The familial condition of tylosis was found in a single extended family in the Orkney islands. Unlike other pedigrees described it has no association with carcinoma of the oesophagus. Various linkage studies have been suggested and pooling of available data would offer a more constructive approach. Electron microscopy suggests further biochemical analysis on affected and normal skin to elucidate the underlying factors causing hyperkeratinization, and possibly resulting in more sophisticated treatment for this irritable but harmless condition.

A national study of the Iran family planning programme is yet to be undertaken. This paper reports clinic continuation rates and causes of drop-out among Iranian pill acceptors based on patient records at three selected clinics in Shiraz and Marvdasht. All three clinics were shown to have a cumulative continuation rate of over 50% up to 1 year. Causes of clinic drop-out varied between rural and urban pill users by time of acceptance and by the acceptors’ background characteristics. The probability of drop-out for unreported reasons was related to level of motivation. The effect of follow-up by clinic motivators was clearly demonstrated in the temporal pattern of drop-out among rural acceptors. The probability of drop-out for medical side effects was related to knowledge about them and users’ own experience. Risk of accidental pregnancy was seen to reduce as pill users gained experience.

The technique of analysing factorial experiments has been used in this paper to analyse data on survival sequence of infants. Even though no generalizations can be made at this stage, the findings relating to interactions appear to be interesting, revealing and useful. Strong associations between survivorship of infants at successive birth orders are indicated.

The paper presents the results of five polymorphic systems in a sample of 999 individuals from Nottinghamshire. The results are classified by the socio-economic grouping of parents and self.

The results show that social class differences for the genetic attributes exist and are almost linear when aggregated distances are computed. There are differences, however, between parental and offspring results. These differences may be the result of changes in social class over the last generation. This social mobility is investigated and it is shown that an upward movement in social class is associated with characteristic genotype groupings.

Mortality from peptic ulcer among middle-aged Canadian males in the period 1959–63 has been analysed by marital status and social class. Adjustment for social class reduced only slightly the mortality disadvantage of single males compared with married males.

Interviews with 103 middle-class wives on their family building experiences and use of birth control techniques show this highly educated group to be effective family planners in comparison with other social groups. The wives developed clear ideas early in marriage about family size, timing and spacing, formulated with reference to sets of beliefs about the transmission of cultural advantage from parents to children, and their social responsibility in relation to world population levels. Ideas about the spacing of children and desired family size appear to be influenced by the women’s orientation towards returning to employment, but their relatively late age of terminating full-time education has had remarkably little effect on the timing of either marriage or the first child’s birth. Female contraceptive methods were most popular with this sample, and their relative effectiveness as family planners may be explained by their preference for the more reliable techniques and high level of motivation to use them efficiently. Variations in patterns of contraceptive usage noted between this and other studies are probably a function of age differences in the groups of women surveyed.

This report describes a family planning KAP survey conducted in 2000 households in rural Ghana between April and October, 1972, as one of the Danfa Project’s baseline studies. Subsequent re-surveys were done in 1975 and 1977 to assess changes related to project health education and family planning programmes.

Reported knowledge about family planning was three times that reported in previous studies in rural Ghana. About 70% of the respondents approve of family planning, but most want a large family, with over six children. At all ages, males wanted two or three more children than did women.

The current 3% population growth rate in Ghana may increase due to continued early age of marriage, the rising size of the reproductive age group and improved pregnancy outcome.

Although the expected relationships between knowledge and use of family planning and age and education were present, these differentials were typically only 10–15%. In the project area it appears that women will be most important in making the decision to practise family planning, although motivation of males is being stressed.

Most villagers hear about family planning through informal, word-of-mouth channels with relatively little use of news media, family planning workers or clinic health personnel. To improve the practice of family planning, village-based health educators are working with volunteers including traditional birth attendants, community leaders, teachers and church groups.

Results are presented from an analysis of the intervals between births from Imesi, Western Nigeria. The mean interval following births of children who survived to 1 year was 35·03 months, but nearly half this value at 18·8 months following stillbirths or deaths under 1 year. Both these results confirm an early study done in the village (Martin, Morley & Woodland, 1964), and the role of post-partum sexual abstention as an explanation for these results is discussed. Attempts were made to look for effects of birth interval variation on the survival of the following child, but no strong trends emerged. Similarly, analyses of many growth variables by preceding and following birth intervals gave very little evidence of real effects. There were, however, hints of trends which were possibly caused by birth order biases; higher birth orders had been found to have correspondingly higher birth intervals. An intriguing result was that those children who had ever suffered from kwashiorkor showed a significantly higher preceding mean birth interval, and also a higher mean interval to the next birth.

This article, based on retrospective survey data, examines the fertility performance of third-order parity women in Korea, following births of specified sexes of children already born. Although the study indicates that additional births and spacing of children after the third birth are strongly influenced by the sex composition of the first three children, this influence becomes apparent only after the introduction of a vigorous national family planning programme. It seems that both the number of sons and the sequence of sons and daughters play an important role in determining subsequent fertility. More than twice as great a proportion of third-parity women proceeded to the fourth parity if the women had three daughters rather than three sons.

Routinely collected data on the 37,094 families with severely handicapped children who have applied to the Family Fund are used to examine the relationship between certain handicapping disorders and the year of birth, season of birth, birth order, region of domicile, social class, sex and presence of a disabled sibling. Differences between each handicapping disorder, and differences between the handicapping disorders and the general population are noted.