Associations of parental rules and socioeconomic position with preschool children's sedentary behaviour and screen time

There is little current understanding of the influences on sedentary behaviour and screen time in preschool children. This study investigated socioeconomic position (SEP) and parental rules as potential correlates of preschool children's sedentary behaviour and screen time.

Factors associated with parental rules for adolescent alcohol use

This study used the Resilient Families baseline survey to examine associations between the connectedness of parents within the school and parents' rules regarding their children's use of alcohol, prior participation in parenting education, and parents' demographic characteristics. The study involved parents of Year 7 students (mean age 12 years) at secondary schools in Melbourne, Australia (N = 1,238; 2004). Most parents (54%) had no connections with parents of other children in their child's school year. Allowing children to have sips of alcohol or drinks on special occasions was reported by 23% and 6% of parents, respectively, but neither was significantly associated with parental connectedness. Copyright © 2014 Informa Healthcare USA, Inc.

Children's performance on ground rules questions: implications for forensic interviewing

Ground rules, also called interview instructions, are included in investigative interviews with children around the world. These rules aim to manage the expectations of children who are typically unaccustomed to being questioned by adults who are naïve to the children's experiences. Although analog research has examined the efficacy of ground rules instruction, a systematic analysis of children's ability to respond appropriately to each of the rules has not been reported. In the current study, we scored the accuracy of children's (N = 501, 4 to 12 years) responses to 5 ground rules practice questions (e.g., "What is my dog's name?") and 2 questions that asked whether they would follow the rules, and then assigned inaccurate responses to 1 of several error categories. Few children answered every question correctly, but their performance on individual questions was encouraging. As expected, there were marked differences in children's understanding across ground rules questions (especially among the younger children), with "Don't guess" and "Tell the truth" rules being the easiest to comprehend. Together with evidence that ground rules instruction takes little time to deliver (typically 2 to 4 min) and is associated with improved accuracy in previous research, these findings support the use of ground rules in investigative interviews of children 4 years and older.

The use of ground rules in investigative interviews with children : a synthesis and call for research

Guidelines for conducting investigative interviews with children often include instructions that explain the conversational rules of the interview. Despite the widespread and international use of such instructions (also referred to as "ground rules"), the body of research characterizing children's understanding of these rules and documenting the impact of instruction on memory reports is relatively small. We review the use of ground rules in investigative interviews, the developmental differences that likely underlie children's ability to make sense of these rules, and research pertaining to the effects of the ground rules commonly included in interview guidelines on the reports of 3- to 13-year-old children. We then present a study space analysis concerning the five ground rules reviewed: (a) a statement about interviewer naïveté regarding the target events, (b) instructions to tell the interviewer when a mistake has been made, (c) cautions that some questions may be repeated, and instructions to say (d) "I don't understand" and (e) "I don't know." The results demonstrate obvious gaps in this body of literature, with only the "I don't know" ground rule having received significant attention. In addition to exploring how individual rules impact interview performance, we encourage more process-oriented studies that relate developmental differences in ground rules benefits to the cognitive processes that underlie rule understanding and implementation. Optimally, this research should identify the most suitable format and placement of instruction in interviews and broaden to more often include field studies of child witnesses.

Maternal efficacy and sedentary behavior rules predict child obesity resilience

Abstract
Background:
To identify longitudinal individual, social and environmental predictors of adiposity (BMI z-score),
and of resilience to unhealthy weight gain, in healthy weight children and adolescents.
Methods:
Two hundred healthy weight children aged 5–12 years at baseline and their parents living in socio-economically disadvantaged neighborhoods were surveyed at baseline and three years later. Children’s height and weight were objectively measured, parents completed a detailed questionnaire that examined the home, social and neighborhood environments, and objective measures of the neighborhood environment were assessed using geographic information system data. Ch
ildren classified as healthy weight at baseline who had
small or medium increases in their BMI z-score between baseline and three year follow up (those in the bottom
and middle tertiles) were categorized as‘ resilient to unhealthy weight gain’. Where applicable, fully adjusted
multivariable regression models were employed to determine baseline intrapersonal, social and environmental predictors of child BMI z-scores at follow-up, and resilience to unhealthy weight gain at
follow-up.
Results:
Maternal efficacy for preventing their child from engaging in sedentary behaviors (B = − 0.03, 95 % CI: 0.06, 0.00) was associated with lower child BMI z-score at follow up. Rules to limit sedentary behaviors (OR = 1.14, 95 % CI: 1.03, 1.25) was a predictor of being resilient to unhealthy weight gain.
Conclusion:
The findings suggest that strategies to support parents to limit their children ’s sedentary behavior may be important in preventing unhealthy weight gain in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities.

The effects of practice on children's ability to apply ground rules in a narrative interview

Despite the widespread use of ground rules in forensic interview guidelines, it is unknown whether children retain and apply these rules throughout narrative interviews. We evaluated the capacity of 260 five- to nine-year-olds to utilize three ground rules. At the beginning of the interview all children heard the rules; half also practiced them. Children then responded to open-ended prompts about a repeated laboratory event and were assessed for their application of the rules. Logistic regressions revealed that practice only benefitted the use of the "don't know" rule. Although the children accurately answered "don't understand" and "correct me" practice questions, practice appeared to give no greater benefit than just hearing the rules. Results suggest that the current format of ground rule practice in interview guidelines is appropriate for the "don't know" rule, but the other rules may require more extensive practice with this age group. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Medical and scientific authorship: a conflict between discipline rules and the law

When the results of medical collaborations are to be published, questions of authorship arise. Which members of the research team are to be acknowledged as authors of the paper? In what order are they to be acknowledged? Institutional rules will generally determine the attribution of authorship to members of the research team. However those rules are most unlikely to be consistent with the legal rules governing authorship and its attribution, most of which will apply regardless of a team’s adherence to institutional rules. This article examines the meaning of authorship in the medical community, and in the legal community under the copyright laws. It considers various formulations of the institutional rules governing authorship, as well as editorial practices. Through consideration of a hypothetical scenario, the consequences of the disparity between authorship norms in law and in medicine are elaborated.