Social “connectivity” through time is currently considered as one of the major drivers of cultural transmission and cultural evolution. Within this framework, the interactions within and between groups are impacted by individuals’ distinction of social relationships. In this paper, we focus on changes in a major aspect of social perceptions, “other” and “stranger.” As inferred from the archaeological record, this perception among human groups gained importance during the course of the Pleistocene. These changes would have occurred due to the plasticity of cognitive mechanisms, in response to the demands on behavior along the trajectory of human social evolution. The concepts of “other” and “stranger” have received little attention in the archaeological discourse, yet they are fundamental in the perception of social standing. The property of being an “other” is defined by one’s perception and is inherent to one’s view of the world around oneself; when shared by a group it becomes a social cognitive construct. Allocating an individual the status of a “stranger” is a socially-defined state that is potentially transient. We hypothesize that, while possibly entrenched in deep evolutionary origins, the latter is a relatively late addition to socio-cognitive categorization, associated with increased sedentism, larger groups and reduced territorial extent as part of the process of Neolithization. We posit that “others” and “strangers” can be approached from contextual archaeological data, with inferences as regards the evolution of cognitive social categories. Our analysis focused on raw material studies, observations on style, and evidence for craft specialization. We find that contrary to the null hypothesis the archaeological record implies earlier emergence of complex socio-cognitive categorization. The cognitive, cultural and social processes involved in the maintenance and distinction between “others” and “strangers” can be defined as “self-domestication” that is still an on-going process. No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;” MEDITATION XVII, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (John Donne)“While much research focused on the question of the emergence of “modern” cognition – a vague concept that is variably understood and therefore variably recognized  discourse, “other” and “stranger,” are often used alternately. However, they are not synonymous. Dictionary definitions run:1.“Other” – refers to a person or thing that is different or distinct from one already mentioned or known about2.“Stranger” – a person who does not know a particular place or community or is not known in a particular place or communityAddressed from contextual archaeological data, our exploration is preliminary and inherently speculative, with inferences as regards the evolution of human sociality. As a caveat to the discussion we must add that the nature of prehistoric evidence clearly impedes archaeologists from discussing the socio-cultural process defined by cultural anthropologists and sociologists as “othering” or the concept of “The Other”.Homo, potentially as far back as Homo erectus (∼1.8 million years ago), during which SC played a major part in constructing the human unique “niche” of adaptation to the external world (ibid.). The active role of culture in shaping the social landscape of humans, in conjunction with genetic dictates and sometimes over-riding them, constitutes what one might define as “self-domestication.”The human social cognition system reflects the history of the genus al world . It seemal world :104, intThe property of “otherness” is inherent to one’s view of the surrounding world and to a large degree defines oneself (see definition above). In evolutionary terms the notion of being an “other” is an innate trait of human sociality, and is immutable. At a group-level, when a number of individuals consider themselves as “one,” vis-à-vis individuals or groups that do not belong to the “one,” “others” becomes a social cognitive construct. Still, there are degrees of social “otherness” that can be perceived within and between groups. Hunter-gatherer kinship terminologies  make it emergent social construct that is transient, since it depends on changeable cultural perceptions. In the words of The concept of “stranger“is a trait of a complex society, an Some non-human primates appear to present behaviors that suggest that they may differentiate between “others” and “strangers.” To wit, the viability of a chimpanzee genetic pool  is maintained by the relocation of fertile females among groups. When chimpanzees from those groups (“kin” or “others” in our terminology) encounter each other, the outcomes vary from skirmishes to friendship  there would be only “us” and “others,” because every person, with whom one had any kind of interaction, belonged by default to the same reproductive network, even if not of the same basic social unit . At all times, these social interactions involved kin and “others” but not “strangers.”Because of the strong influence of culture on SC, changes in economic, demographic, spatial (and other) aspects of human culture introduced changes in perceptions of social relationship, i.e., in SC. Through time, one can observe a rise in residential group size and a reduction in territory sizes – both linked to improved means of production and associated demographic changes , b. A laWith the increase of global and local population sizes and change of economic mode, with the introduction of farming/agriculture, boundaries became less defined by clear-cut geographic features. Instead, “crowding”  led to the emergence of socially constructed barriers. The definition of “strangers” lost its dependency on rare, random encounters. People came to consider as strangers also individuals they could meet on a daily basis but belonged on the other side of the social barrier.The perception of “strangers” became even more nuanced through time. As networks of exchange (of both commodities and information) expanded, the rate of encounters with strangers increased, being beneficial to both sides. Under this premise some strangers, whose expertise and fields of knowledge complemented the ones present within a group, would be favored and would be more often tolerated by, if not accepted into, a given community. This differentiation became most obvious with the introduction of craft specialization and market economy. Hence it is in these later periods that we expect to find indications for “strangers” in the archaeological record.The scenario presented above relies on theoretical, sociological and ethnographic knowledge, all engaged by researchers in attempts to structure a narrative of the evolution of human society and sociability. We find similarities with the question of children’s visibility in the archaeological record, a topic that, once raised, has burgeoned into a prolific field of inquiry  and forms of exchange. Each of these behaviors potentially bears implications for the type of interactions between groups in a given geographic space, namely, contacts with “others” or with “strangers.”The types of Stylistic variations within various categories of material objects have been argued to represent social identities at personal, group and regional levels. In some instances, stylistic variability can be tied to the fission-fusion social structure dynamic, specifically to the phase of aggregation when many “others” come together. It is sometimes possible to identify stylistic particularities that were used consciously as emblems, specifying group or population identities. By default, the absence of a shared emblem would denote one’s state of “stranger.”craft specialization pertains to differences in both style and production technology. Whereas experts perform with high levels of both conceptual and practical (savoire-faire) knowledge, average or novice practitioners possess the theoretical knowledge that is embedded in their material culture traditions, but would implement it poorly. Hence these two (broad) categories of skill are identified archaeologically  there are instances when the material record suggests that an artisan was not local, as expressed by the use of technology and style that had emerged and developed elsewhere. This would suggest a different type of social standing within the group, that of a “stranger.”As our archaeological experience lies mainly within the Levantine record, we discuss some of the implications of the above scenario by looking closely at the details of selected case studies from the Levant. Our insights from the regional record are then contextualized into a broader geographic scope in the Discussion.In the Levant , flint iHowever, studies of raw material-related behaviors among Middle Paleolithic  groups in the Levant suggest that hominins  did not always opt for a “least effort” solutions for raw material requirements. At times, they obtained a variable (across sites) fraction of the raw material from additional, diverse sources, some of which were located at relatively long distances from the habitation sites. At Amud Cave . UnexpecThe notion that the construct of “strangers” was activated in the social cognition of MP hominins gains support from another case study at the open-air site of ‘Ein Qashish . This paThe different implications for social cognitive distinctions, associated with direct transport vs. indirect procurement through exchange, may be best considered when dealing with raw materials from distinct geographic sources. In the Levantine record, this can be done by looking at marine shells. Such items are known from MIS 5  in Qafzeh and Skhul caves  as well in situ. Because of the distance from the contemporaneous shoreline of the time (some 70 km to the west), and because of the large number of shells found in Urkan, this situation could be construed as indicative of exchange between groups, reflecting contacts with “strangers” beyond the group’s habitual territory. Two lines of evidence suggest differently: first, among the shells that reached the site very few belong to species that were not part of the repertoire of Epi-Paleolithic groups  site of Urkan e-Rubb IIa  requiresc groups . These sc groups . In the Stylistic characteristics are widely accepted as expressions of individual or group identity . To bearThe “Levantine Aurignacian” is a short-lived  cultural entity that existed only in the northern part of modern Israel and along the Lebanese coast. It is a unique phenomenon in the Upper Paleolithic  sequence of the Levant in that it shows greater similarity to the West European “classic Aurignacian” cultural entity  than to the local archaeological entities that immediately precede or follow it . This siA unique feature of the Levantine Aurignacian is the occurrence of notched bones  from the Aurignacian levels of Hayonim, Manot, Kebara (and possibly Emireh) caves , all locvis-a-vis notched items is expressed in the selected animal taxa, the raw materials and anatomical elements used, and in the types of “decorated” objects. In the European Aurignacian notches were made on bone, antler and ivory pieces deriving from reindeer, red deer, bovid, and mammoth; the marks occur on antler, bone splinters, personal ornaments and on “utilitarian” tools such as polishers. In contrast, notched pieces in the Levantine Aurignacian are highly uniform and homogenous, with gazelles being the only animal species selected and with an almost exclusive use of a single anatomical element, the scapula.The difference between the Levant and Europe 3, who did not share the social and cultural worldviews expressed through this particular cultural item.The standardization of their production procedures as well as their relative concentration in Levantine Aurignacian assemblages indicate that these items were unique features of the regional record. It was suggested that they served as an emblem of the Levantine Aurignacian . Such itCervus elaphus), and were shaped by a particular technique. Both the manufacture marks and the use-wear signs point toward personal ornaments. Some of the modification processes differed from those observed in other Levantine Aurignacian sites  of a large spectrum of herbivores  and carnivore  species were selected for the manufacture of these ornaments. The flexibility seen in the techniques employed for ornament production is expressed by the emergence of region-specific  characteristics .in situ production of the pendants, demonstrated at least for some of the Hayonim items, reinforces this suggestion. This contrasts significantly with the archaeological manifestations of the locally-rooted Ahmarian techno-complex. Thus, accepting that the pendants were markers of the Aurignacians, their similarity in the Levant and in Europe is striking. It lends support to the notion of the Levantine Aurignacian as an incursion from Europe that is linked to its geographic origins through cultural tradition. The pendants therefore suggest that the Aurignacian populations were “others” within a Mediterranean meta-population, with a shared history that arose before the “migration” of Aurignacian groups into the Levant, and which defined them as “strangers” to the local Ahmarian groups of the eastern Mediterranean coast. Thus, the differentiation was not necessarily constrained or dictated by geographic distance. For the Levantine Aurignacian, “otherness” and “strangeness” seem to have been first and foremost constructs of social cognition.The use-wear of the Levantine and European Aurignacian pierced teeth implies identical utilization of the objects, suggesting shared symbolic practices. The We hypothesized (see above) that encounters with strangers should become more apparent in the archaeological record of later periods. We also suggested that their presence can be detected through identification of the products of expert artisans bringing with them knowledge that is new to the local groups.Although expert lithic knappers may have existed in the Levant as early as the Acheulian, it is of note that their activities are understood as those of local artisans acting within the context of a (sometimes large) residential group  of kin . Comparaibid.). The material cultural record shows that naviform technology first emerged and evolved in the northern Levant , and that its craftsmanship in the north was overall more refined than in the southern Levant. We therefore posit that, heralding from the northern Levant, the expert knappers of naviform items would be perceived as “strangers” by the local communities.The context of activities of expert knappers in the Levant seems to have changed in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B , possibly as part of the Neolithization processes. The “naviform” mode of flaking stone, designed for the production of long and thin blades, was a pan-Levantine phenomenon . NaviforChimpanzees and humans both appear to harbor concepts of “strangers,” which may be attributed to a shared evolutionary origin. The encounters of chimpanzee groups with “strangers” are rare, and were reported rather sparsely e.g., , becauseibid.). Similar to Nearly all researchers agree that hominins, unlike perhaps other species, have found cognitive and social scaffoldings that enable them to operate within very large groups, cross-culturally. It is also clear that at some point in human cultural and social evolution, one’s recognition of “group size” shifted from census numbers to a social perception. Notwithstanding any biological limitations on group size, humans acquired a cognitive flexibility that enabled them to first, enlarge the biological and social perception of kin and, secondly, to categorize their social world as one of stable (“kin”/“classificatory kin”/“others”) and transient relationships (“strangers”). The latter could be remodeled contextually  according to shifting circumstances. Already Furthermore, the archaeological evidence allows us to identify earlier-than-expected trends in the emergence of the social cognitive constructs related to inter-personal/intra-group and inter-group behaviors. There is indirect evidence that large social groupings, with their implied categorization of social relationships, emerged earlier than the UP, thus our null hypothesis must be rejected.We have focused our archaeological discussion on Levantine case studies, using information from lithic raw material, bone tools and personal ornaments. When contextualized against the broader archaeological records of the respective periods outside of the Levant, archaeological data provide insights of similar social cognitive constructs. For example, larger transport distances of raw material entailed, almost by default, awareness and recognition of “strangers.” Long transport distances of obsidian in eastern Africa (>200 km and sometimes >300 km; A known phenomenon in the south Levant, of sites dating to Late UP [Epipalaeolithic] and Neolithic times, is that of obsidian sourced to central and northern Anatolia. This is parsimoniously explained as evidence of down-the-line trade or exchange see  and gradvis-a-vis “strangers” would be instrumental in alleviating “scalar stress” (as defined by As we understand it, the trend is consistent with Both authors perceived and wrote the manuscript.The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.


The relationship between religion and happiness has been seriously understudied in non-Western and non-Islamic societies. Taking religious identity and religious practice as strata, the 2015 Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) data were used to examine the predicting power of health, politics, and social relationships with regard to happiness in four different groups, as follows: People with a religious identity and practice, people with no religious identity but with a practice, people with a religious identity but no practice, and people with neither a religious identity nor practice. Multiple regression analyses were conducted using the Ordinary Least Squares method. The results demonstrate the influence of the independent variables in the four groups, thus confirming the expectation that different religious practices, as well as identities, play a vital role in moderating the degree of happiness. Physical and mental health are significant predictors of happiness regardless of different religious situations, with the effect of mental health here found to be greater in magnitude on happiness than that of physical health. Political participation was not found to be related to happiness, but having a left-wing political attitude did emerge as strongly predicting happiness. The results concerning social relationships further consolidate the hypothesis that religious practice should be taken into consideration separately from religious identity. This study indicates the importance of further investigating religious practice as an independent factor in religious studies in the context of Chinese society. Since the late 1980s, an increasing volume of empirical research has demonstrated the salutary effects of religious commitment on public health , and perRegarding studies on people’s religious commitment in China, Lu and Gao  found thReligion was the least studied social issue during China’s one-hundred-year process of social modernization . HoweverIn the context of investigating the social function of religion, how to measure religion becomes a key issue. Multi-dimensional definitions and sophisticated indexes have been developed to enable this measurement in addition to that of religious identity. Among these, Glock  and, latChinese General Social Survey 2012, the number of folk religion believers was recorded as 3.5%; however, by asking people specifically about the folk belief practices they had participated in, this number surged to 52% [Scholars have typically focused on employing religious identity to investigate religion-related issues in China, as most of the available research has done thus far. It is here argued that religion should be discussed in light of both religious identity and practice, given that ordinary religious believers in this context need not necessarily undergo admittance procedures or rites in order to acquire a religious identity. This is especially true for Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and folk beliefs. On the other hand, the modalities of ‘doing religion’ are easy to acquire by, for example, simply following the local/ethnic tradition, or proclaiming allegiance to a certain religion in private . Religiod to 52% . Based od to 52% , which mIn reviewing the extant literature, it becomes evident that happiness has been recognized as closely aligned with public health preparedness, or with enhancing health security ,31. WhilAs Frazier et al.  concludeTo date, the previous literature has identified various influencing factors of happiness. The most important one can be seen as health related. Regarding health outcomes, studies have reported reciprocal relationships between happiness, mental health, and physical health . Using aRQ1: Does having a religious identity or religious practice present moderating effects on physical or mental health?RQ2: Does mental health exert more influence over happiness than physical health under the moderating effect of religion?Another important factor influencing happiness is that of social relationships. The latter can be regarded as a set of people, or groups of people, interacting with each other . ScholarRQ3: Does having a religious practice influence the correlation between social relationships and happiness?Political participation has been examined in diverse social contexts in order to uncover its connection with happiness, as such participation has been considered to be the inheritance or continuation of Aristotle’s, as well as other classical philosophers’ thinking; namely, that participation in political matters is an essential part of individual fulfillment and, therefore, individual happiness . A crossRQ4: Does religious identity or religious practice present moderating effects on political participation?2012 General Social Survey and the 2005 World Values Survey, Bixter [2012 East Asian Social Survey, Fu [Regarding political orientation, prior research has demonstrated that political conservatism is associated with increased happiness  as found, Bixter  concludervey, Fu  indicateRQ5: Do individuals identifying as politically left-wing tend to feel happier than those identifying as right-wing under the moderating effect of religion?Other influencing factors on happiness include demographic characteristics such as age, gender, ethnicity, education, marriage, and income. Age effects represent aging-related developmental changes over the life course, which have been taken and developed into a methodology of age-period-cohort models to predict individuals’ happiness . Thus faThe results of this research could provide academic insights into how religion moderates the determinant factors of the happiness of Chinese people. The theoretical framework of this paper is shown in 2015 Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS), a series that has been conducted annually since 2003. The 2015 CGSS questionnaire contains the following six modules: Core module, ten-year retrospective module, the East Asia Social Survey, the International Social Survey, energy module, and legislation module. For the purposes of the present analysis models, the variables were selected from the core and ten-year retrospective modules. The questionnaires of these two modules comprise the constant parts of the CGSS series. The 2015 CGSS data were collected in 2015 by the National Survey Research Center of the Renmin University of China. A stratified multi-stage sampling method was used, with a face-to-face interview method. A total of 10,968 respondents were engaged. The samples with missing values for the selected variables were disregarded in the analysis, meaning that a total of 9699 cases were ultimately included in the models. The data used in this research were drawn from the Respondents’ happiness was taken as a dependent variable in this research. The relevant question here was as follows: “In general, do you feel happy?” The answer was measured by a Likert scale ranging from 1 to 5, respectively indicating “very unhappy” to “very happy”. “Religious identity (RI)” and “religious practice (RP)” were used as strata to divide the samples into four groups. Respondents were asked to report their exact religious identity, with those reporting no religion coded as “0”. As long as the respondent reported having a religion , their answer was coded as “1,” regardless of the exact religious identity. The variable of religious practice was measured by asking “how often do you participate in religious activities?” Respondents were required to choose one answer from the following options: Never, less than once a year, 1–2 times a year, several times a year, once a month, 1–2 times a month, almost once a week, several times a week. The answer “never” was considered as representing “no religious practice”, while the other answers represented that the respondents “have a religious practice”. The reason for recoding the original 7-scale religious practice into a dummy variable has been explained in the current literature review. Namely, former studies have revealed a low participation frequency of religious practice; thus, the binary coding is believed to be adequate for the purpose of analyzing religious commitment in practice.Physical and mental health, social relationships, and political attitudes and participation were the main explanatory variables applied in the current research. Respondents were asked to use five-point scales to self-estimate the condition of their physical health, from “very unhealthy” to “very healthy”, as well as their mental health condition. Political participation was measured by asking the following: “did you vote in the last grassroots-level election?” The three response choices were “yes”, coded as 1, “no” and “not qualified”, the latter both coded as 0. Political attitudes were measured by three statements regarding the person’s basic attitude towards the government, as follows: “the government should not intervene if someone criticizes it in public”; “giving birth to a child is a personal matter and the government should not intervene”; “it is the people’s freedom to choose where to live and work, and the government should not control this.” The answers ranged from “strongly disagree” (coded as 1) to “strongly agree” (coded as 5). The more the respondents agreed with the statements, the more right-wing they were deemed to be. In the analysis, the three variables were computed into a single variable in the regression equation. The final explanatory variable was that of “social relationships”, measured by asking the following: “what is the degree of intimacy between you and the people around you?” These responses also adopted a five-point scale, from “very unfamiliar” (coded as 1) to “very familiar” (coded as 5).Six other demographic variables were introduced in order to examine the influences of demographic features. Respondents were asked to report their gender  and age in the year 2015. Respondents were also asked to report their ethnicity, with “Han people” coded as 1 and “minority groups” as 0. In order to explore the support-giving function of religion in unhappy marriages, this research established the dummy variable of “marital status”, in which “divorced or widowed” respondents were coded as 1 and those who had had no such experiences (regardless of whether they had ever been married or not) were coded as 0. Regarding answers to “education background”, 1 to 5 represented a five-stage scale from “illiterate” to “primary school or lower”, “middle school”, “high school”, and finally “under-graduate and above”, in sequence. In addition, respondents were asked to report their personal annual income in 2014 in CNY (Chinese Yuan).This research examined the moderating effects of religious identity and practice on happiness by using religious identity (RI) and religious practice (RP) to divide the respondents into four groups, as follows: no RI × no RP, RI × no RP, no RI × RP, RI × RP. Multiple regression analyses of the Ordinary Least Squares method was employed to test the predictive power of the independent variables. In order to verify and compare the predictive power of the independent variables, coefficients between the independent variables and happiness in each regression analyses of the four groups were standardized and the Standard β (std. β) obtained, so as to directly display the predictive power of key determinants under the moderating effect of religious identity and religious practice. The analyses were processed using EViews 10, IHS Global Inc. .A total of 9699 cases were used for the analyses. This section presents the results of the descriptive analysis and regression analyses for the four groups.The descriptive analysis presented a general picture of all variables used in this study . The disA total of 47.0% of the respondents were male and 92.7% identified themselves as being of Han ethnicity, with 7.3% being from minority groups. The age of the whole sample ranged from 18–94 (M = 50.5), with 50 years as the median, 38 as the younger quarter, and 63 comprising the last 25%. The distribution of education displayed a tendency towards a lower level, with 36.9% of the respondents reporting only having undergone primary school education, and 28.7% middle school. Only 16.4% of the total respondents had had a higher education experience. In terms of personal annul income, 31,452.31 CNY was the mean value, 3000 marked the line of the lowest quarter, and 36,000 the highest quarter.n = 3227) or “very familiar”  with the same.Respondents’ self-reported physical health (M = 3.62) and mental health (M = 3.84) conditions emerged as relatively positive in this survey. A total of 38.8% of the respondents claimed that they were physically healthy, with 21.8% reporting being “very healthy”; specifically, 42.8% reported they were healthy in terms of their mental health, with 25.3% of the latter recording “very healthy”. With regard to political participation, 47.3% of the respondents responded “yes” to partaking in this, while the majority, 52.7%, stated that they did not participate. In terms of political attitudes (M = 3.05), overall the respondents showed a moderate liberal stance. The mean value of social relationships was found to be 3.74, with only 2.4% and 12.3% of respondents respectively claiming to be “very unfamiliar” or “unfamiliar” with the people around them, and over half of the respondents stating that they were “familiar” , physical health  and mental health  initially emerged as significantly related to respondents’ sense of happiness. Political attitudes were found to be closely related to happiness; specifically, those who identified with the left-wing ideology in China reported feeling more happiness  than those identifying as right-wing. Social relationships  and age  were also strong indicators of happiness, although the co-efficient values of the two were relatively low. Marital status also yielded happiness , as none of the divorced or widowed respondents were happier than those who reported not having had these experiences. Personal annual income was found to be significantly related to happiness . These findings of the main determinants predicting happiness in secularized China, without the moderation of either a religious identity or practice, are worthy of reflection. This is so since, according to different statistical data such as the China Family Panel Studies, while the specific percentage fluctuates, most Chinese respondents claimed to have neither a religious identity nor practice.Firstly, in group “no RI × no RP” , physical  and mental  health were found to exert a pronounced effect on happiness, as well as to be the two most influential factors determining the latter, according to the standardized coefficient value. Even with the comfort of religion, respondents who were divorced or widowed  were found to be less inclined towards happiness than those who were not. In addition, personal annul income  and age  also demonstrated a significant predictive power over happiness, with similar coefficients as in the “no RI × no RP” group. This indicates that with or without the moderating effect of religion, people of an older age or a higher personal annual income were more likely to feel happiness. However, under the moderating effect of religion, the formerly significant determinants of political attitude and social relationships were not related to happiness.With regard to group “RI × RP” , the respondents were identified as having a religious identity but no practices. Age was, again, found to be positively related to happiness . The analyzed data revealed that having healthier physical  or mental health  was positively related to happiness. More intimate social relationships were found to lead to a greater sense of happiness, as affirmed by the regression results . Political attitudes were found be related to happiness under the moderating effect of religious identity, with those identifying as left-wing happier than those who were right-wing . Since most of the previous quantitative research concerning religion and happiness has only considered religious identity, the results from the “RI × no RP” group could be referred to by way of a cross-cultural comparison. In group “RI × no RP”  in p < 0.001) and physical  health emerged as the two key determinants of happiness that weighed much more than the other factors. However, the probability of social relationships did not show significance, indicating that there is no relationship between this factor and happiness for those who do have a religious practice but no religious identity. A new finding emerging from this group in comparison to the other three is that ethnicity was found to indicate happiness. Specifically, those who identified as Han people , with no religious identity but engaging in religious practices, were found to be happier than people from minority groups with the same religious characteristics. In addition, none of the other independent variables under discussion in the present study were related to happiness in this group.In the column that reveals the regression results of group “no RI × RP” (Overall, mental and physical health emerged as the two most influential factors in determining happiness. According to the variance of the standardized coefficient value among the four groups, RQ1 could be answered to the effect that religious identity, as well as religious practice, presented moderating effects on physical and mental health. Religion related variables were found to moderate the ecoefficiency of the two factors, with mental health consistently subjected to these moderators more prominently, so an affirmative answer was derived for RQ2. Social relationships were proven only to be moderated by religious practices in association with happiness; this, rather than enhancing the relationship between social relationships and happiness as queried by RQ3, meant that religious practice moderates the relationship between social relationships and happiness by rendering the former insignificant. The same case emerged with regard to political attitudes, only without a religious practice, whereby, regardless of religious identity, people with a left-wing ideology were found to be happier than those with a right-wing one, thus answering RQ5. Political participation was found to have no significance among the four groups, thus answering RQ4 to the effect that neither religious identity nor practice presented with moderating effects on political participation. In addition, age, ethnicity, marital status, and personal annual income were demonstrated to be influenced by the moderators; however, the power of political participation, education, and gender over happiness remained insignificant regardless of the moderating effect of religion.The present study contributes to an in-depth understanding of the predictive power of health, politics and social relationships over happiness under the moderating effect of religious identity and religious practice, based on a large volume of canonic research. The findings of this quantitative research contribute to the exploration of the influence of religion in China, opening up a new perspective by taking religious identity and religious practice separately into consideration, and, innovatively, uncovering the influence of religious practice as a moderator in itself. It should be emphasized that this research consolidates previous propositions positing that religious practice differs from religious identity , and shoThe first prominent finding meriting discussion is that both good physical and mental health were found to have a significant positive effect on happiness under the moderating effect of religious identity and practice. Although physical and mental health were both found to predict positively happiness in the four designated groups with different religious identity/practice combinations, the comparable standardized coefficient values of both types of health varied across the different groups. For instance, comparing “RI × RP” and “no RI × RP” with religious practice controlled for, people who reported having a religious identity were found to be much happier than those who did not have a religious identity when the health of their physical or mental state increased. In addition, it is worth noting that across the four sampled groups, an increase in mental health consistently lead to a higher degree of happiness, although both physical and mental health demonstrated slight fluctuations in coefficients. Under certain conditions, such as among those in groups “RI × RP” and “no RI × no RP”, the standardized coefficient values of mental health were nearly twice those of physical health. This may indicate that the condition of one’s mental health is a greater determinant of people’s happiness than previous studies have implied. The reason for this might be that the sense of gratitude associated with happiness—a mental rather than physical attribute—is considered a vital item on indices of psychological distress .Secondly, the findings of the current research uncovered a frequently used variable affecting happiness, social relationships, on which religious practice was revealed to bear a strong moderating effect. For those who did not participate in religious activities, whether they had a religious identity or not, social relationships were found to help increase their happiness. These results may shed new light on previous findings that religion could work as a substitution for social relationships and, as such, enhance a sense of happiness . The curRegarding political participation, while this was expected to relate to happiness, in none of the four study groups did the results show any relating association between political participation and happiness. This finding may seem confusing in a Western context, where religion and political activism have historically been intertwined ,56,69,70Regarding the demographic factors examined here, age, personal annual income, and marital status were found to be the three most significant in terms of predicting happiness. Apparently, more senior people were more likely to report a higher sense of happiness than younger ones, which neither consolidated the U-shaped curve theory nor the age-reducing theory mentioned in the literature review . This inRegarding ethnicity, the moderating effect of religious practice was relatively more marked than that of religious identity. For all those who reported participating in religious practices, only Han people without a religious identity were found to be statistically happier than respondents from minority groups. While this may, superficially, seem hard to understand, this finding conforms to the current Chinese social context, in that people from minority groups are more inclined to recognize their religious identity from their earliest life stages . Thus, hThe main limitation of the present study was that some of the key variables, like physical and mental health, were not composed of multi-level items to form an index, and may thus have weakened the reliability and validity of the results. This may be seen as an inevitable disadvantage of utilizing second-hand, especially general survey data in trying to conduct exploratory studies. Notwithstanding this, the research has preliminarily proved that religious identity and religious practice play a significant role in moderating the predictive power of factors like health, political participation, and social relationships over happiness. Applying a specific questionnaire survey with an in-depth index of determinants could thus be a valuable component of future research on happiness. The current study examines the determinant factors of Chinese people’s happiness by using religious identity and religious practices as moderators. This research may be seen as pioneering in terms of its adoption of religious identity and religious practice as two separate factors, with the results across the four constructed groups validating the necessity of considering religious practice as an independent variable. Physical and mental health were proven to positively influence happiness, which further supports the fact that, although occurring under different social contexts, these two variables strongly predict people’s sense of happiness. Furthermore, mental health was proven to be more influential on happiness than physical health. Although political participation was not found to be related to happiness, having left-wing political attitudes displayed a strong determinant effect over happiness, in accordance with China’s social context. The current research has thus proposed the new perspective of applying specific religious factors as moderators in the investigation of religion-related issues. This approach does not aim to decease the importance of religion but, rather, to expand the understanding of how religion exerts its effects in a secularized society. It is recommended that future studies continue to scrutinize happiness in explicit religious believer groups, and concentrate on the influences of specific health problems on happiness instead of discussing health as a general condition.


Francisco de Goya contributed to that tradition with his “Portrait of Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuniga.” But Goya also subverted tradition in this popular painting, commonly dubbed “The Red Boy,” by instilling a sense of discomfort and darkness to what could have been a simple proclamation of youthful innocence. Such tension appears in many of Goya’s portraits. Art critic and historian Laura Cumming notes “That Francisco de Goya . . . was a portrait painter first to last is a truth often neglected,” but she also observes a “strain of weirdness” in his portraits. Whether one agrees fully with her assessment, Goya’s art, which includes nearly 1,800 paintings, cartoons, murals, and etchings, defies convenient codification: he garners mentions as being among the last of the great masters and among the vanguard of modern artists.Goya painted four portraits of members of the aristocratic Altamira family; of those, “The Red Boy” is the best known and most discussed. He completed those works nearly a decade before he suffered the debilitating, mysterious illness that caused headaches, vertigo, and delusions and is believed to have been triggered by his exposure to lead-based paints.The Metropolitan Museum of Art Portraits offers this arm’s length description of this portrait: “Outfitted in a splendid red costume, the young boy, the son of the Count and Countess of Altamira, is shown with a pet magpie , a cage full of finches, and three wide-eyed cats. Although they add an engaging element for the viewer, Goya may have intended them as a reminder of the frail boundaries that separate the child’s world from the forces of evil, or as a commentary on the fleeting nature of innocence and youth. Manuel died at the tender age of eight.”Manuel, resplendently dressed, dark eyes and hair, cuts a bold figure for one so young. He walks his magpie on a string while a trio of cats sizes up his pet, which grasps Goya’s calling card in its tilted beak. To the boy’s side, captive finches cluster near the bars of their green gazebo-like cage. Goya’s juxtaposition of cats and birds and of shadow and light creates a sense of latent unease and interjects an atmosphere of fidgeting discomfiture into the portrait. The black cat cloaked in shadows, nearly invisible save for its eyes, amplifies the undercurrent of menace. Essayist and critic Morgan Meis observes that Goya portrays a child who, because of his social standing, is not allowed to dress or play like a child. Meis notes “The boy is trapped in layers of refinement that he cannot possibly understand,” and that “he knows nothing about court intrigues, just as he is unaware that the cats behind him are eagerly sizing up his pet bird.”Cumming echoes those sentiments. She writes “the ‘Boy in Red’ may be a much-loved treasure, but the moppet in his pool of light is surrounded by more nightmare critters in the shape of owl-eyed cats waiting to savage a magpie, while sharp-beaked finches chatter in the darkness.”Such elements of danger and tension in Goya’s work find traction with modern viewers. The trio of cats, especially the spectral shadow cat, seem intent on menacing the tethered magpie and caged birds. Both felids and fowl could themselves be potential sources of zoonotic diseases or harbor zoonotic disease vectors.Escherichia coli infections, cryptosporidiosis, giardiasis, and toxoplasmosis. Influenza, psittacosis, and salmonellosis are among the diseases birds may transmit to humans.More than 60% of known infectious diseases in people are spread from animals, and 75% of new or emerging infectious diseases in people are spread from animals. Among those who may be at greater risk of acquiring zoonotic infections are young children who may not have learned how to practice effective hygiene or who have close contacts with pets or domestic animals. Human infections associated with cats include rabies, cat-scratch disease, capnocytophagosis, pasteurellosis, ringworm, sporothrichosis, tularemia, plague, Q fever, campylobacterosis, salmonellosis, The cause of young Manuel’s death, if known, is not reported. Goya lived into his 80s and experienced a career that veered between triumph and torment. In the two centuries since Goya’s death, our knowledge about infectious diseases etiology and treatment has coalesced into an impressive body of knowledge. Still, like the nearly invisible black cat in Goya’s painting, some threats are harder than others to detect, and the need for constant vigilance remains a public health priority.


Preschool age is a crucial period for social development. Social skills acquired during this period are the basis for future life’s success. This study aimed to investigate the level of social skills in preschool children at home and in preschool and to examine the association between children’s social skills and environmental and cultural backgrounds. A cross-sectional study using a multistage cluster sampling method was conducted on 546 children studying in the preschool centers of an urban area of Iran. Data were collected through demographic and social skill questionnaires from parents and teachers. Our findings showed that the social skills of girls were more than those of boys at home. Further, the majority of children had a moderate level of social skills from the parents’ and teachers’ perspectives. There was a modest parent–teacher agreement in most domains of social skills. Moreover, a statistically significant association was reported between children’s social skill domains and the child’s birth rank, father’s age, father’s job, teacher’s age, teacher’s education, teacher’s experience, and preschool classroom in terms of the numbers of children and the type of classroom. Accordingly, the risk of problems with social skills was reported to be relatively low. Therefore, more attention should be given to the family status and the teacher’s and preschool center’s characteristics to improve social skills in children. Healthy children create the future of any society . TherefoSocial skills enable social adaptation, create and maintain existing social relationships, and have long- and short-term effects over an individual’s life . TherefoPreschool and home are important life settings that play an essential role in the development of children’s social abilities , and parThe development of social skills starts at an early age and is different between males and females . For exaIn the preschool period, 3–6-years-old Iranian children enter kindergartens and preschool centers . This onThis cross-sectional study was conducted on preschool children at preschool centers in an urban area of Iran from 2015 to 2016. They were selected based on the inclusion criteria of an age of six years (born from 23 September 2009 to 23 September 2010), living in the city of Rasht, acquaintance between the child with the teacher for at least 3 months, and the preschool center being under the supervision of Rasht Ministry of Education (regions 1 and 2) and the Welfare Organization. Known physical and mental health problems, and living with one parent or another caregiver were considered exclusion criteria.The results of the study by Sheikhzakaryaie et al. on children at preschools in the city of Tehran were used to estimate the sample size . Other vFor two-stage random cluster sampling, data regarding the number of preschool age children at each preschool center were collected. The number of preschool age children was classified on the basis of preschool centers supervised by the Ministry of Education regions 1, 2, and the Welfare Organization. They consisted of boys’, girls’, and coeducational preschool centers of the public, both private and nonprofit type. The number of children in each preschool center was divided into their total population and multiplied by the sample size (n = 525). Further, the number of children from public, private, and nonprofit preschool centers was calculated, and then it was divided into the average number of children in each classroom to calculate the number of classes (n = 28). The preschool centers were selected using a random method, and from each center, one classroom was chosen randomly to recruit the samples .The demographic data and the social skills rating system (SSRS) questionnaires were used for data collection. Three questionnaires were designed by the researchers through a review of literature to examine the sociodemographic variables of children. The validity of these questionnaires was confirmed using face and content validity methods. They included the child’s demographic questionnaire consisting of questions about the child’s gender, birth rank, number of children in the family, going to the kindergarten, and presence of physical and mental health issues. Further, the child’s family questionnaire included questions about parents living with a spouse, parent’s age, parent’s education level, parent’s job, and family income. The teacher’s demographic questionnaire included questions about the teacher’s age, education level, and teaching experience, number of children in each classroom, type of classroom , and characteristics of the preschool center type.The social skills rating system (SSRS) was used to investigate social skills in preschool children from the parents’ and teachers’ perspectives. The SSRS is a comprehensive and psychometrically tested tool for evaluating social skills among preschool children . The socThe SSRS is a 3-point Likert scale . The SSRS–T is a standardized 30-item questionnaire consisting of three subscales of ‘cooperation’, ‘assertion’, and ‘self-control’. The cooperation domain includes 19 questions with a score range from 0 to 38, the assertion domain includes 8 questions with a score range between 0 and 16, and the self-control domain includes 3 questions with a score range from 0 to 6. Furthermore, the total score of social skills in the SSRS–T is calculated through summing up all subscale scores with a range of scores from 0 to 60. The SSRS–P is a standardized 39-item question with three subscales of ‘cooperation’ (19 questions with a score range from 0 to 38), ‘assertion’ (16 questions with a score range from 0 to 32), and ‘self-control’ (4 questions with a score range from 0 to 8). Further, the total social skill score of the SSRS–P is calculated through summing up all subscale scores with a range of scores from 0 to 78 ,38. For Out of 255 preschool centers, 28 preschool centers were randomly selected , and froThe Social Determinants of Health Research Center at Guilan University of Medical Sciences approved the study protocol under the code of IR.GUMS.REC.1394.52. Prior to the study, the permission to enter the study was obtained. The samples were informed of the study aim and process and were ensured of confidentiality of data. Those who were willing to take part in the study signed the informed consent form.α < 0.05) and patent’s (α < 0.05) ratings. Given the categorization of the social skills level, the social skill subscales and total social skills of children were categorized into three categories  for parents’ and teachers’ ratings separately. Afterwards, the Chi-square test was used to compare the percentages of social skill subscales between the teachers’ and parents’ ratings (α < 0.05). In addition, correlation analysis using the Pearson test was performed to examine the parent–teacher agreement ratings (α < 0.05). Moreover, the STATA software  was used to perform multivariable linear regression and investigate the association between sociodemographic variables . Regarding the normal distribution of data, mean and standard deviation of social skill scores were calculated for cooperation, assertion, self-control, and the total social skills from the teachers’ and parents’ perspectives. To examine gender differences in social skill subscales in preschool and at home separately, the independent samples t-test was used based on the teacher’s (Due to missing data (n = 17) and noncompliance with exclusion criteria (n = 35), 52 questionnaires were excluded from the data analysis and reporting. According to p = 0.02) in preschool. However, from the parents’ perspectives, girls had higher scores in cooperation (p = 0.03), self-control (p = 0.001), and total social skill domains (p = 0.01) than boys at home. The social skills of the preschool children at home and in preschool based on gender differences and the teachers’ and parents’ ratings are shown in 2 = 6.48 df = 2, n = 546, p = 0.03).p < 0.001), the parents’ cooperation ratings, and the teachers’ total social skills ratings . In addition, a statistically significant correlation was found between both assertion ratings , the parents’ assertion ratings, and the teachers’ total social skills ratings . Additionally, there was a statistically significant correlation between the parents’ self-control ratings and the teachers’ cooperation ratings . Finally, in the total social skill domains, statistically significant correlations were found between the parents’ total social skills ratings and the teachers’ cooperation , assertion , and total social skills ratings .The multivariable linear regression analysis to investigate the association between sociodemographic variables and social skill domain scores from the parents’ and teachers’ ratings is shown in The findings of this study revealed that the social skills of girls were more than those of boys at home. The majority of children had a moderate level of social skills from the parents’ and teachers’ perspectives. A modest parent–teacher agreement was found in most domains of social skills. Further, statistically significant associations were reported between children’s social skill domains and the child’s birth rank, father’s age, father’s job, teacher’s age, teacher’s education level, teacher’s teaching experience, and preschool classroom in terms of the numbers of children and the type of classroom. From the teachers’ ratings, no correlation was found between both genders except high assertion scores in boys in preschool. From the parents’ ratings, girls had higher social skills in the subscale of cooperation, self-control, and total social skills at home. The reports of studies in Western societies showed that girls had more social skills than boys ,15,40,41In addition to cultural characteristics that encourage Iranian girls to become cooperative, submissive to tasks, kind, responsive, and empathic at home ,42, baseIn addition to gender differences in social skills described in this study, gender differences in other areas of development such as self-concept and environmental empathy are present ,48. SelfThe results of present study showed that the majority of children had a moderate level of cooperation, assertion, self-control, and total social skills from both the teachers’ and parents’ perspectives. In the preschool age, children get the first experiences of socialization at home and school. Therefore, their initial experiences are reported at a moderate level ,29,30,50There was a significant parent–teacher agreement on social skills in all domains except self-control, but it was modest in magnitude. The social competence is multifaceted, and children’s social behaviors are different at home and school. Therefore, children’s behaviors vary across situations . This fiThe findings of this study showed an inverse significant association between the birth rank and self-control from the teachers’ ratings. In general, higher birth ranks have an inverse effect on cognitive and social development . Self-coIn this study, the social skills of children with older fathers were found to be greater than those of children with younger fathers. Parenting as a complex activity consists of special methods and behaviors that interact with each other and influence the child’s social development. Therefore, parenting skills are affected by cultural, economic conditions, and the parent’s knowledge . The autChildren with teachers that have a higher education level had higher social skills. Education in early childhood is important for social skill development in future life . ExperieIn this study, children educated by more experienced teachers achieved higher scores in social skills. It can be said that teachers with more work experience and those with more in-service training can improve children’s life skills ,70. SuchIn this study, children studying in classrooms with more than 30 children had lower social skills. There is an inverse relationship between classroom size and social learning, so the learning of social skills in large classrooms can be worse than that in small classrooms . A largeThis study revealed that children in coeducational classes had more social skills in all domains except self-control, but this was only significant in the assertion domain. Studies reported the positive effects of single-sex education on children’s achievement compared to coeducational education ,77,78. BGeneralizability of findings to preschool children in other contexts needs further studies due to cultural differences affecting the development of social skills in children. The study sample size was limited to children at the 6th year of age and living in an urban area, but no data were collected from children, which should be considered in future studies. Data regarding children social skills were collected from the parents’ and teachers’ perspectives as reliable sources of information about children’s development. Therefore, our findings can improve the international knowledge of social skills in children and gender differences affecting children’s adjustment. In addition, this study identified the importance of a child’s birth rank, father’s age, father’s job, teacher’s age, teacher’s education, teacher’s experience, and preschool classrooms influencing social skills. Policymakers can use our findings to improve the development of children’s social skills ,66. MoreGirls had higher cooperation, self-control, and total social skills at home from the parents’ perspectives, but the teachers’ perspectives showed no difference in social skill domains between genders except for a higher level of assertion in boys in preschool. The majority of children had moderate social skills in all domains from the parents’ and teachers’ ratings, and no difference between them was reported, except in cooperation. In addition, a modest parent–teacher agreement in all domains of social skills except self-control was found. Furthermore, statistically significant associations were reported between the parents’ and teachers’ ratings of children’s social skills, and the child’s birth rank, father’s age, father’s job, teacher’s age, teacher’s education, teacher’s experience, preschool classroom in terms of the numbers of children, and the type of classroom. Accordingly, the risk of problems with social skills was reported to be relatively low. More attention should be given to the family status, teacher’s, and preschool center’s characteristics to improve children’s social skills.


Katherine Houser was not included as an author in the published article. The original article has been updated and the new Author Contributions statement is: “RS and MW taught the study context. KH is the director of the early childhood development center. WO is an assistant professor of literacy education at the college, served as a participant observer in the research, main point of contact, and PI on this study. RS, MW, KH, and WO all contributed to the design of the study, data collection, analysis, and writing of this article.”Additionally, in the original article, there was an error. Incorrect demographics were included for the center and students.Materials and Methods, Participants and Procedures, Paragraph One:A correction has been made to the N = 25). This classroom is part of a larger early childhood development center that is facilitated and associated with a small, public university in the southeast of the United States. The student population represents families associated with the college or local community. As a demonstration program, the school structures class groups to support appropriate diversity that reflects the surrounding community, gender distribution, and accommodation for children with special needs to model best practices for pre-service teachers.”“This study was conducted with a convenience sample from a mixed age class of 4, 5, and 6-year-old students in an early childhood classroom , “Bad lightning storm, good lightning storm,” (pictures 2 & 3), and “The big lightning storm,” (picture 4). See Stage 2: Developing Storyteller, paragraph three:“Norman, a 4-year-old male student, is obsessed with Transformers. His stories all reflect his knowledge and understanding of either a particular movie or show. Each story has the same characters playing their designated roles, Optimus Prime is the good guy, Megatron the bad guy. These characters fight and the good guys always win. Researcher notes capture a conversation Norman had with a teaching assistant as he creates and draws his story.”Stage 3: Emerging Storyteller, paragraph three:Figure 3 for pictures 8 and 9.”“A 6-year-old male student, Orlando enjoys playing with Legos, Mixels, and is familiar with superhero stories. His stories reflect a combination of a variety of characters interacting in new and creative ways. He has moved away from a script and can write both fiction and personal narratives, expressing what is familiar to him: “Antman tricked the bad guy to sit on the electric computers and then Antman goes to a secret tunnel that goes to the batcave and Superman's hideout” (picture 8). On other days this student can recount a personal event: “I built things with my legos. You click them apart and make funny things” (picture 9). He is able to tell the difference between real and make believe. See Stage 4: Early Storyteller, paragraph three:Figure 5 for picture 11.”“Sally, a 5-year-old female student, usually writes in coordination with several of her friends. They write on the same themes and consult with the teachers as they draw. An example of this would be a question Sally asks as she draws a version of Thomas, another student, “What color shirt do you want me to draw for you?” In another example, Sally told the classroom teacher “I'm going to write about my grandparents.” She had a plan for her story when she arrived at school, and immediately sat down to draw and write when she entered the classroom. She crafted her story with some input from Rose, a 6-years-old peer, to help her spell rainbow and parents. She reviewed her story by reading, “I saw a rainbow with my grandparents then I went to school to play on the seesaw with Jiiel” to her tablemates (picture 11). See Finally, the Acknowledgements statement was also omitted it has now been added: “Jamie Fecio and Kailey Ray were graduate assistants at the early childhood development center and assisted in instruction and data collection in the study.”The authors apologize for these errors and state that they do not change the scientific conclusions of the article in any way. The original article has been updated.The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.


Increasing physical activity in older adults remains a key public health priority in countries with a high burden of non-communicable disease, yet current interventions have failed to substantially increase population uptake with UK data suggesting that only half of 65–74 year olds report meeting recommended levels. The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic and inductive qualitative synthesis of the large body of qualitative research describing what influences physical activity at this age, and older adults’ experiences of physical activity.A qualitative meta-ethnography was chosen as the study design as this inductive approach can provide novel insights and generate new theory about physical activity and ageing. Papers were identified by searching electronic databases and key citations. Peer-reviewed primary qualitative studies and systematic reviews were included if they met the following inclusion criteria: community-dwelling participants aged 60 years or older or in the retirement transition period; reporting on leisure-time physical activity; utilising a rigorous qualitative methodology. A line of argument approach was employed to generate a theory about how older adults think and feel about physical activity.Thirty-nine papers met the inclusion criteria and were synthesised. The emergent theory suggested transition to older age can challenge people’s sense of self and their role in life. Physical activity can help in regaining feelings of purpose, of being needed in collective group activity, and by creating habitual routine and structure to the day. In overcoming real and perceived barriers, and by taking up or sustaining physical activities, older adults can further build self-esteem all of which contributes to a fulfilling older age.Current failures to increase population levels of physical activity in older adults may be explained by an approach overly focused on the health benefits of activity. Insights from this study suggest we need to reframe our approach to consider the wider set of goals and aspirations which are of greater personal importance to older adults, and future interventions should focus on how physical activity can contribute to life satisfaction, sense of purpose, and sense of role fulfilment in older age.CRD42013003796.Registered prospectively on PROSPERO on 29th March 2013: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-019-6624-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Whilst the scientific and technological progress in reducing premature mortality in high and middle-income countries is welcome, society must prepare for the significant changes this extension of life expectancy will bring to the way our populations are structured. There are vast health, social, and economic implications of an absolute and relative increase in the population of older adults, especially if these individuals are in poor states of health with high levels of frailty and disability . To amelA deeper understanding of what physical activity signifies to older adults would enable the development of interventions that acknowledge and address the physical, psychological, and social factors that influence their activity. Qualitative studies can be of considerable value in answering such questions. There is a very large and disparate body of qualitative research in this field to draw on, and there is a need for this to be quality-assessed and assimilated. Integrating or synthesising qualitative research findings can produce new insights not evident in single studies and can generate new theory which can be used to inform the development of new interventions. For example, a meta-ethnography of qualitative research revealed new insights into how patient experiences are shaped by the processes of decision-making and meaning-making. The meta-ethnography indicated ways in which communication between doctors and patients may be facilitated in terms of antidepressant concordance . Theory Whilst there have been several robust systematic quantitative reviews of the effectiveness of physical activity interventions for older adults, existing qualitative syntheses have been limited in scope, for example focusing only on those of South Asian heritage , those wWe aimed to undertake a thorough and comprehensive meta-ethnographic synthesis of high-quality qualitative studies on older adults and physical activity in order to generate theoretical insights which could be used to enhance intervention development in this field.Papers were included if they were peer-reviewed and reported primary qualitative or mixed methods studies, including systematic reviews. Only papers which focused on physical activity and included community-dwelling participants aged 60 years or over, or those in the retirement transition period, were included. Studies reporting subgroups containing adults in this age range were included if the older adults were analysed and reported separately. Physical activity was considered to include leisure-time physical activity , active pastimes , and sports. Papers were excluded if the population was recruited because of a specific disease or health condition, participants had been selected because they were “master athletes”, if physical activity was only a minor component of a wider set of behaviours investigated, and if the physical activity was only in the context of a clinical rehabilitation programme or as part of a research evaluation of an intervention. Studies reporting only superficial, quantitative, or other deductive analytical techniques such as content analysis or those using pre-set frameworks were excluded because these papers would not have had the richness and depth of concept obtained from studies using inductive approaches. Quantitative approaches include counting the frequency with which certain concepts appear in the data, and deductive analytical approaches are often “quasi-quantitative” in that they start with a hypothesis and use the data to refute or confirm this, rather than being led by the dataset itself to drive the theory. Inductive approaches are more fitting for qualitative research where meaning and understanding are sought from the data. Only papers published in English were included.The following electronic databases were searched in January 2013 to identify all potentially relevant titles: Ovid Medline; Ovid Embase; Ovid PscyhINFO; CINAHL; Web of Science. Search strategies were devised to ensure maximum sensitivity with reasonable specificity  to generate third-order constructs. Third-order constructs are novel and innovative, and should reveal something about the whole field that is not evident from simply reading the original papers , 31.Second-order constructs were extracted by the first author by line-by-line coding of all text under the headings of “Results” or “Findings”. Free second-order construct codes were generated de novo to capture the findings described in the text. As new codes were generated, they were juxtaposed with existing codes and a process of refinement, re-classification, and grouping was undertaken. A purposive sample of papers, that is those felt to contribute the greatest to the emerging findings, were double-coded by MW who was blinded to the code set created by GSM. Double-coding was employed to broaden interpretations rather than to confirm or refute the original coding, given that precise agreement is neither likely nor necessary in meta-ethnography . Extractto offer a fuller account of the phenomenon by arranging the studies’ metaphors in some order … to construct an argument about what the set of ethnographies say” , and thagain …” .I get up the same time as I did when I went to work. I do exactly the same thing the only difference is I go out … to the [swimming pool] and come back but I keep that momentum” [“It’s just like a job to me” [Physical activity can bolster self-esteem and strengthen self-identity by adding routines and new roles in ageing , by fulfomentum” . In thisomentum” , 54 and omentum” , 48, 55:b to me” , 43, 56 b to me” , 53, 57 b to me” . The papb to me” , self-beb to me” , 49, 56 b to me” –49, 52 mPeople will notice and it makes you feel nice … it makes you feel … a bit special if people notice that you are not there” [. Group membership per se was perceived to be of value to older adults [The use of physical activity as an opportunity to increase desired social contact with others , 57–61, t there” . Group mr adults , 49, 57 r adults  though ar adults , 36 and r adults , 50.“Even when we’re away on holiday together you know, we go to places and climb hills and walk …” [The role of family in physical activity experiences in older age can be complex and discordant: practical support, understanding, and enjoyment of doing things with loved ones [ walk …” , 19 can  walk …” , 63, 64  walk …” , negativ walk …” , and bei walk …”  may be d walk …” , 65.“You don’t know what goes on behind these doors – if only the others could see how we are enjoying ourselves” [. For many active older adults, physical activity is associated with feelings of joy [Pleasure derived from a feeling of belonging, a purposeful self-identity, and a habitual routine compliments the pleasure that older adults derive directly from the physical activity itself , 58: “Yorselves” . For mans of joy , laughtes of joy , and funs of joy , 56, 61 s of joy , 44, 51.Being in such close contact with my husband when we’re dancing is wonderful. I always become very aware of his aftershave and I always like to wear nice perfume” [. Similarly, for older adults who find pleasure from being outside and close to nature, physical activity can provide an opportunity to explore this [… I like just looking at the sky you know, it is wonderful, the big skies are so beautiful. I walk through the fields there. I go for the skies alone” [The physical health benefits of physical activity are well established and widely acknowledged , the original primary papers did not provide findings stratified by gender, nor did they include sufficient detail on whether gender was an important conceptual differentiator.In addition, meta-ethnography, as an interpretivist approach, will be influenced to some degree by the authors’ own experiences, perspectives, and preconceptions. To reduce undue influence over the data interpretation and theory-building, a transparent, referenced, and fully-documented analytical methodology was employed, and emergent constructs were discussed and checked amongst the study team.We were unable to quantify the physical activity levels of the participants included in the synthesised papers. Our eligibility criteria ensured that “master athletes”- those older adults competing at elite levels - were not included in the synthesis, yet it is possible that the level of physical activity and fitness still varied considerably amongst participants in the included studies. Nevertheless, the constructs derived from these studies should be relevant to older adults across the activity spectrum, and the heterogeneity of the study populations is likely to mirror the heterogeneity of the wider older adult population.Increasing physical activity levels amongst adults of all ages, including those aged over 65, is a public health priority. In the UK, current National Health Service (NHS) guidelines recommend adults over 65 who are generally fit with no health conditions should undertake at least 150 min of moderate aerobic activity, for example cycling or walking, every week. The latest self-report data published by the Health Survey for England in 2016 reveal that less than half (44%) of the population aged over 65 are meeting this target and the proportion reduces further for those aged 75 years and older (30%) . Our stuThe findings presented in this synthesis suggest that physical activity should be framed as a mechanism for supporting a purposeful, socially-connected, and usefully engaged life in older age. As such it provides public health practitioners and gerontologists with an approach, grounded in qualitative data, upon which new programmes and interventions can be developed. Our findings may be used to develop or enhance interventions at the level of the individual, community, or population by reframing the focus to better meet older adults’ motivations. Indeed, a recent paper using qualitative methods to develop a typology of older adults’ motivations for physical activity also included reference to those seeking “purposeful” activity .Further work is required to explore how interventions can incorporate the constructs presented in this paper. An approach moving away from the paternalistic “physical activity for health” message is necessary yet replacing this with a paternalistic “physical activity for purpose” message is unlikely to be effective. Public health specialists will need to create environments in which older adults can both recognise the value of a physically active lifestyle and be enabled to change their behaviour to receive these wider benefits. Age-friendly cities and communities  provide Existing physical activity interventions for older adults often emphasise the health benefits as a means of encouraging behaviour change. This meta-ethnography suggests that for older adults, such a focus may be misplaced because at this stage in their lives older adults have other goals which are of greater personal importance. Physical activity however can be a means by which these goals may be obtained. We therefore suggest that for an intervention to effectively increase and sustain physical activity levels in older adults a shift in focus is required. We advocate an approach in which older adults are supported to regain or consolidate their sense of purpose through the routines, personal achievement, and meaningful social connections physical activity can provide.Additional file 1:Table S1. Description of papers included in meta-ethnography. (DOCX 20 kb)


Low statistical power and inattention to principles underpinning Bayesian statistics reduce experimental rigor, but mitigating skills can be learned. Overcoming our natural human tendency to make quick decisions and jump to conclusions is a deeper obstacle to doing good science; this too can be learned.“Good science” means answering important questions convincingly, a challenging endeavor under the best of circumstances. Our inability to replicate many biomedical studies has been the subject of numerous commentaries both in the scientific and lay press. In response, statistics has re-emerged as a necessary tool to improve the objectivity of study conclusions. However, psychological aspects of decision making introduce preconceived preferences into scientific judgment that cannot be eliminated by any statistical method. The psychology of decision making, expounded by Kahneman, Tversky, and Thaler, is well known in the field of economics, but the underlying concepts of cognitive psychology are also relevant to scientific judgments. I repeated experiments carried out on undergraduates by Kahneman and colleagues four to five decades ago, but with scientists, and obtained essentially the same results. The experiments were in the form of written reactions to scenarios, and participants were scientists at all career stages. The findings reinforce the roles that two inherent intuitions play in scientific decision making: our drive to create a coherent narrative from new data regardless of its quality or relevance and our inclination to seek patterns in data whether they exist or not. Moreover, we do not always consider how likely a result is regardless of its  Societal approaches to improving the rigor and reproducibility of preclinical biomedical science have largely been technical in nature with a renewed focus on the role of statistics in good experimental designs. By contrast, the importance of preconceived notions introduced by our very human nature has been underappreciated for their influence on scientific judgments. Explicitly recognizing and addressing these cognitive biases, and including such strategies as carrying out a “premortem” before embarking on new experimental directions, should improve scientific judgments and thereby improve the quality of published findings, eventually boosting public confidence in science.p values, low statistical power, and the waning of traditional good experimental design practices such as blinding and inclusion of both positive and negative controls have all been highlighted as likely sources of misleading preclinical research (Most failures in advanced (phase 3) clinical trials for small molecule drug candidates can be traced to insufficient efficacy . Althougresearch . Recent research . Poor rehttps://www.sfn.org/news-and-calendar/news-and-calendar/news/professional-development/virtual-conference-scientific-rigor-transparency-science). Journals are providing checklists meant to enhance transparency and, in some cases, employing statisticians on their editorial boards to check the veracity of findings. A checklist has been introduced to help recognize research that might have one or more procedural flaws (https://grants.nih.gov/reproducibility/index.htm). This is all good and helpful, but renewed attention to statistics and good experimental design practices will not, by themselves, solve this problem. Inherent in the goal of improving the reproducibility of preclinical science is the need to change behavior. Accepting the value of statistics or proper experimental design is rarely enough to bring about the desired change. In this regard, science can benefit from insights gleaned in the fields of investing, finances and marketing from considerations of how people arrive at judgments and make decisions.The scientific community is responding vigorously to this growing “crisis of confidence” in the reliability of preclinical science. Universities are reemphasizing a working knowledge of statistics that extends beyond “plug and play” software. Professional societies such as the Society for Neuroscience are providing web-based resources for enhancing the rigor and transparency of research . Interestingly, 41% of today’s scientists chose the correct answer compared to only 20% of the original sample of 97 undergraduates with little or no background in probability or statistics. The p value of 0.041 comparing the two cohorts (Fisher’s exact test) is encouraging of progress until one calculates the statistical power of the comparison, which is only 52% (G*power 3.1.9.2). Low statistical power increases the likelihood of a false positive ; poor diagnosis in rural areas (3); lower anxiety and stress (3); rare forms of cancer less likely if fewer people (2); healthier lifestyle; less medical care; early mortality due to other causes; counties are undersampled; smaller population leads to lower numbers with cancer; smaller sample size means greater variance.Non-political answers were (with number of respondents in parentheses if >1): Low access to health care or preventive care (7); pesticides or other contaminants in groundwater are carcinogenic (6); increased recent screening (3); low access to healthy foods (2); socioeconomic status leads to higher stress; education level; ethnicity; less healthy lifestyle.A separate group was presented with the same scenario, except the word “lowest” was replaced by “highest.” Their responses: n leads to high variability.It is interesting that stress, diet, and lifestyle feature prominently in both scenarios but are used to reach opposite conclusions. Both scenario statements are correct; moreover, a county that has a high incidence one year can have low incidence the next. The two words in both scenarios most relevant to understanding the nature of the problem are “sparsely populated,” as shown in p value. These data are congruent with the proposal  but no less likely than the specific sequence below it. We all try to look for patterns in our data, whether they exist or not. Random events can produce runs of seeming regularity , and ourp = 0.88 by χ2; A final, somewhat treacherous, example of pattern seeking is illustrated by the spatial pattern of bombs dropped on London during the eight-month-long blitz in 1940–1941. Although when viewed from a distance the bombing pattern appears very dense , left, aChris is of high intelligence, although lacking in true creativity. He has a need for order and clarity, and for neat and tidy systems in which every detail finds its appropriate place. His writing is rather dull and mechanical, occasionally enlivened by somewhat corny puns and flashes of imagination of the sci-fi type. He has a strong drive for competence. He seems to have little feel and little sympathy for other people, and does not enjoy interacting with others. Self-centered, he nonetheless has a deep moral sense.The base rate is the probability that a member of a specific population will have a certain characteristic, assuming that we know nothing else about this individual. Does the base rate influence decisions when new data are introduced? A group of 43 scientists considered the following scenario: Respondents were asked to rank order nine fields by the likelihood that Chris is in that field . Forty-three scientists replied .There is no right or wrong answer to this puzzle of course, but even a cursory perusal of the results suggests that the respondents paid little attention to, or were unaware of, the base rates of employment; the four fields deemed least likely have, together, approximately six-fold higher employment than the four deemed most likely. A full 67% of respondents felt that Chris was more likely to be in library science than in business administration, a field that has 64-fold higher employment. Interestingly, the rank order of fields was nearly identical to that found when the study was originally done, although the responding cohorts were as different as undergraduates and scientists, and the tests were separated by 45 years .p value. The minimalist conclusion is that the null hypothesis is unlikely to be true, although what we are actually interested in is whether our hypothesis is correct. These are two very different statements. Falsifying the null hypothesis does not imply that our hypothesis is correct; other explanations might serve better. What determines whether a statistically significant result is actually correct rather than being a false positive? Traditional Fisherian statistics highlights the role of statistical power and α  in estimating the probability that a statistically significant finding is actually correct. However, the thought experiment presented in A related problem arises when one does a properly designed experiment and obtains a result with a statistically significant We begin by considering an experiment that tests 1000 hypotheses, 100 of which are expected to be true based on our experience. If our experimental design yields 80% power, only 80 of these true hypotheses will be identified as such and the remaining 20 will be missed, i.e., false negatives. With α = 0.05, the remaining 900 hypotheses are also separated into two groups, with 45 (=0.05*900) being false positives and the remaining 855 appropriately identified as “no effect” or true negatives. These predictions are distributed into the outcomes table in p value, by itself, does not provide good evidence favoring any non-null hypothesis. Your chance of correctly interpreting a statistically significant result depends on α, statistical power, and the probability of the result based on prior knowledge (p < 0.005 rather than p < 0.05 (A, B, and C, respectively, which are more palatable than the typical situations with p < 0.05.Thus, the nowledge D. Similanowledge , always nowledge . The majnowledge . A propop < 0.05 ; this wop value, and sometimes do not pay enough attention to whether a new result is likely to be true regardless of statistical significance. One pernicious outcome of this situation is the proclivity for some journals to publish “very unexpected” findings that nonetheless have statistical significance.Why is it so hard to do good science? The work of Kahneman, Tversky, and Thaler, supported by the recent tests described here, points out that a major part of the problem is rooted in our human nature, which makes us prone to jump to conclusions. We have tendencies to favor the law of small numbers, to spin narratives out of datasets of questionable relevance, and to seek patterns in noisy data. Kahneman and Tversky’s biases are prominent in the best of us: it is easier, more social, and more comfortable to think intuitively and quickly, whereas rational, contemplative thinking is difficult, can be tiring, and is frequently a solitary exercise. Second, we often have too much confidence in a favorable The experiments and scenarios described here are relevant to how people evaluate tests of hypotheses, not how we form hypotheses. The critical thinking skills required to rigorously test hypotheses are quite distinct from the cognitive processes involved in the initial generation of hypotheses. It is striking that answers to the survey questions were so similar regardless of whether respondents were undergraduates in the 1960s and 1970s, or scientific investigators engaged this year. Admittedly, the outcome of the experiments reported here only show that scientists exhibit human features and do not directly demonstrate that we are subject to cognitive biases when planning and evaluating scientific projects. This could be the subject of future work that addresses the circumstances under which scientific decisions are influenced, although senior scientists I have spoken with recognize the relevance to their own research.Deciding when it is allowable to exclude an outlier, how to incorporate both positive and negative controls, how to determine the number of subjects that will provide an appropriate level of confidence in one’s findings, and selection of the proper statistical test, are all important technical skills that can be learned. Circumvention of cognitive biases, however, is also important in most experiments but particularly preclinical animal trials, cell culture experiments, any experiment in which outcomes are compared among two or more experimental groups.p < 0.005 will also reduce false positives.Notwithstanding the above, plenty of excellent science that stands the test of time is reported by reputable journals every month. How can the substantive investigator improve the quality of scientific endeavors, develop more confidence in our findings, and guard against a premature exit from a research career? First and probably foremost, it is helpful to recognize explicitly the human nature features that can lead us astray; we can then attempt to use Kahneman’s “slow thinking” strategy, recognizing and trying to avoid common biases that unhelpfully support our preconceived notions. Second, we could more often employ good experimental practice that avoids the red flags identified by Finally, before embarking on a new line of experiments it can be helpful to perform a “premortem,” i.e., assume the experiment failed and list all potential reasons cf. . When seAll of these suggestions would have us acting more like the ancient Greek Titan, Prometheus, and less like his brother, Epimetheus. Prometheus has come to symbolize “forethought” and effective planning, with Epimetheus representing “afterthought.” Recall that in the Greek legends, Prometheus helped advance mankind in many ways, whereas Epimetheus, in a rush, married Pandora and helped open her box.