Summary. A detailed parametric study has been made of data concerning epilepsy in 118 children. Thirty-nine items of behaviour disorder, and eighteen items of parental attitudes and behaviour have been subjected to separate principal components analyses. The resulting components, together with a number of neurological and environmental variables, have been correlated. A multiple regression analysis has been carried out using the chief component of behaviour disorder as a dependent variable. This exercise indicates that both social and neurological variables are correlated with aggressive behaviour, and are independent of one another. The usefulness of this kind of study for solving the problem of integrating the approaches of sociology, psychology and biology in the study of social behaviour is discussed.

Data are presented on the verbal and performance (non-verbal) IQs of a sample of university scientists, their surviving fathers and male sibs.

Although mean IQs differ between scientific disciplines the disciplines do not differentially attract scientists from particular socio-economic classes.

The verbal IQs of both the scientists and their fathers are positively correlated with socio-economic class but only in the fathers' sample is the performance IQ/class correlation significant. The variance of both verbal and performance IQs increases from Class I to Class IIIM. The overall estimate of heritability for the verbal IQ is higher than that for the performance IQ.

Verbal and performance IQs are related to the distance the scientists have moved on the socio-economic scale. The effects of social mobility on the genetic and environmental components of the verbal and performance IQ phenotypic variances are discussed.

The possible influence of psycho-social factors on the use and effectiveness of the intrauterine contraceptive device (IUD) has not been seriously examined until recently. Inquiry into these factors has become feasible as large-scale projects—primarily designed to consider medical factors in IUD use—have been developed. Data obtained from a number of centres within and outside the United Kingdom indicate the existence of variation in the clinical efficacy of the same type of device. This variability suggests that success or failure of a given model does not necessarily depend on the device alone. Factors other than those generally considered ‘medical’ may play a significant role in IUD use and effectiveness.

The procedures involved in organizing large-scale multi-clinic IUD trials and including efficient data-retrieval systems are described in detail.

In addition, findings are reported on the trial of a stainless steel type of device, the M 213, which has been fitted in sufficient numbers in several UK clinics to permit analysis of variables associated with both the clinic and the doctor responsible for the IUD fitting. Evaluation of the data collected from two single-doctor clinics in two adjacent towns in the southwest of England using the M 213 and served by the same doctor, has revealed significant differences in the net cumulative pregnancy rate associated with the device. Age and parity of the IUD acceptors (and the interaction of age and parity) did not appear to be responsible for the difference. Although the general atmosphere and work load within the clinic setting may have differed it is not thought that this could fully account for the observed variations in the pregnancy rates between the two clinics.

There appears to be sufficient evidence to suggest that the traditional purely ’medical’ approach to the examination of IUD use—effectiveness should be extended to include the study of social and psychological variables associated with both the providers and the acceptors of the IUD service.

The National Survey of 1960 Graduates, which included every woman and every other man who graduated from British universities in 1960, provided a unique opportunity to further our knowledge of the correlates of academic success measured in terms of the gaining of a university degree. A relatively large family appeared to be no impediment to the educational achievements of middle-class children, but for those with less privileged home circumstances a small family was an essential ingredient for success. First-born children were over-represented among this sample, though only children were not particularly favoured. In general, the likelihood of graduation appeared to decrease with each later position in the birth order.

In the fall of 1965 and again in the fall of 1967, The Population Council sponsored nationwide public opinion polls in which questions were asked regarding whether the world and US population growth rates constituted serious problems. Both polls found the proportion of respondents viewing the world growth rate as serious (62% in 1965, 69% in 1967) to be higher than the proportion viewing the US rate as serious (54% in 1965 and 1967) (Kantner, 1968). Thus, attitudes towards world population growth and US population growth appear to be potentially independent of and not necessarily congruent with one another, but to date no examination has been made of their relationship. It is the purpose of the present study: (1) to determine the incidence of each possible combination of views towards the world and US population growth rates, and (2) to determine how individuals with a particular attitude towards one growth ratedistribute themselves in terms of attitudes towards the other rate.

Most women in Western society seem to reach the menopause in their early fifties; the median age in this Aberdeen series being 50.1 years. As far as symptoms were concerned, only the vasomotor disorders, flushing and night sweats, were definitely correlated with the menopause.

A cross-sectional study was performed on 1527 Thai women, 1270 of whom had received from one to twenty-five consecutive 3-month contraceptive injections of 150 mg of depo medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA) and a monthly oral oestrogen supplement. Analysis of data revealed that use of DMPA and breast nodules are independent.

The commencement of demographic transition with rapid mortality decline and changing fertility patterns has been studied prospectively for 20 years among over 5000 persons in Buka and New Ireland—two pre-industrial societies of New Guinea. The demographic study has been complemented by a detailed social study of fertility variables in three societies.

At the commencement of the study the New Ireland society had a high level of primary and secondary sterility of gonorrhoeal origin which disappeared among the younger women after mass penicillin therapy. The mean age at marriage is no longer immediately post-menarchal; the mean age of mother at birth of first child varied between 18·7 and 20·6 years; and the mean age of cessation of reproduction approached 44 years.

The three societies each show differing degrees of demographic transition with social patterns in one hardly changed by culture contact through to occasional voluntary use of introduced contraceptive techniques. The most important changes in fertility variables over the 20-year survey were the decrease in duration of post-partum abstinence from intercourse, the increase in continuity of cohabitation in marriage and other pronatal effects.

The demographic assessment of Buka showed age specific fertility rates for 1962–67 of over 300 per each 5-year age group between the ages of 20 and 39 with total fertility reaching a maximum of 8680 and with consequent changes in family size. The mean birth interval for births fell from 3·15 years for persons with first births between 1947 and 1953 to 2·13 years where the first birth was after 1961. There are several levels of reproduction with a mean birth interval for women for the most productive group of 2·00 years. The current mean interval for births of 2·16 years is consistent with a maximum biological level of reproduction for a society using breast feeding as the sole significant negative factor affecting fertility.

The associated rapid mortality decline and improved health of the community were due to the control of malaria and available rural health services as part of authoritarian health measures. Fertility decline consistent with transition theory would require community participation in child spacing to re-establish the traditional family size of three to four surviving children. This would entail the introduction of biochemical and mechanical contraception to fill the role previously taken by post-partum abstinence from intercourse and high infant mortality.

When I was first invited to give this year's Marie Stopes Memorial Lecture I had to express my reservations, as my ignorance of Marie Stopes' work was, I'm afraid, profound. I was assured that the talk could simply be on any area relevant or only indirectly related to Marie Stopes' work. I assumed from this that the reason for my invitation was to associate Marie Stopes' achievements with the contemporary Women's Liberation Movement. Since those days of pristine ignorance two things have happened to me. First, I have now read a certain amount on and by Marie Stopes, and second, I have read the lecture that Laurie Taylor gave here last year entitled ‘Marie Stopes—The Unfinished Sexual Revolution—but also extremely annoying. Here was a man extraordinarily sensitive to the facile male chauvinism of his predecessors: those biographers who had let a stuffy nervousness about Marie Stopes' stress on her own life-long sexual needs mar their tale, often turning an adventurous and unconventional woman into a disturbed and frustrated eccentric: someone who was not a ‘fuffilled’ woman. In his talk Laurie Taylor more than righted the balance for he not only corrected the priggish sexism of others, and was himself unusually free from it, but, moreover, he managed to place Stopes' work in a context of serious theories of sexual revolution. In other words, on reading last year's lecture I found my task already done. It is a rare and pleasant occasion when one can defer to the anti-male chauvinism of a male critic, and I do so with great satisfaction. In fact I wish to do more than to defer to it; I wish to take advantage of it. For I want today to use Marie Stopes merely as a jumping-off point, only vaguely relating her preoccupations to those of the contemporary Women's Liberation Movement. I am afraid I even want to be critical of aspects of her great achievement in spreading birth control and gynaecological health in a way for which, goodness knows, we are all most grateful today. For an active member of the Women's Liberation Movement to come and speak in honour of one of the women who in this century has done so much for women and ignore that honour or even turn it to criticism, is, I'm afraid, a dishonourable act. I feel I've been asked here in double trust and I am, in a way, going to abuse both.