Motives,barriers, and ways of communicating in mother-daughter sexuality communication: a qualitative study of college women in Tanzania

In Tanzania, young women aged 15–24 are at high risk for HIV and nearly half (45%) of women experience pregnancy or childbirth before age 19. The HIV epidemic has motivated many parents to overcome cultural taboos and talk with their children about sexuality, but few studies in Tanzania have examined how young adults perceive these discussions. In-depth interviews with 31 Tanzanian college women (ages 18–25) reveal how they make sense of sexuality messages from mothers that are sometimes vague, admonishing and fear-based. Participants identified how mothers focused on the health, educational and social consequences of premarital sex and emphasised the avoidance of men as a strategy to maintain virginity. Mothers avoided providing specific information about safer-sex practices, or strategies to negotiate romantic relationships, sexual pressures or sexual desires. Findings offer insight into how relational and cultural contexts influence mothers’ sexual socialisation and can inform education and intervention approaches that consider the changing cultural landscape. Future qualitative research with mothers is recommended to develop programmes that are more responsive to mothers’ and daughters’ needs.     

Automatic and manual indexing performance in a small file of medical literature.

A test of the performance of an automatic indexing procedure based on the processing of the full text of medical journal articles shows results comparable to those achieved using Excerpta Medica and MEDLARS manual indexing. A file of nineteen documents was partitioned by sixteen questions, for each of which two search strategies in each indexing language were formulated. The results were compared to ideal answers chosen by a fourth-year medical student who read the entire file and posed the questions.     

Biological Sensitivity to Context: The Interactive Effects of Stress Reactivity and Family Adversity on Socioemotional Behavior and School Readiness

This study examined the direct and interactive effects of stress reactivity and family adversity on socioemotional and cognitive development in three hundred and thirty-eight 5- to 6-year-old children. Neurobiological stress reactivity was measured as respiratory sinus arrhythmia and salivary cortisol responses to social, cognitive, sensory, and emotional challenges. Adaptation was assessed using child, parent, and teacher reports of externalizing symptoms, prosocial behaviors, school engagement, and academic competence. Results revealed significant interactions between reactivity and adversity. High stress reactivity was associated with more maladaptive outcomes in the context of high adversity but with better adaption in the context of low adversity. The findings corroborate a reconceptualization of stress reactivity as biological sensitivity to context by showing that high reactivity can both hinder and promote adaptive functioning.