Information on cause of death among adults in sub-Saharan Africa is essentially nonexistent. Published sources provide statistics on both cause-specific and overall rates of mortality, but closer examination reveals that these data consist mostly of extrapolations and outright guesses. In the absence of accurate and comprehensive registries of vital events for the majority of the region's inhab...

Locus of control is one of the most widely studied concepts in the history of personality psychology. In spite of its popularity and its associations with numerous relevant outcomes, the ability of locus of control to predict future behaviors involving parenting effectiveness has been under researched. The few parent locus of control children's outcome studies are characterized by cross-section...

OBJECTIVE To explore the nature of paternal involvement in early child-rearing adopting a social developmental perspective, and estimate its effect on behavioural outcomes of children aged 9 and 11 years. SETTING The data come from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) cohort recruited in the former county of Avon in the southwest of England. PARTICIPANTS Out of the 1...

Picky eating (also known as fussy, faddy or choosy eating) is usually classified as part of a spectrum of feeding difficulties. It is characterised by an unwillingness to eat familiar foods or to try new foods, as well as strong food preferences. The consequences may include poor dietary variety during early childhood. This, in turn, can lead to concern about the nutrient composition of the die...

BACKGROUND In a number of studies prolonged breastfeeding was associated with a higher risk of undernutrition, although most of these studies are limited by their cross-sectional design which does not allow examination of temporal relationships between full weaning and undernutrition. METHODS The relationship between prolonged breastfeeding and child growth was examined prospectively among ch...

In a prospective birth cohort study of 5295 girls from the UK-based Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), we examined the association between biological father absence in childhood and age at menarche whilst adjusting for antenatal indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage and maternal characteristics. We also examined whether exposure to maternal depression and financial pro...

The prevalence of adolescent overweight and obesity (hereafter, simply "overweight") in the US has increased over the past several decades. Individually-targeted prevention and treatment strategies targeting individuals have been disappointing, leading some to propose leveraging social networks to improve interventions. We hypothesized that social network dynamics (social marginalization; homop...

BACKGROUND Cognitive theories of depression suggest that beliefs of low self-worth and the tendency to attribute negative events to causes that are global (widespread rather than specific) and stable (will persist rather than change in the future) are associated with the development of depressed mood. Such theories are supported by evidence from prospective studies and have guided the developme...

BACKGROUND Heavy alcohol use during pregnancy can cause considerable developmental problems for children, but effects of light-moderate drinking are uncertain. This study examined possible effects of moderate drinking in pregnancy on children's conduct problems using a Mendelian randomisation design to improve causal inference. METHODS A prospective cohort study (ALSPAC) followed children fro...

A prospective study of menstrual cycles and reproductive outcomes has been in progress since 1935. Data from this study are used to describe the risk of spontaneous abortion in two time periods 26 years apart. Out of the total of 3889 women who have enrolled in this study, two cohorts of women are selected for analysis: cohort one consists of 2070 university students who entered the study in 19...