The role of depression and dissociation in the relationship between childhood trauma and bulimic symptoms among ethnically diverse female undergraduates

OBJECTIVE: The goals of this study were to examine the role of dissociation and depression as possible mediators of the relationship between several forms of childhood trauma and bulimic symptomatology and to explore potential ethnic differences in these relationships. METHOD: Four hundred seventeen female undergraduates participated in this cross-sectional study. They completed measures of dissociative, depressive, and bulimic symptoms, and childhood trauma. Experiences of multiple forms of childhood trauma were measured, including physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect, and emotional neglect. However, only emotional abuse was correlated with bulimic symptoms at p<.01. Therefore, other forms of trauma were excluded from the analyses to control for Type I error. RESULTS: Dissociation was not associated with emotional abuse after controlling for depression; therefore, tests of dissociation as a mediator were discontinued. Depression was significantly associated with emotional abuse after controlling for dissociation. Emotional abuse was significantly associated with bulimia. Finally, emotional abuse and depression together were significantly associated with bulimia after controlling for dissociation. However, emotional abuse became nonsignificant when entered with depression, indicating that depression mediated the relationship between emotional abuse and bulimic symptoms. There were no ethnic differences in this relationship. CONCLUSIONS: It appears that among women who have experienced childhood emotional abuse, depression is more strongly associated with unhealthy eating behaviors than is dissociation. Results also suggest that emotional abuse is a form of childhood trauma particularly relevant to bulimia.     

Syntactic skills in sentence reading comprehension among Chinese elementary school children

The present study examined the role of syntactic skills for reading comprehension in Chinese. Two hundred and seventy-two Chinese children were tested on their phonological processing, orthographic, morphological, syntactic, and literacy skills at Grades 1 and 2. Hierarchical multiple regression results showed that syntactic skills, in terms of word order, connective usage, and knowledge of morphosyntactic structure (measured by an oral cloze task) in Grade 1, significantly predicted sentence reading comprehension in Grade 2 after controlling for the children’s age, IQ, and word level reading-related cognitive skills in Grade 1, and word reading in Grade 2. As in alphabetic languages, syntactic skills are essential for reading comprehension in Chinese. The unique roles of individual syntactic skills for understanding sentences in Chinese are discussed.     

The Future of Nursing: Implications for Childbirth Educators

In this column, the editor of The Journal of Perinatal Education discusses the Institute of Medicine’s 2011 report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, and its implications for childbirth educators. The editor also describes the contents of this issue, which offer a broad range of resources, research, and inspiration for childbirth educators in their efforts to promote, support, and protect natural, safe, and healthy birth.     

Time for Rebirth

In this column, the editor of The Journal of Perinatal Education (JPE) discusses how nature works exquisitely to accomplish its intended outcomes and compares the rebirth of flowers and trees in the springtime to physiological birth. The editor also describes the contents of this issue, which offer a broad range of resources, research, and inspiration for childbirth educators in their efforts to promote, support, and protect natural, safe, and healthy birth.     

Worth the Wait

In this column, the editor of The Journal of Perinatal Education discusses disadvantages of not waiting for labor to begin on its own and the effects of elective induction and cesarean surgery. The editor also describes the contents of this issue, which offer a broad range of resources, research, and inspiration for childbirth educators in their efforts to promote, support, and protect natural, safe, and healthy birth.     

Childbirth Education and Obstetric Interventions Among Low-Risk Canadian Women: Is There a Connection?

The objective of this study was to examine the associations between attendance at childbirth education classes and maternal characteristics (age, income, educational level, single parent status), maternal psychological states (fear of birth, anxiety), rates of obstetric interventions, and breastfeeding initiation. Between women’s 35th and 39th weeks of gestation, we collected survey data about their childbirth fear, anxiety, attendance at childbirth education classes, choice of health-care provider, and expectations for interventions; we then linked women’s responses (n = 624) to their intrapartum records obtained through Perinatal Services British Columbia. Older, more educated, and nulliparous women were more likely to attend childbirth education classes than younger, less educated, and multiparous women. Attending prenatal education classes was associated with higher rates of vaginal births among women in the study sample. Rates of labor induction and augmentation and use of epidural anesthesia were not significantly associated with attendance at childbirth education classes. Future studies might explore the effect of specialized education programs on rates of interventions during labor and mode of birth.     

Making On-line Science Course Materials Easily Translatable and Accessible Worldwide: Challenges and Solutions

The PhET Interactive Simulations Project partnered with the Excellence Research Center of Science and Mathematics Education at King Saud University with the joint goal of making simulations useable worldwide. One of the main challenges of this partnership is to make PhET simulations and the website easily translatable into any language. The PhET project team overcame this challenge by creating the Translation Utility. This tool allows a person fluent in both English and another language to easily translate any of the PhET simulations and requires minimal computer expertise. In this paper we discuss the technical issues involved in this software solution, as well as the issues involved in obtaining accurate translations. We share our solutions to many of the unexpected problems we encountered that would apply generally to making on-line scientific course materials available in many different languages, including working with: languages written right-to-left, different character sets, and different conventions for expressing equations, variables, units and scientific notation.