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Motherhood in Western Europe

Insights from Western European Mothers

The changing face of motherhood — Western Europe

The accompanying reports combine a review of existing literature with an analysis of original quantitative data derived from a poll of 9,582 mothers from 12 countries in Western Europe, making it one of the largest studies of this kind ever conducted

Child Obesity and Health

An analysis of the latest available data from the Health Survey for England (HSE)

Child Obesity and Health — download the full report in pdf format

In this ‘National Childhood Obesity Week’, the SIRC report, Children, obesity and heath: Recent trends, holds up a true mirror, accurately reflecting the trend towards slimmer, healthier children. more

The Future of Freemasonry

An examination of the role of Freemasonry in the 21st century

Freemasonry

This report is, as far as we know, an account of the first ever study that has been commissioned by Freemasons from a non-Masonic body. None of the SIRC members involved in the project are Freemasons, a fact that evoked surprise and welcome in equal measure from the Lodge members we met. more

The Changing Face of Motherhood

Insights from three generations of mothers

Motherhood

The report seeks to answer some specific questions about the changing face of motherhood and determine the extent to which modern ‘solutions’ to motherhood are more or less beneficial than the solutions of the past. more

Lifelines

Irish Times – Monday, May 31, 1999

By Sarah Marriott
Do shock tactics for health campaigns work? No – according to researchers at the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford, who have found they have the opposite effect. The three unwanted effects are: warning fatigue (people pay no attention to health messages); risk factor phobia (people over-react to health warnings); and forbidden fruit effect (particularly common among teenagers, who defy authoritarian health warnings). Warning fatigue is illustrated by the failure of campaigns to encourage people to exercise more and give up smoking, while risk factor phobics over-reacted to reports of health risks linked to the contraceptive pill, and stopped taking the pill (resulting in a 9 per cent rise in the abortion rate in the UK).

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