COVID-19 Life Events Spill-Over on Family Functioning and Adolescent Adjustment

We examined US parent and youth perceptions of how life events, both positive and negative, associated with COVID-19 resulted in changes in family and youth functioning. Families ( n = 105, 80% white, 48% male, and 87% mothers) completed surveys during the pandemic (May to July 2020) and 3 years prior (for youth ages M = 10.6, SD = 1.17 and M = 13.6, SD = 1.19). Declines in youth, though not parent, report of open family communication, parental support, and family satisfaction were found. Declines were associated with various domains of pandemic-related stress in parent report, though positive life events served as buffers. Pre-pandemic family functioning also predicted pandemic stress. Spillover effects in turn impacted youth functioning. The current findings shed light on how experiences of the pandemic are linked with family functioning and have implications for how to support families during this time.

Sexual and reproductive health and attitudes towards sex of young adults in China

BackgroundThe study aimed to discuss the importance of socioeconomic status (SES) and family sexual attitudes and investigate their association with sexual and reproductive health in a large sample of Chinese young adults.MethodsWe analysed a large sample of 53 508 youth aged 15–24 years from an internet-based survey from November 2019 to February 2020. Multivariable logistic regression analyses were employed to examine the association between SES, family sexual attitudes, and sexual and reproductive health (SRH), stratified by sex and adjusting for potential confounders.ResultsIndividuals with the highest expenditure were more likely to engage in early sexual intercourse (female: OR 4.19, 95% CI 3.00 to 5.87; male: OR 3.82, 95% CI 2.84 to 5.12). For both sexes, the likelihood of young adult sexual risk-taking such as first intercourse without using a condom, acquiring sexually transmitted infections, and pregnancy was lower in those with higher maternal educational attainment, whereas it was higher in those with open family sexual attitudes.ConclusionsLower SES and open family attitudes toward sex had a significant association with a range of adverse young adulthood SRH outcomes. Public health policies should focus on more deprived populations and advocate suitable parental participation to reduce risky sexual behaviours in youth.

Coaching Communications Model For Improving Athlete Achievement

In general, the trainer's technical abilities must be mastered by the trainer. The reason is that those who become coaches are generally former athletes. They are also have training certificates from various training and coaching clinics. However, the ability to communicate in coaching is not necessarily fully mastered by most coaches. The purpose of this research was to add theoretical development about the study of sports coaching communication, especially in the process of athlete physical and mental training by using descriptive qualitative research approaches. The results showed that the coaching communication patterns developed in the training process and outside the training. The form of coaching communication during and outside training is generally face-to-face. The method used in coaching communication is to use lectures and demonstrations as well as to involve video media to further stimulate achievement motivation for each athlete. The approach taken in coaching communication is an open, family, and personal approach. The choice of coaching communication methods has been proven to be able to motivate and build athletes' self-confidence and athletes can accept and interpret the instructional messages conveyed and desired by the coaches. Suggestions and recommendations that can be given in this research are on the certification of trainers for each sports trainer.

Patterns of Communicating About Family Health History: Exploring Differences in Family Types, Age, and Sex

Family communication environments can be a facilitator or barrier to family cooperation and communication in collecting family health history (FHH) information, which can facilitate disease prevention. This study examined the direct and indirect effects of family communicative environments on whether individuals actively collected FHH information, as well as how age and sex differences complicate this relationship. Participants ( N = 203) completed online surveys, answering close-ended questions about their family’s communication patterns, how open their family is to communicating about FHH, and whether they have actively collected FHH information. Results show there was a direct effect between open family communicative environments and active collection, and found FHH communication openness was a positive partial mediator. Conversely, family environments stressing hierarchy and homogeneity of beliefs inhibit open communication about and collection of a FHH. Analysis of age and sex as moderators in the models showed a significant conditional indirect effects, which grew stronger as participants’ age increased. Furthermore, results showed open family communicative environments lead to active collection of FHH for women, but not for men. Results confirm the importance of family communicative environments in facilitating or inhibiting FHH collection. Findings from the current study provide intervention points for practitioners to advise patients on the importance of collecting a FHH and guide behaviors to collect FHH information based on the family communicative environment.

Estimating singularity dimension

In this paper we address an interesting question on the computation of the dimension of self-affine sets in Euclidean space. A well-known result of Falconer showed that under mild assumptions the Hausdorff dimension of typical self-affine sets is equal to its Singularity dimension. Heuter and Lalley subsequently presented a smaller open family of non-trivial examples for which there is an equality of these two dimensions. In this article we analyse the size of this family and present an efficient algorithm for estimating the dimension.