BACKGROUND Few studies have examined the predictors of adherence separately for supervised and unsupervised exercise or in postmenopausal women over an extended time period. Here, we report the predictors of exercise adherence in the Alberta Physical Activity and Breast Cancer Prevention (ALPHA) Trial. METHODS The ALPHA trial randomized 160 postmenopausal women in Calgary and Edmonton, Canada...

In evolutionary biology, fluctuating asymmetry (FA) is thought to reveal developmental instability (DI, inability to buffer development against perturbations), but its adaptive and genetic bases are being debated. In other fields, such as human clinical genetics, DI is being assessed as incidence of minor morphological abnormalities (MMAs) and used to predict certain fitness outcomes. Here, for...

BACKGROUND Good work ability is very important in young workers, but knowledge of work situations that influence work ability in this group is poor. The aim of this study was to assess whether changes in self-reported work factors are associated with self-reported work ability among young female and male workers. METHODS A sample of 1,311 (718 women and 593 men) was selected from a Swedish co...

Behavioral evidence suggests that memory for context (i.e., source memory) is more vulnerable to age-related decline than item memory. It is not clear, however, whether this pattern reflects a specific age-related deficit in context memory or a more general effect of task difficulty. In the present study, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with healthy younger an...

Using data from the German SOEP, this paper analyses whether there have been (a) any significant changes in poverty rates and poverty intensities before and after the Hartz IV reforms and (b) whether there have been observable changes in the effect of employment in reducing the threat or intensity of poverty. Using multivariate analyses we can find no evidence of increases in poverty rates comp...

OBJECTIVE Our objective was to determine whether paternal depressive symptoms were associated with less father involvement among African American fathers not living with their children (ie, nonresident fathers). METHODS We analyzed survey data for 345 fathers enrolled in a program for nonresident African American fathers and their preteen sons. Father involvement included measures of contact,...

OBJECTIVES To explain the use of interaction terms in nonlinear models. STUDY DESIGN We discuss the motivation for including interaction terms in multivariate analyses. We then explain how the straightforward interpretation of interaction terms in linear models changes in nonlinear models, using graphs and equations. We extend the basic results from logit and probit to difference-in-differenc...

BACKGROUND The Rhinosinusitis Disability Index (RSDI) is a validated measure of health-related quality of life (HRQL) in rhinitis. Responsiveness of the RSDI to changes in health status over time has not been described. METHODS We studied adults with a self-reported physician diagnosis of rhinitis identified through a national telephone survey. HRQL was assessed at baseline and at 24 months u...

Penalized REML estimation can substantially reduce sampling variation in estimates of covariance matrices, and yield estimates of genetic parameters closer to population values than standard analyses. A number of suitable penalties based on prior distributions of correlation matrices from the Bayesian literature are described, and a simulation study is presented demonstrating their efficacy. Re...

Iraqi refugees in Lebanon are vulnerable to food insecurity because of their limited rights and fragile livelihoods. The objective of the present study was to assess household food insecurity among Iraqi refugees living in Lebanon, almost 10 years after the invasion of Iraq. A representative survey of 800 UN High Commissioner for Refugees-registered refugee households in Lebanon was conducted u...