ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: Gender norms are increasingly recognized as drivers of health and wellbeing. While early adolescence constitutes a critical window of development, there is limited understanding about how adolescents perceive gender relations across different cultural settings. This study used a mixed-method approach, grounded in the voices of young people around the world, to construct and test a cross-cultural scale assessing the perceptions of gender norms regulating romantic relationships between boys and girls in early adolescence. METHODS: The study draws on the Global Early Adolescent study (GEAS), a study focusing on gender norms and health related outcomes over the course of adolescence in urban poor settings worldwide. In-depth interviews were first conducted among approximately 200 adolescents between 10-14 years in seven sites across 4 continents to identify common scripts guiding romantic relations in early adolescence. These scripts were then transformed into a multidimensional scale. The scale was tested among 120 adolescents in each of 14 GEAS sites, followed by a second pilot among 75 adolescents in six sites. We evaluated the psychometric criteria of each sub-scale using principal component analysis, and parallel analysis, followed by exploratory factor analysis to guide the selection of a more parsimonious set of items. RESULTS: Results suggested a two-factor structure, consisting of an "adolescent romantic expectations" subscale and a "Sexual Double Standard" subscale. Both subscales yielded high internal validity in each site, with polychoric Cronbach alpha values above 0.70 with the exception of Kinshasa for the adolescent romantic expectations scale (0.64) and Hanoi for the sexual double standard scale (0.61). CONCLUSION: This study reveals common perceptions of gendered norms about romantic engagement in early adolescence, normative for both sexes, but socially valued for boys while devaluated for girls. The findings illustrate that social hierarchies of power in romantic relationships form early in adolescence, regardless of cultural setting.
ABSTRACT
A prospective study of two local anaesthesia regimen for female sterilization is presented. A total of 1,077 female clients were sterilized via minilaparotomy under local anaesthesia (ML/LA) as outpatients. The clients underwent pre-operative screening and received pre-operative and continuing counselling. The first 257 of these clients were sedated with an intramuscular injection of pethidine after atropine premedication (pre-sedated group). The other clients (non-sedated group) were premedicated with atropine alone, without sedation. For the pre-sedated group, the mean volume of one percent lignocaine used was 18.3 (S.D. 2.2) ml, the mean length of surgical incision was 2.8 (S.D. 0.5) cm, and the mean duration of surgical was 15.8 (S.D. 5.3) minutes; 8.2% of these clients reported that they felt much pain. In comparison, 7.7% of the non-sedated group clients reported much pain following a mean of 17.7 ml of one percent lignocaine (S.D. 2.7) through an incision of mean length 2.5 (S.D. 0.5) cm for surgery lasting a mean of 14.5 (S.D. 4.5) minutes. Clients who were pre-medicated with pethidine were more likely to have multiple post-operative complaints, especially dizziness, faintness, headache, nausea and vomiting. This study found no significant difference in the clinical performance of female sterilization by minilaparotomy, duration of operation, length of incision, amount of local anaesthesia required or perception of pain between clients who were premedicated with intramuscular pethidine and those who were not.
PIP: A prospective study of two local anaesthesia regimens for female sterilization is presented. A total of 1077 female clients were sterilized via minilaparotomy under local anaesthesia (ML/LA) as outpatients. The clients underwent preoperative screening and received preoperative and continuing counseling. The first 257 of these clients were sedated with an intramuscular injection of pethidine after atropine premedication (presedated group). The other clients (nonsedated group) were premedicated with atropine alone, without sedation. For the presedated group, the mean volume of 1% lignocaine used was 18.3 (SD, 2.2) ml, the mean length of surgical incision was 2.8 (SD, 0.5) cm, and the mean duration of surgical procedure was 15.8 (SD, 5.3) minutes; 8.2% of these clients reported that they felt much pain. In comparison, 7.7% of the nonsedated group clients reported much pain following a mean of 17.7 ml of 1% lignocaine (SD, 2.7) through an incision of mean length 2.5 (SD, 0.5) cm for surgery lasting a mean of 14.5 (SD, 4.5) minutes. Clients who were premedicated with pethidine were more likely to have multiple postoperative complaints, especially dizziness, faintness, headache, nausea, and vomiting. This study found no significant difference in the clinical performance of female sterilization by minilaparotomy, duration of operation, length of incision, amount of local anaesthesia required, or perception of pain between clients who were premedicated with intramuscular pethidine and those who were not.
