A study difficulty inventory and three sets of personality scales were administered to 145 students attending a university health centre. Motivational and psychoneurotic components of study difficulty were identified, which were differentially related in male and female students to basic personality characteristics and to psychiatric symptomatology. Syllabus-boundness emerged as more salient in the female students, and self-esteem in the males. Poor academic performance was found to be associated with distinctive personality profiles in the two sexes. Both intra-personality and social–psychological interactional factors appear to underlie the pattern of results.

Medical and social characteristics of couples who obtained a vasectomy at a Leicester Family Planning Association (FPA) clinic were compared with those from earlier studies. There were several differences which would suggest that the operation is now more popular with the public than in the late 1960s.

The familial condition of tylosis was found in a single extended family in the Orkney islands. Unlike other pedigrees described it has no association with carcinoma of the oesophagus. Various linkage studies have been suggested and pooling of available data would offer a more constructive approach. Electron microscopy suggests further biochemical analysis on affected and normal skin to elucidate the underlying factors causing hyperkeratinization, and possibly resulting in more sophisticated treatment for this irritable but harmless condition.

In 1975, as part of a socio-medical survey in a southern province of Iran, the influence of socio-cultural variables on behaviour in relation to illness and on beliefs about the causes of disease was examined. It was found that traditional beliefs such as ‘luck’ and religion were related to locality and age. For instance, the urban literate community puts less emphasis than the illiterate rural population on such beliefs. Older people and those living in rural areas still tend to believe in as ‘evil eye’ as a cause of disease, but a small percentage of old people in both localities do believe that flies can cause disease. The causal role of culture or specific elements of culture on health and disease requires further study.

Studies involving collation of social characteristics of women frequently include statements about their social class designation and may compare groups in different classes against other variables. The method of making such a designation is very unsatisfactory and may lead to spurious conclusions arising from the method of classification.

When designation is carried out by a method primarily concerned with married women's own occupations rather than those of their husbands, some of the apparent differences in distribution are lost. It is possible to examine married and unmarried women together if those in both groups work outside the home.

Such considerations are particularly important in data relating to reproductive behaviour, such as abortion statistics and studies of births or the use of contraception.

The results are presented of a survey of male subjects attending the Kingston Contraceptive Clinic for vasectomy. The men living in the Kingston Area (KA) were compared with those living in the Out of Kingston Area (OKA) for economic and other differences.

For both groups, the average age of the subjects at the time of interview was 36 years and the average age of their partners was 33 years. The couples in both groups had an average of 2·4 living children. The OKA sample had been married on average 3 years longer than the KA sample.

Economic differences were minimal, both groups having an average weekly income £22 in excess of the estimated average national wage. Educationally the groups were broadly similar, the OKA sample having a higher proportion of graduate subjects. The social class distribution of both samples was significantly different from that of the South-East of England, and showed that usage of vasectomy was predominantly by Social Classes II, IIIN and IIIM. This is interpreted as indicating the gradual spread of acceptability of vasectomy as a means of birth control through the social classes, in a manner similar to that already documented for the pill.

A discrete time probability model has been developed to describe the waiting time until the first conception for a woman who is married before the age of 20 years. The model is illustrated by applying it to data on the time of first conception on the basis of the moment estimates of the parameters.

A national study of the Iran family planning programme is yet to be undertaken. This paper reports clinic continuation rates and causes of drop-out among Iranian pill acceptors based on patient records at three selected clinics in Shiraz and Marvdasht. All three clinics were shown to have a cumulative continuation rate of over 50% up to 1 year. Causes of clinic drop-out varied between rural and urban pill users by time of acceptance and by the acceptors’ background characteristics. The probability of drop-out for unreported reasons was related to level of motivation. The effect of follow-up by clinic motivators was clearly demonstrated in the temporal pattern of drop-out among rural acceptors. The probability of drop-out for medical side effects was related to knowledge about them and users’ own experience. Risk of accidental pregnancy was seen to reduce as pill users gained experience.

Before relating somatic growth and maturation to genital maturation, we should present a concept of growth that is sometimes a little difficult to conceive. The most important basis in studying human growth is the fact that it is a continuum, and does not start at birth, but at conception. This continuum rarely moves at a constant speed. We are so used to thinking in terms of size attained: the average measure of head circumference at 3 months of age in health, for example. Yet to consider growth as movement leads us to think in terms of velocity; that is, how fast, or slowly, is an individual child growing.

The technique of analysing factorial experiments has been used in this paper to analyse data on survival sequence of infants. Even though no generalizations can be made at this stage, the findings relating to interactions appear to be interesting, revealing and useful. Strong associations between survivorship of infants at successive birth orders are indicated.

There is currently both an absolute and relative reduction in births to older women. In a single hospital population the number of older women. In a single hospital population the number of older women having amniocentesis for pre-natal diagnosis is only a small, though increasing, proportion of those at risk. The main factors in failure of offering amniocentesis are late booking and communication difficulty.

This paper presents a method of estimating the number of births averted due to induced abortions by utilising the data on prospective birth intervals of the women. Numerical illustrations are given.

In a previous pilot project (Rosenzweig & Adelman, 1976) the sex choice attitudes of married couples with university (graduate school) education were explored. The present study extends this work by investigating the sex-choice attitudes of high school and partially college-educated subjects. Once again, the basic decision-making unit of husband and wife was sampled. Differences in sex preferences and sex-choice attitudes, based on the size of the marital family (no child, one child), were systematically explored. A greater effort was made to determine the effect of additional information regarding new methods of fetal sex determination, contraception, and related topics on sex-choice attitudes. Questionnaires were completed before and after information had been provided. Discussion was encouraged between husband and wife but discouraged with others. Results indicated that the exercise of sex choice is favoured by the majority of subjects across all three educational groups. Most individuals would employ sex control to ensure a balance of the sexes in a limited, two-child family. Little desire was shown to choose first child sex but active choice of a second child of opposite sex from the first appears a strong probability. Male preference, while pronounced, was a much weaker influence on the desire to make choices than the balance principle. Selective intercourse and a sex-choice pill were acceptable methods of sex control, but both artificial insemination and fetal sex determination combined with selective early abortion were rejected. Added information had a measurable but only slight effect on attitudes. Public education as to the possibilities of sex choice and control will be gradual and sex control will probably be selectively employed in the near future. But general use of such procedures is not imminent. Once put into practice, however, sex choice will create new marital problems that may require professional counselling.

Puberty is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as the state or condition of having become functionally capable of procreating offspring, suggesting that it is a discrete event that occurs at a particular point in time. Whilst it is easy to determine the age at puberty in animals from the time of completion of spermatogenesis in the male, or the first ovulation in the female, these are particularly difficult criteria to evaluate in our own species. Thus human puberty is generally described in terms of a sequence of changes in secondary sexual characteristics occurring over an extended period of time, and these have been reviewed in detail by Marshall & Tanner (1974).

A review of empirical findings which differentiated between the effects of social and non-social variables in the determination of human conduct found non-social variables most frequently to have been superior. A two-factor comparision of the impact of money and social cues, discriminative stimuli, and rewards from delinquent peers on incarcerated juvenile delinquents found money to be the more powerful determinant of cheating behaviour (P < 0.001). It is suggested that explanations of human behaviour should not ignore the effects of non-social variables.