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This study investigates the relationship between religious influence and sexual expression in older Americans, with specific attention to gender. Using the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project, a nationally-representative survey of older adults, we create a composite measure of religious influence on sexual expression using Latent Class Analysis. We find more variability within denominations than between in terms of membership in the high-influence class; this indicates that religious influence on sexual expression is diverse within faiths. We show that religious influence is associated with higher self-reported satisfaction with frequency of sex, as well as higher physical and emotional satisfaction with sex, but only for men. Men are also significantly more likely than women to report that they would only have sex with a person they love. These results persisted in the presence of controls for demographic characteristics, religious affiliation, church attendance, intrinsic religiosity, political ideology, and functional health.

"The half-open interval procedure seems to offer an inexpensive method of reducing undercoverage in housing unit frames during data collection. Interviewers check the areas near their selected cases, and, if they find any units missing from the frame, give them a chance of selection. However, the effectiveness of the method in the field has not been tested. This paper reviews how the procedure should work and presents evidence from two surveys about its performance in practice. We show experimentally that the procedure often fails to reduce undercoverage and can introduce overcoverage. The authors conclude with thoughts about the appropriate role for the half-open interval procedure in household surveys in the future." (author's abstract)

Argues that answering questions seeking information on when certain major life events occurred, as well as information about the frequency of certain mundane habits like TV viewing, is more difficult than it may initially seem. Types of errors that respondents (Rs) typically make are discussed, highlighting the error of temporal displacement, also known as "telescoping." Interview data were gathered in 1992 from 2,109 British Rs asked to recall two landmark news events, the resignation of Margaret Thatcher & the Hillsborough football disaster. Only a small % of Rs were correct to within a month about the events, with Thatcher's resignation being forward telescoped most frequently, & the Hillsborough disaster being backward telescoped. Correlations between different demographic characteristics & the type of telescoping observed are reported. It is argued that people's temporal estimations are complex, & the likelihood of telescoping errors should be taken into account by those examining surveys. 3 Tables, 21 References. D. Weibel

Leading academic institutions, governments, and funders of research across the world have spent the last few decades fretting publicly about the need for scientists and research organisations to engage more widely with the public and be open about their research. While a global literature asserts that public communication has changed from a virtue to a duty for scientists in many countries and disciplines, our knowledge about what research institutions are doing and what factors drive their 'going public' is very limited. Here we present the first cross-national study of N = 2,030 research institutes within universities and large scientific organisations in Brazil, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. We find that institutes embrace communication with non-peers and do so through a variety of public events and traditional news media-less so through new media channels-and we find variation across countries and sciences, yet these are less evident than we expected. Country and disciplinary cultures contribute to the level of this communication, as do the resources that institutes make available for the effort; institutes with professionalised staff show higher activity online. Future research should examine whether a real change in the organisational culture is happening or whether this activity and resource allocation is merely a means to increase institutional visibility.