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To date, only one national study has examined patterns of adult sexual knowledge, attitudes and behaviour in New Zealand in the hope of improving sexual and reproductive health outcomes for all New Zealanders. This study was performed nearly two decades ago. The aim of this study is to explore current patterns of sexual health and wellbeing among a sample of adults from the Christchurch metropolitan area. Seven hundred and sixty seven participants were selected from the General and Maori electoral registers and invited to participate in an Internet-based self-administered anonymous survey. Data was collected on sexual health, knowledge, attitudes and behaviour and compared to five previous national studies in adult sexual health and wellbeing. Twenty-five men and 17 women responded to the survey. Overall, sexual health and wellbeing behaviours reported in this study are higher than those found in the five comparative studies. However, it is not clear whether this finding is an accurate reflection of the current sexual and reproductive health status of the sample population or whether participation bias has overestimated the rate of behaviours in question. In conclusion, the results from this study provide sufficient motive to continue on researching a possible shift in patterns of adult sexual health and behaviour over the last two decades in New Zealand.

Previous studies of the first direct elections to the Hong Kong Legislative Council (LegCo) in 1991 were largely focused on the effect of the Tiananmen Incident on voters' choice, neglecting the domestic dimension of social conflict evolving within Hong Kong from the 1970s. Adopting the social cleavage approach, the present thesis argues that two electoral cleavages, centre-periphery and collective consumption, were important by 1991. It, therefore, explores the international, social and political contexts within which the 1991 LegCo direct elections took place in order to explain the political alignments and electoral cleavages during the period 1982-1991. First, the study examines the Sino-British attitudes towards political reforms in Hong Kong and the development of the centre-periphery cleavage in the 1980s as the two countries negotiated the transfer of sovereignty. Second, the expansion of the Hong Kong Government's activities and its privatisation programmes are analyzed in order to describe the increasingly intimate relations between government and society and to show that, as a result, conflicts evolved over issues of collective consumption. Third, the emerging competition at the time of the 1991 elections is discussed with reference to political mobilisation and alignments during the previous decade. Fourth, the electoral market of 1991 is examined to explain voters' choice. Finally, the election results are analyzed to demonstrate that two electoral cleavages, centre-periphery and collective consumption, played a significant role. The data used in this study were collected from: official documents, such as the Hong Kong Government Gazette, the Sino-British Joint Declaration, the Basic Law, the Hong Kong Census and By-census reports, the annual reports of various government departments; opinion polls and one exit poll of the 1991 LegCo direct elections; personal interviews with leading political leaders; campaign materials and election debates on television; and newspaper cuttings.

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This thesis describes the use of centrifugal photosedimentation, for the particle size analysis of soil clays and clay minerals. The instrument that was used is the Horiba, CAPA 500. It has a lower limit to particle size analysis for clays of 20nm (Stokes' diameter) and gives a high degree of size resolution. The initial output is a relationship between turbidity and Stokes' diameter over a limited range of particle sizes. Use of the centrifugal photosedimentometer with materials containing a broad range of particle sizes, such as clays, by combining results from runs with overlapping size ranges is described. In order to maximize sensitivity it was necessary to use higher initial suspension concentrations when analysing for small particles, compared to those used when analysing for larger particles. Typically clays contain particles that are both greater and smaller than the wavelength of light in the dispersing medium (400 nm in this case). It is therefore important to correct for the variation in light extinction with particle size and those aspects of light scattering and absorption theory that are relevant to photosedimentation data analysis are reviewed. For particles that are smaller than 100nm absorption makes a significant contribution to light extinction. Therefore the absorption coefficients of a range of contrasting clays were estimated from reflectance measurements taken from diluted clays (in powder form). These samples provided a set of standards that allowed the absorption coefficients of other clays to be estimated by visual comparison. In very force fields disc-like particles sediment so that they are oriented with their minimum dimension in the direction of motion. Light scattering is sensitive to particle orientation, hence photosedimentation was used to estimate the orientation state of sedimenting particles. Estimates of the maximum advisable centrifugal speed for use with the various particle sizes are given. These were obtained from both simple theory and from experimental results. Although repeatable results were obtained from photosedimentation, the particle size distributions calculated from the relationship between turbidity and Stokes' diameter did not agree with those from gravimetric size analysis, when traditional theories (e.g. Mie) were used to correct the experimentally obtained turbidity data prior to the calculation of particle size distribution. However, satisfactory semi-empirical scattering efficiencies are suggested for the 100nm to 10 μm size range, but they need further testing. Photosedimentation analysis produced the same shape of particle size distribution for TEM size analysed samples, however the positions of these size distributions in terms of mean particle size did not always coincide. Despite the various sources of uncertainty in the particle size distributions that are obtained from photosedimentation data analysis, the high degree of size resolution and good repeatability of the instrument make it suitable for many applictions in Soil Science. Centrifugal photosedimentation was found to be particularly useful for studying the effect of saturating cation on the particle size distributions of dispersed bentonite. Further work is suggested to extend the range of semi-empirical values of extinction efficiency that are given and also to quantify the biasing that can result from samples which have a variation of axial ratio and/or chemical composition with particle size.