Community Gender Norms Change as a Part of a Multilevel Approach to Sexual Health Among Married Women in Mumbai,India

Inequitable gender norms in societies and communities negatively contribute to women’s sexual and reproductive health. While the need for change in gender norms is well recognized, the task is highly challenging in terms of intervention design, implementation and assessment of impact. This paper describes a methodology for identification of gender norms, the design of community level intervention, community participation and the assessment of intervention impact in a low income, predominately Muslim community of 600,000 people in Mumbai, India. Formative research focused on in‐depth interviews with women, men and couples yielding gender normative statements and assessment of community resources to facilitate change. A Gender Equity Scale (GES) based on this formative research was developed and administered annually for a three‐year period to random, cross‐sectional samples in the intervention and control communities, and to community based, non‐governmental organizations (NGO) staff and Imams (religious leaders) in the intervention community. NGO staff disseminated gender oriented messages to their female constituency through their regular outreach activities and through special events and festivals in the community. Imams disseminated gender messages through lectures on social issues for men attending Friday prayers. The results showed that the NGO staff and Imams, assumed more gender equitable attitudes across time. The intervention was associated with a significant improvement in attitudes towards gender equity in the intervention relative to the control community. Men showed a dramatic change in more positive gender attitudes, while women lagged behind in their GES scores. The meaning of these results are explored and the implications assessed for the generalizability of the methodology for other countries, cultures and communities.     

An empirical comparison of three variants of the AHP and two variants of conjoint analysis

This paper provides an empirical comparison of two methods of attribute valuation: the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and conjoint analysis. Variants within each approach are also examined. The results of two empirical studies indicate that the methods differ in their predictive and convergent validity. Within the AHP methods no significant difference in predictive validity was found. Within the conjoint methods, the ranking method significantly outperformed the rating method. The difference in predictive validity between the AHP and conjoint methods was significant in the second study but not in the first study, suggesting superior performance of the AHP over conjoint analysis in complex problems. Copyright© 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Disentangling the facilitating and hindering effects of threat-related stimuli – A visual search study

Although large body of research has demonstrated the attention-grabbing nature of threat-related stimuli, threat could also facilitate attentional processes. Previous studies suggest a linear relationship between the facilitating effect of the arousal level conveyed by threat and performance on visual search tasks. Due to the temporal competition bias favouring stimuli with higher arousal level, this could be more pronounced for shorter onset times. Here, through two experiments we aimed to disentangle the two effects by using a visual search paradigm that allowed us to separate the emotional stimuli and the cognitive task. We manipulated stimulus onset time and threat intensity. Participants saw neutral and threatening pictures as priming stimuli, and then, they had to find numbers in ascending order in a matrix array. We measured the reaction time for finding the first number, and search time for finding all the numbers. Our results showed that when the priming stimulus is presented, longer threatening pictures produced longer reaction times compared to neutral ones, which was reversed with increase in arousal. We did not find any significant effects for the shorter onset time. Further theoretical and methodological implications are discussed.     

Nonconscious perception, conscious awareness and attention

Because it is unclear how a nonconscious stimulus is cognitively processed, there is uncertainty concerning variables that modulate the processing. In this context recent findings of a set of neuroimaging experiments are important. These findings suggest that conscious and nonconscious stimuli activate same areas of the brain during performance of a similar task. Further, different areas are activated when a task is performed with or without awareness of processing. It appears that the neural network involved in cognitive processing depends on the awareness of processing rather than awareness of perception. Since conscious and nonconscious cognitive processing use separate neural networks, each processing is modulated by different variables. Attention modulates most conscious cognitive processing and most, but not all, nonconscious processing is attention dependent. Nonconscious tasks that require attentional resources, with or without conscious awareness, are processed using the attention dependent system. Further, because attention dependent and attention independent tasks are processed by separate neural networks, the cognitive processing and modulating variables can be understood better if cognitive tasks are defined as attention dependent or attention independent, rather than conscious or nonconscious.     

Capability development in knowledge intensive IT enabled services

Most of the call centre literature discusses cases where the customer support task is routine and low in complexity. Call centres are considered to be modern equivalents of factory sweatshops in this literature. Technical support, however, is an example of a knowledge intensive support service. The article presents a case study of a call centre providing remote technical support and illustrates the nature of capabilities required for consistent service performance. The practices adopted at this technical support call centre do not confirm to the sweatshop stereotype mentioned in the literature.     

Neuroimaging of Priming: New Perspectives on Implicit and Explicit Memory

Priming refers to a change in the ability to identify or produce an item as a consequence of a specific prior encounter. Priming has been studied extensively in cognitive studies of healthy volunteers, neuropsychological investigations of brain-damaged patients, and, more recently, studies using modern functional neuroimaging techniques such as positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging. We review recent neuroimaging studies that have converged upon the conclusion that priming is reliably accompanied by decreased activity in a variety of brain regions. The establishment of this cortical signature of priming is beginning to generate new hypotheses concerning the relation between priming and explicit retrieval, which we illustrate by considering recent experiments on within- and cross-modality priming.     

Theory of mind and schizophrenia

A number of cognitive and behavioral variables influence the performance in tasks of theory of mind (ToM). Since two of the most important variables, memory and explicit expression, are impaired in schizophrenic patients, the ToM appears inconsistent in these patients. An ideal instrument of ToM should therefore account for deficient memory and impaired ability of these patients to explicitly express intentions. If such an instrument is developed, it should provide information that can be used not only to understand the pathophysiology but also to monitor patients.     

Multilevel Perspectives on Community Intervention: An Example from an Indo-US HIV Prevention Project in Mumbai, India

This paper explores the meaning and applicability of multilevel interventions and the role of ethnography in identifying intervention opportunities and accounting for research design limitations. It utilizes as a case example the data and experiences from a 6-year, NIMH-funded, intervention to prevent HIV/STI among married men in urban poor communities in Mumbai, India. The experiences generated by this project illustrate the need for multilevel interventions to include: (1) ethnographically driven formative research to delineate appropriate levels, stakeholders and collaborators; (2) identification of ways to link interventions to the local culture and community context; (3) the development of a model of intervention that is sufficiently flexible to be consistently applied to different intervention levels using comparable culturally congruent concepts and approaches; (4) mechanisms to involve community residents, community based organizations and community-based institutions; and (5) approaches to data collection that can evaluate the impact of the project on multiple intersecting levels.     

Effects of the one-way mirror on family therapy

The one-way screen often used in family therapy is usually a mirror and may have unsuspected effects, ensuring that clients' behaviour in therapy reflects social acceptability and personal values, rather than their usual interactions.