3,181 research outputs found
Investigating the role of health care at birth on inequalities in neonatal survival: evidence from Bangladesh
No full textIntroduction: In countries such as Bangladesh many women may only seek skilled care at birth when complications become evident. This often results in higher neonatal mortality for women delivering in institutions. However, we hypothesise that the apparent increase in mortality is concentrated in less advantaged women. The aim of this paper is to examine the association between place of delivery and neonatal mortality in Bangladesh, and how this varies by socio-economic status. Methodology: The study is based on data from three pooled Bangladesh Demographic and Household Surveys, and uses bivariate analysis and binomial multivariate logistic regression. It creates composite variable combining place of delivery with indicators of socio-economic status to examine the relationship between these two factors on neonatal mortality.Results: Women from poorer socio-economic groups who give birth in institutions have worse outcomes than those who give birth at home. This difference is much less marked for more wealthy women. There is a much stronger socio-economic gradient for neonatal mortality for women who give birth in institutions than those who delivery at home.Conclusion: In Bangladesh babies from lower socio-economic groups have very poor outcomes if born in a facility, suggesting that services are particularly failing to meet the needs of poorer and less educated women
The 'true use of reading' : Sarah Fielding and mid eighteenth-century literary strategies.
No full textPhDThe aim of this thesis is to explore, by examining her life and
works, how Sarah Fielding (1710-68) established her identity as an author.
The definition of her role involves her notions of the functions of
writing and reading.
Sarah Fielding attempts to invite readers to form a sense of ties
by tacit understanding of her messages. As she believes that a work
of literature is produced through collaboration between the writer and
the reader, it is an important task in her view to show her attentiveness
toward reading practice. In her consideration of reading, she has two
distinct, even opposite views of her audience: on the one hand a familiar
and limited circle of readers with shared moral and cultural values and
on the other potential readers among the unknown mass of people. The
dual targets direct her to devise various strategies. She tries to
appeal to those who can endorse and appreciate her moral values as well
as her learning. Her writings and letters testify that she is sensitive
to the demands of the literary market, trying to lead the taste of readers
by inventing new forms.
The thesis opens with an overview of Sarah Fielding's career,
followed by a consideration of her critical attention to the roles of
reading. I go on to examine the narrative structures and strategies
she deploys, with a particular emphasis on her use of the epistolary
method. The following chapter deals with her attention to the reading
of the moral message tangibly embodied in her educational writing. It
is followed by an analysis of the activity which earned her a reputation
as a learned woman. Various as the forms of her works are, they invariably
reflect her attempt to balance herself between the two demands of
inventiveness and familiarity
The measurement of neonatal mortality: how reliable is Demographic and Household Survey Data?
No full textIt is estimated that, on a global scale, neonatal deaths now contribute to nearly 40% of all mortality in children under the age of five. However, as most neonatal deaths occur at home in countries with no vital registration, estimates of mortality are normally based on large national surveys such as the Demographic and Household Surveys (DHS). However, these have major limitations which restrict their accuracy.This study explores the potential contribution of DHS data in improving knowledge of trends in neonatal mortality in developing countries. It analyses the potential causes and extent of both sampling and non-sampling errors using review of existing literature as well as original analysis. The study suggests that one of the greatest limitations for DHS data is the wide confidence intervals. This makes it impossible to use DHS data to detect relatively small changes over time. While analysis suggests that in most countries data on neonatal mortality conform to expected patterns, there is also some evidence of age-heaping and back-dating of death
The measurement of early adolescent fertility: evidence of differential under-reporting by women 15-19 years in Demographic Household Surveys
No full textHow reliable are reports of early adolescent reproductive and sexual health events in demographic and health surveys?
No full textCONTEXT: Age at sexual debut, age at first marriage or first union and age at first birth are among the most widely used indicators of health and well-being for female adolescents. However, the accuracy of estimates for these indicators, particularly for younger adolescents, is poorly understood.METHODS: For each of nine countries in Africa and Latin America, Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from two surveys conducted five years apart were used to examine women’s reports of age at sexual debut, marriage or first union, and first birth. The consistency of estimates between surveys and across birth cohorts is described, focusing particularly on the reporting of events occurring before age 15 and age 16.RESULTS: Marked differences in estimates for very early first births and marriage were found. Women aged 15–19 were much less likely to report marriages and first births before age 15 than were women from the same birth cohort when asked five years later at ages 20–24. Early sexual debut was reported more consistently in consecutive surveys than early marriages or births. CONCLUSIONS: Caution should be exercised when inferring changes in early adolescent sexual and reproductive health on the basis of estimates from the DHS. Greater effort should be made to develop data collection instruments that reduce misreporting of self-reported data from women sampled in household surveys
Neonatal death and national income in developing countries: will economic growth reduce deaths in the first month of life?
No full textThe relationship between national income and child mortality has been understood for many years. However, what is less well known is whether the association differs for neonatal mortality compared to postneonatal and early childhood deaths. Our study extends knowledge by analysing the relationship between gross national income (GNI) and neonatal, postneonatal, and early child mortality. The study draws on mortality estimates from Demographic and Household Surveys and World Bank data for GNI. It uses multivariate multiple regression analysis to examine the relationship between GNI and neonatal, postneonatal, and early child mortality rates (NMR, PNMR, and ECMR) using cross-sectional data from 65 countries and trend data from 49 countries. No significant relationship can be found between NMR and GNI for cross-sectional data once adjusted for region. The trend data confirms that increases over time in GNI are associated with lower reductions in NMR than other component rates. Thus, economic growth alone may have a weaker effect on reducing neonatal deaths than for older age groups; achieving improvements in neonatal mortality requires investment in maternal and new born health services alongside growth
Sarah Fielding: Satire and Subversion in the Eighteenth-Century Novel
No full textThis study of Sarah Fielding (1710―68) is an original contribution to Fielding scholarship that has a dual purpose: to support those who are striving to re-introduce her to the modern literary landscape in an effort to restore her eighteenth-century literary standing, and to firmly establish Fielding as an early feminist writer. It is argued here that throughout her oeuvre Fielding challenged prevailing traditions that denied women a choice, particularly in education, employment and marriage. These themes are also considered in the political treatises of Mary Astell (1666―1731) and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759―97), who are now widely recognised as feminist writers.
It is further argued that Fielding’s subversion in fiction of the English patriarchal system is underscored by her unorthodox performance in the literary arena. This is fully explored alongside her use of sentimentalism as a literary tool with which she challenges her seemingly inhumane society. Fielding’s interest in ‘the Labyrinths of the Mind’ (in modern terms, human psychology) will also be addressed as will her placement in the history of feminism and her placement in the sentimental novel tradition. Fielding’s performance as a literary critic will be compared with the few female authors who, like her, dared to publish literary criticism during her writing career. Accordingly, extracts from Fielding’s novels and her two critical pamphlets will be thoroughly examined.
An updated biography of Fielding that is also included here will provide evidence for a further claim, that her fiction is autobiographical in part. A comprehensive account of Fielding’s performance as a literary critic forms the final chapter of this work. It is the first full-length examination of her contribution to the genre and includes an appraisal of her recently unearthed critical pamphlet entitled A Comparison Between the Horace of Corneille and The Roman Father of Mr. Whitehead (1750) that is yet to be formerly attributed to her. Ultimately this study of Fielding will go far beyond what has previously been written about this remarkable eighteenth-century author, particularly regarding her feminist activity
Researching up? Interviews, emotionality and policy-making elites
No full textThis article recounts the methodological story of a qualitative research project that investigated the work of the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain and the news media’s deconstruction of the Commission’s report – the Parekh Report – which was published on 11 October 2000. Our project used a multi-method fieldwork approach, combining textual analysis of news media coverage and the extensive documentary archives of the Commission, along with semi-structured interviews with Commissioners and other figures involved in the publication of the Report. The article attempts to offer a reflexive account of the experiences of interviewing a particular public policy-making elite and examines how a particular ‘public trauma’ – that is, the damaging political fall-out of extremely negative news media coverage of the Parekh Report – inflected our research encounters. We argue that the openness with which many of the participants spoke about this traumatic experience suggests that the production of policy documents can constitute highly emotional labour for participants. We extend this argument by examining how this openness also reveals the instabilities and uncertainties of power within the research interviewee/interviewer relationship. In this way the article seeks to contribute to debates about the problems of defining the category ‘elites’ in both public policy and social research worlds
Misrepresenting the multi-cultural nation: the policy making process, news media management and the Parekh Report
No full textThe Commission for the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain was launched by Jack Straw in January 1998 to provide a blueprint for a progressive, multi-culturally constituted ‘post nation’. The long awaited Commission report – the Parekh report – was published two years later and was met by a torrent of negative news media coverage and government handwashing. Academics and policy makers working on sensitive issues of race, ethnicity, culture and national identity are still attempting to learn the lessons from the failure of the Parekh report to capture the national-popular imagination. A series of important research questions are raised in this article about the role of the media in public policy agenda-setting; the most significant being whether the negative news coverage and political response to the report signalled the end of New Labour's ‘post Lawrence’ attempts to re-imagine Britain as a twenty-first century multiethnic nation. In its account of the report's production to publication narrative, the article considers the continued power of the news media to confound and unsettle the plans of policy makers, academics, public relations companies and government ministers working on race matters. In the broader context in which the nature of the relationship between policy networks, social policy documents and the news media remains relatively under-scrutinised in both policy and media debates, the article explores how, and on what terms, policy makers can and do engage with the process of making race-related policy documents ‘known about’. Drawing on data collected through a qualitative study of the journey of the Parekh report into the public domain, this article analyses the news media strategy developed to launch and promote the report and reveals the limits of attempts to manage the news media. It argues that the report was destabilised not only by the news media and its political reception but by competing sets of demands that mystified the purpose of the Commission and its beneficiaries
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