Many surveys of the U.S. household population are experiencing higher refusal rates. Nonresponse can, but need not, induce nonresponse bias in survey estimates. Recent empirical findings illustrate cases when the linkage between nonresponse rates and nonresponse biases is absent. Despite this, professional standards continue to urge high response rates. Statistical expressions of nonresponse bias can be translated into causal models to guide hypotheses about when nonresponse. causes bias. Alternative designs to measure nonresponse bias exist, providing different but incomplete information about the nature of the bias. A synthesis of research studies estimating nonresponse bias shows the bias often present. A logical question at this moment in history is what advantage probability sample surveys have if they suffer from high nonresponse rates. Since postsurvey adjustment for nonresponse requires auxiliary variables, the answer depends on the nature of the design and the quality of the auxiliary variables.

Nonresponse Rates and Nonresponse Bias in Household Surveys

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male

This survey of sexual practices in the United States has been combed by the media for items of interest to the public: monogamous sex is much more widespread in this country than has been thought; infidelity is less frequent than presumed; vaginal intercourse is the defining experience of heterosexual behavior; watching one's partner undress is stimulating to many people; married couples have more sex than single people (unmarried, cohabiting couples have the most sex of all); the majority of couples experience sex twice a week to several times a month; 2.8% of men identify themselves as homosexual and 1.4% of women do so, but a higher percentage of people consider a same-gender experience to have some appeal; 75% of men always experience orgasm compared with 28.6% of women, but more nearly equal numbers of men and women declare themselves satisfied with their sexual experiences. The book is, in fact, a

The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States

Stigma and discrimination toward obese persons are pervasive and pose numerous consequences for their psychological and physical health. Despite decades of science documenting weight stigma, its public health implications are widely ignored. Instead, obese persons are blamed for their weight, with common perceptions that weight stigmatization is justifiable and may motivate individuals to adopt healthier behaviors. We examine evidence to address these assumptions and discuss their public health implications. On the basis of current findings, we propose that weight stigma is not a beneficial public health tool for reducing obesity. Rather, stigmatization of obese individuals threatens health, generates health disparities, and interferes with effective obesity intervention efforts. These findings highlight weight stigma as both a social justice issue and a priority for public health.

https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdfplus/10.2105/AJPH.2009.159491

Obesity Stigma: Important Considerations for Public Health

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(98)03201-2.pdf

Changing patterns of mortality across Europe in patients infected with HIV-1.

There is more to modern health than new scientific discoveries, the development of new technologies, or emerging or re-emerging diseases. World events and experiences, such as the AIDS epidemic and the humanitarian emergencies in Bosnia and Rwanda, have made this evident by creating new relationships among medicine, public health, ethics, and human rights. Each domain has seeped into the other, making allies of public health and human rights, pressing the need for an ethics of public health, and revealing the rights-related responsibilities of physicians and other health care workers.

Medicine and Public Health, Ethics and Human Rights

This volume provides a global review of the AIDS situation. The work covers the period from the first recognition of AIDS in the early 1980s through mid-1992 "and thus contains both a retrospective and a current analysis of the pandemics dimensions shape and impact as well as the range of societal responses." The book attempts to provide the data projections and information needed to analyze current and future trends in the epidemic and "projects that by 1995 nearly 20 million people will be infected with HIV and 6.4 million adults and children will develop AIDS; by the year 2000 between 38 and 110 million adults and as many as 10 million children will be infected with HIV and up to 24 million adults will develop AIDS." (EXCERPT)

Jonathan M. Mann

Papers

Medicine and Public Health, Ethics and Human Rights

AIDS in the world.

Health and human rights : a reader

AIDS in the world II : global dimensions, social roots, and responses

Health and human rights.