1,721,045 research outputs found
How bulimia nervosa relates to addictive behavior
Using longitudinal data that tracks bulimic behavior among young girls (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Growth and Health Study), we examine (1) whether bulimic behavior is consistent with addiction criteria as stated in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV (APA, 1994); and 2) whether the persistence in bulimia nervosa (BN) reflects tolerance formed from an addiction or if it can be attributed to slow learning about the deleterious health effects of BN. Making the case for treating BN as an addiction has important policy implications. First, it suggests that the timing of educational policy and treatment is crucial: preventive educational programs aimed at instructing girls about the deleterious health effects of BN, as well as treatment interventions, will be most effective if provided in the early stages. Second, it would put those exhibiting BN on more equal footing (from a treatment reimbursement perspective) with individuals with drug or alcohol addictions
Personality traits and Bulimia Nervosa
Bulimia Nervosa is a detrimental eating disorder that impacts millions of women. We examine the role played by socioeconomic factors and personality traits in bulimic behavior. Using data on eating disordered behavior from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Growth and Health Study, we present results showing that personality traits are significant determinants of bulimic behavior, even after controlling for race and class. This finding suggests that policies based on both the SES characteristics and the personality traits will be more effective for targeting those at risk
Negative Advertising and Political Competition
Why is negative advertising such a prominent feature of competition in the US political market? We hypothesize that two-candidate races provide stronger incentives for going negative relative to non-duopoly contests: when the number of competitors is greater than two, airing negative ads creates positive externalities for opponents that are not the object of the attack. To investigate the empirical relevance of the fewness of competitors in explaining the volume of negative advertising, we exploit variation in the number of entrants running for US non-presidential primaries from 2000 through 2008. Duopolies are over twice as likely to air a negative ad when compared to non-duopolies, and the tendency for negative advertising decreases in the number of competitors. The estimates are robust to various specification checks and the inclusion of potential confounding factors at the race, candidate, and advertisement levels
Weight, Reference Points, and the Onset of Eating Disorders
We investigate whether the development of eating disorders, in the form of purging, is influenced by peers’ body size through interpersonal comparisons. Using detailed information on recent cohorts of U.S. teenagers, we document a sizeable and significant negative effect of high school peers’ body mass index (BMI) on purging behavior during the adolescence for females, but not for males. Interpersonal comparisons operate through the formation of a distorted self-perception: teenage girls with relatively thin female peers perceive themselves as heavier than they actually are. The girls who are more susceptible to peer influences are those having peers who are thinner, more popular, more (verbally) able, and with more educated parents
Health Outcomes, Personality Traits, And Eating Disorders
Bulimia Nervosa (BN) is a detrimental persistent eating disorder that impacts millions of women, and imposes serious costs on the economy in terms of physical health, treatment costs, absence from work, and reduced human capital accumulation. One important issue in treating BN is that it is often undiagnosed, especially among disadvantaged girls. The failures to diagnose BN occur, in part, because many cases of BN are unobservable to others, and asking girls about their bingeing and purging behavior can be considered invasive. Using data on eating disorder behaviors from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Growth and Health Study, we show that information on a girl’s personality traits, along with information on her family’s socioeconomic status, can be used to impute the unobservable BN behavior. In particular, we find that personality traits are significant determinants of bulimic behavior, even after controlling for socioeconomic status. These results suggest a way to target those who are likely to suffer from BN based on identifiable personality traits. Given the costs involved in BN, and the number of individuals affected, our research suggests a practical direction for public health policy to reduce the number of undiagnosed cases
Education, HIV status and risky sexual behavior : how much does the stage of the HIV epidemic matter?
We study the relationship between education and HIV status using nationally representative data from 39 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) in Sub-Saharan Africa. First, we construct an innovative algorithm that systematically defines aggregate stages of the HIV epidemic in a comparable manner across time and across space. Second, we exploit the variation in the aggregate HIV stages in the DHS data, and find that the education gradient in HIV shows a U-shaped (positive-zero-positive) pattern over the course of the epidemic. Further, educational disparities in the number of extramarital partners are largely consistent with the evolution of the education gradient in HIV. We propose a simple theoretical model of risky sex choices that accounts for these stylized facts
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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