Suchergebnisse

The development of a vaccine marks a breakthrough in the fight against infectious diseases. However, to eradicate highly infectious diseases globally, the immunization of large parts of the population is needed. Otherwise, diseases, such as polio, measles, or more recently COVID-19, will repeatedly flare-up, with devastating effects on individuals and, in the worst case, on significant shares of the world population. For example, polio has been almost eradicated over the past three decades through an unprecedented global effort, but complete immunization has not yet been achieved. In this article, we use polio as an example to show how the global effort of developing and administering a vaccine can be understood as solving a complex problem since it involves cultural, political, and geographical barriers that demand solutions in dynamically changing and highly versatile environments. Referring to the literature on problem-solving, higher-order thinking, and complex reasoning, we demonstrate how the ability to deal with real-world environments that are complex and dynamically changing, adapting initial solutions to new circumstances and collaborate efficiently with others, has been essential for this endeavor. We argue that problem-solving abilities form one basis for solving consequential world problems.

This article summarizes the status of three recent German twin studies: CoSMoS, SOEP, and ChronoS. The German twin study on Cognitive Ability, Self-Reported Motivation, and School Achievement (CoSMoS) is a three-wave longitudinal study of monozygotic and dizygotic twins reared together, and aims to investigate predictors of and influences on school performance. In the first wave of the data collection in 2005, 408 pairs of twins aged between 7 and 11 as well as their parents participated in CoSMoS. The SOEP twin study is an extended twin study, which has combined data from monozygotic and dizygotic twins reared together with additional data from full sibling pairs, mother–child, and grandparent–child dyads who participated in the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) study. The SOEP twin project comprises about 350 twin and 950 non-twin pairs aged between 17 and 70. Data were collected between 2009 and 2010, with a focus on personality traits, wellbeing, education, employment, income, living situation, life-satisfaction, and several attitudes. The aim of the Chronotype twin study (ChronoS) was to examine genetic and environmental influences on chronotype (morningness and eveningness), coping strategies, and several aspects of the previous SOEP twin project in a sample of 301 twin pairs aged between 19 and 76 years, recruited in 2010 and 2011. Part of the ChronoS twin sample also participated in the earlier SOEP twin study, representing a second wave of assessments. We briefly describe the design and contents of these three studies as well as selected recent findings.

The German twin family study 'TwinLife' was designed to enhance our understanding of the development of social inequalities over the life course. The interdisciplinary project investigates mechanisms of social inequalities across the lifespan by taking into account psychological as well as social mechanisms, and their genetic origin as well as the interaction and covariation between these factors. Main characteristics of the study are: (1) a multidimensional perspective on social inequalities, (2) the assessment of developmental trajectories in childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood in a longitudinal design by using (3) a combination of a multi-cohort cross-sequential and an extended twin family design, while (4) capturing a large variation of behavioral and environmental factors in a representative sample of about 4,000 German twin families. In the present article, we first introduce the theoretical and empirical background of the TwinLife study, and second, describe the design, content, and implementation of TwinLife. Since the data will be made available as scientific use file, we also illustrate research possibilities provided by this project to the scientific community.

TwinLife ist eine auf zwölf Jahre angelegte repräsentative verhaltensgenetische Studie zur Entwicklung von sozialen Ungleichheiten. Für eine detaillierte Studien-Dokumention besuchen Sie bitte https://www.twin-life.de/documentation/.

Das Langfristvorhaben begann im Jahr 2014 und befragt in einem jährlichen Turnus über 4000 in Deutschland lebende Zwillingspaare und deren Familien zu unterschiedlichen Lebensbereichen. Durch den Vergleich von ein- und zweieiigen, gleichgeschlechtlichen Zwillingspaaren können neben sozialen Mechanismen auch genetische Differenzen zwischen Individuen, sowie die Kovariation und Interaktion sozialer und genetischer Einflussgrößen analysiert werden.
Um die individuelle Entwicklung unterschiedlicher Einflussfaktoren zu dokumentieren werden die Familien über mehrere Jahre hinweg umfassend untersucht. Inhaltlich wird dabei auf sechs für soziale Ungleichheiten bedeutsame Lebensbereiche fokussiert: 1. Bildung und Kompetenzerwerb, 2. Karriere und Erfolg auf dem Arbeitsmarkt, 3. Integration und Teilhabe am sozialen, kulturellen und politischen Leben, 4. Lebensqualität und wahrgenommene Handlungsmöglichkeiten, 5. physische und psychologische Gesundheit sowie 6. Verhaltensprobleme und abweichendes Verhalten.

In 2020 und 2021 fanden drei zusätzliche Befragungen zu den Einflüssen und Folgen der COVID-19-Pandemie statt. Die erste Zusatzerhebung hatte zum Ziel, retrospektiv das Verhalten, die Einstellungen, Belastungen, Gesundheit und sozioökonomische Veränderungen im Leben der Befragten während der ersten Welle der COVID-19-Pandemie von März 2020 bis hin zu den ersten Lockerungen der Lockdown-Maßnahmen zu erfassen. Die zweite Zusatzbefragung zielte darauf ab, aktuelle Verhaltensweisen, Einstellungen, Belastungen, gesundheitliche und sozioökonomische Veränderungen während der COVID-19-Pandemie zu erfassen. Die dritte ergänzende COVID-19-Umfrage befasste sich mit aktuellen Einstellungen, Belastungen, gesundheitlichen und sozioökonomischen Veränderungen aufgrund der COVID-19-Pandemie.