It is widely believed that people can remember the age at which they first had sexual intercourse. Questions about age at onset are routinely asked in population sexual behaviour surveys and in clinical history-taking. However, there are limited test–retest data, especially with regard to individual differences in unreliable recall. In this study, telephone interviews and follow-ups an average of 15 months later were conducted with 570 non-virgin subjects aged between 28 and 73 years. Test–retest correlations for recalled age at first intercourse were 0·85 for females and 0·91 for males. Consistency was slightly lower among older people and women with a history of sexual abuse. There were no significant associations between consistency of recall and measures of personality, educational background or history of alcohol dependence and depression.

A study of urinary schistosomiasis in Umueze-Anam, Anambra State, Nigeria, showed a Schistosoma haematobium infection of 26% (85) among school children with no significant difference by sex except when age as a variable is introduced. Eleven percent (37) of the 333 children were positive for haematuria; all these 37 children lived within 1·0 km of the water sources. Of the 85 infected children, swimming and laundering accounted for 65% and 48% of all water contact activities, for boys and girls respectively. One-third of the 230 adults interviewed believed haematuria to be a venereal disease and 20% thought it was a sign of maturity. Individual perception of causation and seriousness of haematuria differed by level of education and by sex. Less than 2% of the respondents knew that snails transmitted the disease. The effects of social restrictions on the epidemiology of infection is discussed.

This paper outlines the demographic characteristics of the Baiga tribe, one of the most primitive of the aboriginal tribal groups of Central India. The Baiga population has grown steadily since the first anthropological study of the tribe in the 1930s. Age at menarche, age at marriage, breast-feeding, and time interval between marriage and first conception are natural. There are more females than males. Sub-tribe endogamy is common; consanguineous marriage is favoured (34% of marriages are between first cousins) and marital distance is low (mean 7·1 km). Though the mean menarcheal age is high (15·2 years), mean age at first marriage is low (16·6 years), giving a long reproductive period.

Using data from the 1988 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey, this study examines couples' demographic and socioeconomic characteristics in the context of their attitudes towards family planning, and the impact of these factors on the use of contraceptives. The characteristics of the husbands and their influence on wives' behaviour illustrate the role of intra-household relations between men and women and their effect on fertility-related behaviour in patriarchal African societies.

The Cerdanya valley in the eastern Pyrenees has a physical unity into which a political frontier has been imposed to divide it. The social and cultural repercussions of this Franco-Spanish border have created obstacles to marriage which are not due to topography. Choice of month of marriage is under cultural control and the study of seasonality in marriages recorded in the registers of all the Cerdan parishes on both sides of the border demonstrated differences over time and between French and Spanish sectors. It is suggested that these changes demonstrate the process of distancing of the two populations. Cluster and correspondence analysis showed progressive differentiation of the seasonality patterns of the French and Spanish Cerdans despite the geographic unity of the valley. Sociocultural factors are presumed responsible.

This paper reports the preliminary findings of an analysis of the Moray House (verbal IQ) results of a base sample of 4383 Orkney children due to be tested in the schools at age 11±1½ years in 1947–75. Girls enjoy a 3·63% premium relative to phenotypically equivalent boys at test age. Relationships within the sample, which includes some members of the parental generation, are known. The trait is found to be X-linked, with nine phenotypes in the boys, and lyonization is involved.

This paper proposes a new method of measuring excess risk of child mortality in cross-sectional surveys, which is applied to DHS I data for Burundi, Uganda and Zimbabwe. The expected child mortality experience is estimated for each mother on the basis of child's age, mother's age at child's birth and her parity, and compared with her observed experience. Mothers who exceed their expected child mortality experience and also had more than one child die are considered to have excess child mortality. Zimbabwe had the greatest concentration of child deaths as measured by a simple ratio of mothers to deaths, but when observed experience was compared with expected it had less than half as many excess deaths as Uganda and Burundi. In all three countries mother's education had a strong negative association with the risk of excess child mortality, and in Zimbabwe and Burundi there were significant regional differences.

Protein energy malnutrition is a major health problem in India and it affects the growth and development of young children. This study investigated the impact of hygiene, housing and sociodemographic variables on acute malnutrition in children aged 5–7, living in urban and rural areas. Ordinal logistic regression analysis showed that the overall prevalence of severe malnutrition was 8·2%. Older age, male sex, mother's poor education, lower family income, higher birth order of the child, use of dung or fire wood as fuel and defecation within the premises were significantly associated with malnutrition. Appropriate intervention programmes should be formulated to educate and support these families.

A weighted total of 630 pupils aged 14–15 in Glasgow schools, about evenly divided between pupils of South Asian and non-Asian (overwhelmingly British) background, were measured for height and weight and compared with previous results for a similar Glasgow sample aged 30–40. Among 14–15-year-olds, British Asians were not so short compared with non-Asians as among 30–40-year-olds, especially females. Among 30–40-year-old Glasgow Asians only 7% were born in the UK, while among 14–15-year-old Glasgow Asians 86% were so born, indicating that they are the children of migrants. Generational differences in these comparisons cannot be due to positive selection of the migrant generation for height, and are attributed to improved environment, including nutrition and public health measures. This suggests the possibility of corresponding improvements in coronary and diabetic risk.

The study investigated whether homosexual men are, on average, born a shorter time after their next-older siblings than are heterosexual men. Because of mixed evidence that birth intervals are longer after a male child, the sex of the next-older sibling was included as a control variable. The probands were 220 heterosexual and 183 homosexual men with at least one older sibling examined in Southern Ontario in 1994–95. These completed a self-administered, anonymous questionnaire concerning their family background and other biodemographic information. The results showed that birth interval was negatively correlated with sibship size, positively correlated with maternal age, and uncorrelated with paternal age. They also confirmed that birth intervals are longer after a male than after a female child. The mean birth intervals preceding heterosexual and homosexual males, however, were virtually identical, indicating that the association of short birth intervals with decreased sex hormone levels in cord blood is unrelated to the development of sexual orientation.