Despite a growing acceptance of egalitarian gender attitudes, there is no empirical evidence about the division of roles between wives and husbands and its variation across their family life in the ...Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). This paper uses data from the 2014 to 2015 Time Use Survey, representing urban areas of the IRI, to examine the dynamics of the spouses’ division of roles across their family life. The findings confirm a gender division of roles. The mapping of the spouses’ role behaviours during their family life provides a combination of gender similarities and differences. Role configurations (or role variations across family life) clearly differ between spouses but the pathways (or life-course variations in role behaviours) are quite similar in some roles (i.e., community, individual and parental roles) and different in others (i.e., occupational and domestic roles). To the extent that the existing gender patterns are perceived as unjustified, they can be consequential not only for marital satisfaction and quality, but also for marriage and childbearing decisions.
Education is considered one of the most important determinants of population change; operating through cultural change, enhancing negotiating powers or increasing opportunity costs of some behaviors. ...However, the role of education in gender division of household activities has not been investigated in Iran. This paper uses data from the 2014–2015 Time Use Survey, representing urban areas of Iran, to examine the association between spouses’ education and their participation in domestic and parental activities. The findings show that wives are five times more likely to participate in either domestic or parental activities than their husbands, suggesting the persistence of gender division of roles in family sphere in urban areas of Iran. There are considerable gender differences in the association between education and the amount of time allocated to these activities. However, the experience of both wives and husbands is consistent with cultural explanations. Although different levels of education determine wives’ and husbands’ participation in domestic and parental activities, the positive direction of these associations suggest that economic explanations are irrelevant. It seems that higher education does not increase the opportunity costs of household activities nor used as a negotiating power to reduce one’s share in household activities. Education appears to operate by enhancing egalitarian gender attitudes and the importance of quality parenting. Similar analyses in rural areas can deepen our understanding about gender relations in Iran and help evidence-based policy making in a context where family dynamics have raised serious concerns at the highest political levels.
Fake news has become an important topic of research in a variety of disciplines including linguistics and computer science. In this paper, we explain how the problem is approached from the ...perspective of natural language processing, with the goal of building a system to automatically detect misinformation in news. The main challenge in this line of research is collecting quality data, i.e., instances of fake and real news articles on a balanced distribution of topics. We review available datasets and introduce the MisInfoText repository as a contribution of our lab to the community. We make available the full text of the news articles, together with veracity labels previously assigned based on manual assessment of the articles’ truth content. We also perform a topic modelling experiment to elaborate on the gaps and sources of imbalance in currently available datasets to guide future efforts. We appeal to the community to collect more data and to make it available for research purposes.
•The point estimates of anxiety prevalence among general population was 27.3% (95% CI, 23.7%; 31.2%) while the prevalence in people infected by COVID-19 was 39.6% (95% CI, 30.1%; 50.1%)•The ...prevalence of anxiety symptoms in females 47.8% (95% CI, 38.8%; 57%) was higher compared to men 27.8% (95% CI, 20.2%; 36.9%) (P-value<0.05)•A unit of increase in patient's age decreased the prevalence of anxiety by -0.04% (95% CI, -0.05; -0.03).•The anxiety prevalence was higher among women 32.4% (95% CI, 26.7%-38.7%) compared to men 24.9% (95% CI, 19.7%-30.9%).•A unit of increase in the population age increased the prevalence of anxiety by 0.03 (95% CI, 0.02-0.05) depicting that older adults were excessively affected by anxiety disorders (P-value<0.05).
The COVID-19 pandemic has had an adverse effect on the mental health of population worldwide. This study was conducted to systematically review the existing literature to identify the individuals at higher risk of anxiety with a view to provide targeted mental health services during this outbreak.
In this study, the studies focusing on anxiety prevalence among the general population during the COVID-19 pandemic were searched in the PubMed, EMBASE, Scopus, Web of Science (WoS) and Google Scholar from the beginning of Covid-19 pandemic to February 2021.
103 studies constituting 140732 people included in the review. The findings showed that anxiety prevalence was 27.3% (95% CI, 23.7%; 31.2%) among general population while the prevalence in COVID-19 patients was 39.6% (95% CI, 30.1%; 50.1%). Anxiety was significantly higher among females and older adults (p≤0.05). In addition Europe revealed the highest prevalence of anxiety 54.6% (95% CI, 42.5%; 66.2%) followed by America 31.5% (95% CI, 19%; 47.5%) and Asia 28.3% (95% CI, 20.3%; 38%). In the general population the highest prevalence of anxiety was in Africa 61.8% (95% CI, 57%-66.4%) followed by America 34.9% (95% CI, 27.7%-42.9%), Europe 30.7% (95% CI, 22.8%-40%) and Asia 24.5% (95% CI, 20.7%-28.9%).
During the COVID-19 crisis, through identifying those who are more likely to be suffered from mental disorders at different layers of populations, it would be possible to apply appropriate supportive interventions with a view to provide targeted mental health services during the outbreak.
The BNT162b2 mRNA (Pfizer–BioNTech) and ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (Oxford–AstraZeneca) COVID-19 vaccines have shown high efficacy against disease in phase 3 clinical trials and are now being used in national ...vaccination programmes in the UK and several other countries. Studying the real-world effects of these vaccines is an urgent requirement. The aim of our study was to investigate the association between the mass roll-out of the first doses of these COVID-19 vaccines and hospital admissions for COVID-19.
We did a prospective cohort study using the Early Pandemic Evaluation and Enhanced Surveillance of COVID-19—EAVE II—database comprising linked vaccination, primary care, real-time reverse transcription-PCR testing, and hospital admission patient records for 5·4 million people in Scotland (about 99% of the population) registered at 940 general practices. Individuals who had previously tested positive were excluded from the analysis. A time-dependent Cox model and Poisson regression models with inverse propensity weights were fitted to estimate effectiveness against COVID-19 hospital admission (defined as 1–adjusted rate ratio) following the first dose of vaccine.
Between Dec 8, 2020, and Feb 22, 2021, a total of 1 331 993 people were vaccinated over the study period. The mean age of those vaccinated was 65·0 years (SD 16·2). The first dose of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine was associated with a vaccine effect of 91% (95% CI 85–94) for reduced COVID-19 hospital admission at 28–34 days post-vaccination. Vaccine effect at the same time interval for the ChAdOx1 vaccine was 88% (95% CI 75–94). Results of combined vaccine effects against hospital admission due to COVID-19 were similar when restricting the analysis to those aged 80 years and older (83%, 95% CI 72–89 at 28–34 days post-vaccination).
Mass roll-out of the first doses of the BNT162b2 mRNA and ChAdOx1 vaccines was associated with substantial reductions in the risk of hospital admission due to COVID-19 in Scotland. There remains the possibility that some of the observed effects might have been due to residual confounding.
UK Research and Innovation (Medical Research Council), Research and Innovation Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, Health Data Research UK.
ABSTRACTRecent reductions in female age at marriage in Iran correspond with the rise in the proportion of girls marrying at young ages. This paper aims to determine to what extent the probability of ...surviving in the never-married state by age 18 is affected by different time-invariant demographic, socio-economic, and cultural factors. A multivariate survivorship analysis was applied to the 2% micro-data from two successive censuses. This method is useful where longitudinal family surveys are not available. The findings indicate that (1) gender and ethnicity remain two important determinants of early marriage after adjusting for other covariates and (2) having literate parents substantially increases the relative probability of survival, with the literacy of the father displaying a larger influence regardless of gender and place of residence. These indicate the relevance of gender system, ethnicity, and socioeconomic standing in designing policies and interventions aimed at preventing early marriage in Iran.
This study was conducted to systematically review the existing literature examining the prevalence of anxiety among hospital staff and identifying the contributing factors to address the ...complications of this disorder and develop effective programmes for reducing the complications of this mental health problem.
We searched the electronic databases including PubMed, EMBASE, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar from January 2020 to February 2021. To perform meta-analysis, the random effects model was used. To assess the statistical heterogeneity of the included studies, the I
index was used, and 95% CI was estimated. Data analysis was performed by R software.
In the final analysis, 46 articles with the total sample size of 61 551 hospital staff members were included. Accordingly, anxiety prevalence among healthcare workers (HCWs) was 26.1% (95% CI 19% to 34.6%). The prevalence rates of anxiety in health technicians and medical students were 39% (95% CI 13% to 73%) and 36% (95% CI 15% to 65%), respectively, indicating a much higher prevalence than other hospital staff members. Furthermore, a positive significant relationship between prevalence of anxiety among HCWs and their age was approved (p<0.001). The prevalence rate of anxiety was higher among women 37.7% (95% CI 25.4% to 51.8%) than men 27.2% (95% CI 18.2% to 38.6%).
The findings show a moderately high prevalence rate of anxiety in hospital staff. Due to the high prevalence of this mental health problem in health technicians, medical students and frontline health workers, it is highly suggested that healthcare institutions offer mental health programmes for these working groups in order to appropriately manage anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We examine gender bias in media by tallying the number of men and women quoted in news text, using the Gender Gap Tracker, a software system we developed specifically for this purpose. The Gender Gap ...Tracker downloads and analyzes the online daily publication of seven English-language Canadian news outlets and enhances the data with multiple layers of linguistic information. We describe the Natural Language Processing technology behind this system, the curation of off-the-shelf tools and resources that we used to build it, and the parts that we developed. We evaluate the system in each language processing task and report errors using real-world examples. Finally, by applying the Tracker to the data, we provide valuable insights about the proportion of people mentioned and quoted, by gender, news organization, and author gender. Data collected between October 1, 2018 and September 30, 2020 shows that, in general, men are quoted about three times as frequently as women. While this proportion varies across news outlets and time intervals, the general pattern is consistent. We believe that, in a world with about 50% women, this should not be the case. Although journalists naturally need to quote newsmakers who are men, they also have a certain amount of control over who they approach as sources. The Gender Gap Tracker relies on the same principles as fitness or goal-setting trackers: By quantifying and measuring regular progress, we hope to motivate news organizations to provide a more diverse set of voices in their reporting.
Summary
Objective
This study was undertaken to determine whether epilepsy and antiepileptic drugs (including enzyme‐inducing and non‐enzyme‐inducing drugs) are associated with major cardiovascular ...events using population‐level, routinely collected data.
Methods
Using anonymized, routinely collected, health care data in Wales, UK, we performed a retrospective matched cohort study (2003–2017) of adults with epilepsy prescribed an antiepileptic drug. Controls were matched with replacement on age, gender, deprivation quintile, and year of entry into the study. Participants were followed to the end of the study for the occurrence of a major cardiovascular event, and survival models were constructed to compare the time to a major cardiovascular event (cardiac arrest, myocardial infarction, stroke, ischemic heart disease, clinically significant arrhythmia, thromboembolism, onset of heart failure, or a cardiovascular death) for individuals in the case group versus the control group.
Results
There were 10 241 cases (mean age = 49.6 years, 52.2% male, mean follow‐up = 6.1 years) matched to 35 145 controls. A total of 3180 (31.1%) cases received enzyme‐inducing antiepileptic drugs, and 7061 (68.9%) received non‐enzyme‐inducing antiepileptic drugs. Cases had an increased risk of experiencing a major cardiovascular event compared to controls (adjusted hazard ratio = 1.58, 95% confidence interval CI = 1.51–1.63, p < .001). There was no notable difference in major cardiovascular events between those treated with enzyme‐inducing antiepileptic drugs and those treated with non‐enzyme‐inducing antiepileptic drugs (adjusted hazard ratio = .95, 95% CI = .86–1.05, p = .300).
Significance
Individuals with epilepsy prescribed antiepileptic drugs are at an increased risk of major cardiovascular events compared with population controls. Being prescribed an enzyme‐inducing antiepileptic drug is not associated with a greater risk of a major cardiovascular event compared to treatment with other antiepileptic drugs. Our data emphasize the importance of cardiovascular risk management in the clinical care of people with epilepsy.
Aims
The aim of this study was to assess the psychological health associated with prenatal screening in low‐risk pregnancy for chromosomal aneuploidy.
Methods
This longitudinal study was performed on ...310 low‐risk pregnancies for chromosomal aneuploidies. Using the standard DASS‐21 questionnaire, levels of stress, anxiety, and depression were assessed—prior to the recommended time for the first‐trimester screening test (T1), after the first‐trimester tests on the second referral (T2) concurrently with the request for the second‐trimester tests (T3)—and compared between women undergoing the prenatal screening and in women refusing it.
Results
The results showed that the mean of stress, anxiety, and depression levels were not different between groups at T1; but the level of the stress, depression, and anxiety were higher in the screening group than the non‐screening group. The effect of group on changes in the stress, depression, and anxiety levels was significant.
Conclusion
The results revealed that the prenatal screening program in low‐risk pregnancies for chromosomal aneuploidy can be followed by rising psychological symptoms and this psychological burden should be conceded on prenatal screening tests for pregnant women.
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