Association between sleep patterns, somatization, and depressive symptoms among Russian university students.

In adolescents and young adults, physical and mental health are known to be associated with sleep. In this paper, we consider the connection between health indicators and sleep patterns. We collected and analyzed data of 267 master's and bachelor's degree students from 21 educational programs at one elite Russian university. Somatic health and mental health were measured using, respectively, the 8-item and the 15-item Patient Health Questionnaire, and sleep patterns were identified using the Munich Chronotype Questionnaire. The results indicated that shorter sleep time, later bedtime, and later rising time on workdays were associated with student somatic health. Shorter sleep on workdays was positively associated with the severity of depressive symptoms. Our findings highlight the importance of healthy sleep behavior for student health.

Anorexia and Young Womens' Personal Networks: Size, Structure, and Kinship.

Anorexia is a serious threat to young women's wellbeing worldwide. The effectiveness of mental health intervention and treatment is often evaluated on the basis of changes in the personal networks; however, the development of such measures for young women with anorexia is constrained due to the lack of quantitative descriptions of their social networks. We aim to fill this substantial gap. In this paper, we identify the basic properties of these women's personal networks such as size, structure, and proportion of kin connections. The empirical analysis, using a concentric circles methodology, is based on 50 ego networks constructed on data drawn from interviews with Russian-speaking bloggers who have been diagnosed with anorexia and write about this condition. We conclude that young women with anorexia tend to support a limited number of social ties; they are prone to select women as alters, but do not have a preference to connect to their relatives. Further research is needed to elucidate whether these personal network characteristics are similar among women with anorexia who belong to different age, ethnic, cultural, and income groups.

Women in gig economy work less in the evenings.

Women have been systematically disadvantaged in the labour market. This could be explained by a complex association of factors, such as the lower speed of women's professional growth within companies, their under-representation in management positions, and the unequal distribution of caregiving and housework between men and women. The rise of the gig economy-a market system that is based on hiring independent contractors and freelance workers as opposed to creating full-time contracts-has brought researchers and policymakers into a discussion on the effects of online platforms and flexible work arrangements on labour market gender parity. In this study, we examine the case of the largest online English-language school in Eastern Europe, Skyeng. Data on 6,461,404 lessons given by 13,571 teachers demonstrate that women had fewer working hours than men in most age categories, but especially for ages 30-35. The workload deficit for the women could be partly attributed to the fact that they worked less often than the men did in the evenings (7-10 p.m.). We conclude that, despite the flexible work arrangements the gig economy has offered, the women taught fewer classes than the men (i.e., having fewer paid working hours), which in turn led to a gender pay gap. The rapid growth of the gig economy makes it important to monitor gender-gap dynamics as well as discuss potential mechanisms eliminating gender inequality in the labour market.

How academic achievement spreads: The role of distinct social networks in academic performance diffusion.

Behavior diffusion through social networks is a key social process. It may be guided by various factors such as network topology, type of propagated behavior, and the strength of network connections. In this paper, we claim that the type of social interactions is also an important ingredient of behavioral diffusion. We examine the spread of academic achievements of first-year undergraduate students through friendship and study assistance networks, applying stochastic actor-oriented modeling. We show that informal social connections transmit performance while instrumental connections do not. The results highlight the importance of friendship in educational environments and contribute to debates on the behavior spread in social networks.