Lucas Tarcisio Daniel Pontes , Salari Paola
Published: January 2022

Background

Lack of nutrition, inadequate housing, low education and limited access to quality care can negatively affect children’s health over their lifetime. Implemented in 2003, the Bolsa Familia (“Family Stipend”) Program (PBF) is a conditional cash transfer program targeting poor households in Brazil. This study investigates the long-term benefits of cash transfers through intergenerational transmission of health and poverty by assessing the early life exposure of the mother to the PBF.

Methods

We used data from the 100M SINASC-SIM cohort compiled and managed by the Center for Data and Knowledge Integration for Health (CIDACS), containing information about participation in the PBF and socioeconomic and health indicators. We analyzed five measures of newborn health: low (less than 2,500 g) and very low (less than 1,500 g) birth weight, premature (less than 37 weeks of gestation) and very premature (less than 28 weeks of gestation) birth, and the presence of some type of malformation (according to ICD-10 codes). Furthermore, we measured the early life exposure to the PBF of the mother as PBF coverage in the previous decade in the city where the mother was born. We applied multilevel logistic regression models to assess the associations between birth outcomes and PBF exposures.

Results

Results showed that children born in a household where the mother received BF were less likely to have low birth weight (OR 0.93, CI; 0.92-0.94), very low birth weight (0.87, CI; 0.84-0.89), as well as to be born after 37 weeks of gestation (OR 0.98, CI; 0.97-0.99) or 28 weeks of gestation (OR 0.93, CI; 0.88-0.97). There were no significant associations between households where the mother received BF and congenital malformation.

On average, the higher the early life exposure to the PBF of the mother, the lower was the prevalence of low birth weight, very low birth weight and congenital malformation of the newborn. No trend was noted for preterm birth.

Conclusion

The PBF might have indirect intergenerational effects on children’s health. These results provide important implications for policymakers who have to decide how to effectively allocate resources to improve child health.
Regional living conditions and the prevalence, awareness, treatment, control of hypertension at the individual level in Russia
Authors: Maksimov Sergey Alekseevich , Balanova Yulia A. , Shalnova Svetlana A. , Muromtseva Galina A. , Kapustina Anna V. , Drapkina Oksana M.
Published: January 2022

Background

The objective of our study was to investigate the associations of characteristics inherent in large Russian Federation (RF) regions with prevalence, awareness, treatment and control of hypertension at the individual level.

Methods

Regional characteristics were obtained from the official website of the Federal State Statistics Service of the RF. We employed principal component analysis to reduce the dimensionality of data, which allowed defining five integral regional indices. Prevalence, awareness, treatment and control of hypertension were assessed from the data of the cross-sectional stage of ESSE-RF study conducted in 2013–2014. The final sample included 19,791 patients from 12 RF regions. Generalized estimating equations were used to identify the associations of regional indices with prevalence, awareness, treatment and control of hypertension at the individual level, taking into consideration nested data structures (study subjects in the regions).

Results

The index characterizing deterioration of social living conditions and societal marginalization exhibited positive associations with the prevalence of hypertension among men (OR = 1.18; 95% CI: 1.05–1.32) and elderly people (OR = 1.16; 95% CI: 1.02–1.32). Moreover, deterioration in the social environment was associated with a reduction in treatment (OR = 0.76; 95% CI: 0.64–0.90) and control of hypertension (OR = 0.79; 95% CI: 0.69–0.90). Hypertension awareness was directly connected with demographic crisis (OR = 1.13; 95% CI: 1.02–1.25) and augmented industrial development (OR = 1.15; 95% CI: 1.01–1.33) in the regions. The association of regional living conditions with the prevalence of hypertension is relatively weak, compared to predictors at the individual level, but this influence is important for awareness, treatment and control of hypertension.

Conclusion

The study contributed to evaluating the associations of the vital characteristics inherent in population of large RF regions with arterial hypertension prevalence, as well as with awareness, treatment and control of this disease. Our results provided original insights from the standpoint of cardiovascular disease epidemiology in the RF, as well as in the context of investigating the impact of living conditions on population health.