<p>This thesis examines if house-owners are prepared to reduce energy use by means of accessing more information on electricity consumption. The goal has been to examine whether house-owners are interested in details such as knowing what impact various installations and electrical appliances have on the overall consumption, and to present examples of various solutions available for solving this task. The aim has also been to present recommendations on what features such a system should hold, and to suggest how it can be designed.</p><p>An orientation has been made on the electricity metering market for electricity trading, to examine what information is available to households today. Research in the topic of electricity feedback suggests that today's public methods are generally not as effective as other solutions with greater saving potential. The concept of Disaggregated Electricity Feedback (DEF) has been introduced and is intended to give effective feedback, contributing to a better understanding of the household electricity consumption. Study's main goal has been to investigate house owner’s interest in what DEF is aiming to achieve. The results show there is a strong interest for house-owners having access to what DEF is supposed to provide. Another result obtained in this work is that a potential product equipped with the DEF may be of interest to other parties. With technology changes taking place in the electricity market, opportunities are created for electricity companies to offer their customers completely new and customized services, where a DEF-product may have a number of possible uses.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 304-319).

Although considerable progress has been made in documenting the nature and gendered allocation of unpaid family work in Canada over the last several decades, relatively few epidemiological studies have addressed the potential consequences of household labour for womens mental health. Even fewer have focused on the consequences for men. The limited research which has examined the relationship between household work and well-being has produced conflicting findings. Conflicting findings may be due, in part, to the almost sole focus of researchers on time spent in family work as the key determinant of mental health outcomes, ignoring other conditions and characteristics of family work. The objective of the present study was to examine more nuanced relationships between the perceived division of household labour and psychological distress, taking into consideration other aspects of family work, including the nature of the household task and the perceived fairness of the division of family work. Of particular interest in the study was whether the nature of these relationships differs for men and women. The study involved secondary data analysis of a recently conducted telephone survey of employed, partnered parents with children. Data analyses involved a multi-stage process consisting of univariate, bivariate, and multivariable analyses. To address the key objectives of the study, a series of multiple linear regression models were estimated with psychological distress as the outcome, adjusting for key confounders. The results indicated that the perceived division of family work was important for womens psychological well-being and the perceived fairness of the division of family work for mens. That is, for women, perceiving spending more time than their partners in housework and child rearing was associated with greater psychological distress. For men, perceived unfairness to themselves in the division of housework and perceived unfairness to their partners in the division of child rearing were both associated with greater psychological distress. The results of this study, combined with previous research, suggest that the gendered nature of household work has implications for the psychological well-being of both women and men and that both paid and unpaid work needs to be considered when examining the social determinants of parents psychological well-being.

This thesis examines if house-owners are prepared to reduce energy use by means of accessing more information on electricity consumption. The goal has been to examine whether house-owners are interested in details such as knowing what impact various installations and electrical appliances have on the overall consumption, and to present examples of various solutions available for solving this task. The aim has also been to present recommendations on what features such a system should hold, and to suggest how it can be designed. An orientation has been made on the electricity metering market for electricity trading, to examine what information is available to households today. Research in the topic of electricity feedback suggests that today's public methods are generally not as effective as other solutions with greater saving potential. The concept of Disaggregated Electricity Feedback (DEF) has been introduced and is intended to give effective feedback, contributing to a better understanding of the household electricity consumption. Study's main goal has been to investigate house owner’s interest in what DEF is aiming to achieve. The results show there is a strong interest for house-owners having access to what DEF is supposed to provide. Another result obtained in this work is that a potential product equipped with the DEF may be of interest to other parties. With technology changes taking place in the electricity market, opportunities are created for electricity companies to offer their customers completely new and customized services, where a DEF-product may have a number of possible uses.

Although considerable progress has been made in documenting the nature and gendered allocation of unpaid family work in Canada over the last several decades, relatively few epidemiological studies have addressed the potential consequences of household labour for womens mental health. Even fewer have focused on the consequences for men. The limited research which has examined the relationship between household work and well-being has produced conflicting findings. Conflicting findings may be due, in part, to the almost sole focus of researchers on time spent in family work as the key determinant of mental health outcomes, ignoring other conditions and characteristics of family work. The objective of the present study was to examine more nuanced relationships between the perceived division of household labour and psychological distress, taking into consideration other aspects of family work, including the nature of the household task and the perceived fairness of the division of family work. Of particular interest in the study was whether the nature of these relationships differs for men and women. The study involved secondary data analysis of a recently conducted telephone survey of employed, partnered parents with children. Data analyses involved a multi-stage process consisting of univariate, bivariate, and multivariable analyses. To address the key objectives of the study, a series of multiple linear regression models were estimated with psychological distress as the outcome, adjusting for key confounders. The results indicated that the perceived division of family work was important for womens psychological well-being and the perceived fairness of the division of family work for mens. That is, for women, perceiving spending more time than their partners in housework and child rearing was associated with greater psychological distress. For men, perceived unfairness to themselves in the division of housework and perceived unfairness to their partners in the division of child rearing were both associated with greater psychological distress. The results of this study, combined with previous research, suggest that the gendered nature of household work has implications for the psychological well-being of both women and men and that both paid and unpaid work needs to be considered when examining the social determinants of parents psychological well-being.

Background: Influenza viruses cause substantial mortality and morbidity both worldwide and in Hong Kong. Furthermore, the possible emergence of future influenza pandemics remains a major threat to public health. Some studies have estimated that one third of all influenza transmission occurs in households. Household studies have been an important means of studying influenza transmissions and evaluating the efficacy of influenza control measures including vaccination, antiviral therapy and prophylaxis and non-pharmaceutical interventions. Household studies of influenza can be categorized as pertaining to one of two designs: household cohort and case-ascertained. In household cohort studies households are recruited before the start of an influenza season and then monitored during the influenza season for influenza infection. In case-ascertained studies a household is enrolled once influenza infection is identified in a household member. Objectives: This thesis comprises of two parts. The objective of the first part is to evaluate the resource efficiency of different designs for conducting household studies. The objective of the second part is to estimate community and household transmission parameters during the 2009 A(H1N1) pandemic in Hong Kong. Methods: Monte Carlo simulation parameterized with data from influenza studies in Hong Kong was used to compare the resource efficiency of competing study designs evaluating the efficacy of an influenza control intervention. Approaches to ascertaining infections in different types of studies, and their implications for resource efficiency were compared. With regard to the second part, extended Longini-Koopman models within a Bayesian framework were used on data from a Hong Kong household cohort study conducted from December 2008 to October 2009. Household and community transmission parameters were estimated by age-groups for two seasonal influenza strains circulating in the winter of 2008-09 and two seasonal and one pandemic strain circulating in the summer of 2009. Results: Simulations showed that RT-PCR outperformed both serology and self-report of symptoms as a resource efficient means of identifying influenza in household studies. Identification of influenza using self-report of symptomatology performed particularly poorly in terms of resource efficiency due to its low sensitivity and specificity when compared to laboratory methods. Case-ascertained studies appeared more resource efficient than cohort studies but the results were sensitive to the choice of parameter values particularly the serial interval of influenza. In statistical analyses of household data during the winter of 2008-09, it was found that transmissibility of seasonal influenza strains were similar to those previously reported in the literature. Analysis also showed for the summer 2009 the estimates of household transmissibility were similar for seasonal A(H3N2) and pandemic A(H1N1) especially after taking into account that some individuals were likely immune to infection. Conclusions: Careful consideration of study design can ensure that studies are resource efficient and have sufficient statistical power. Data from a household study suggested that during 2009 seasonal and pandemic influenza had similar transmission patterns. / published_or_final_version / Community Medicine / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The purpose of this research was to investigate the association between gross household income during early adolescence and property crime from early adolescence into young adulthood. A truncated version of recent nationally representative sample---the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1997-2006)---was married with a set of sociological and developmental theories to explore these processes. Results from Study I indicate that cumulative property crime did not significantly differ by income but did differ by race and gender; parent-adolescent relationship quality significantly differed by income; emotional problems significantly differed by gender; and criminal arrests significantly differed by income, gender, and race. In addition, baseline and change scores for all variables of interest shared substantial variation. Results from Study II indicate that controlling for gender, race, and household structure, gross household income during early adolescence had a significant positive association with cumulative property crime from early adolescence into young adulthood. Parent-adolescent relationship quality (but not emotional problems) helped to explain this association. In general, these mediated processes did not significantly differ by income, gender, or race. Results from Study III indicate that criminal arrests from early adolescence into young adulthood explained a substantial portion of the variance between income and cumulative property crime from early adolescence into young adulthood, and partially mediated the association between income and property crime. Criminal arrests during adolescence also explained a substantial portion of the variance between income and property crime during adulthood, and partially mediated the association between income and property crime during adulthood. For these processes, moderated mediation was occurring. On the one hand, criminal arrests during adolescence generally deterred adults from later engaging in property crime, but this association was only significant higher income adolescents ($25,001- $100,000). On the other hand, criminal arrests during adolescence were associated with higher counts of property crime for those adults who generally engaged in at least one property crime, but this association was only significant for adolescents for lower middle income adolescents ($10,001-$25,000). Implications of these findings and future research are discussed.

The object of this study is to examine the economic, religious, political and social aspects of landowning on the Devon and Somerset border, at a time of change and challenge after the Restoration. It considers in particular whether landowners were able to abandon the animosities that had been aroused by the Civil War. The first chapter is an introduction to the region and its landowners, together with a discussion of the sources used. It points out the themes which will be developed in later chapters. This is followed by a study of landowning, showing its progress in the parish of Uffculme in Devon. Chapter 3 takes a look at society at a level below that of the middling gentry, to the trademen and yeomen who were beginning to make their way into the landowning class, and provides some case studies. Chapters 4 and 5 concern the economic aspects of landowning, including agriculture, estate management and the cloth trade and show how with careful husbanding of resources an estate could be made to pay even in difficult times, but how the shift of the London cloth trade to the Exeter ports adversely affected some estates. Nonconformity was closely linked with the cloth trade and the landowner's beliefs and their connection with levels of nonconformity are discussed in chapter 6. Religious attitudes were closely linked to political outlook in the seventeenth-century and political themes are examined in chapter 7. The first section discusses the divided society that had developed at the end of the 1670s and the second contains a description of the MPs, the electorate, the conduct of elections, and the issues involved. Chapter 8 is concerned with prevailing social attitudes to patriarchialism and contract, viewing three groups within the household, that of husbands and wives, parents and children, and master/mistress and servant. The final chapter is a conclusion of how well the ideas with which the study was begun have been supported by the evidence adduced.

The Louisiana shrimp fishery has experienced a collapse in the price of shrimp since 2001. The principal reason for this collapse is increasing shrimp imports. Examining the political economy of agro-food systems and the interrelated household economies of Louisiana shrimp fisherpeople, this thesis asks how household commodity production, where fishers own their means of production and supply most labor themselves, is being restructured by the liberalization of seafood trade. Shrimpers have drawn increasingly on household resources (such as unwaged labor of family members) that are normally devoted to social reproduction to maintain their participation in household commodity production. In other words, households shift resources out of the family and into the economy in order to make good on losses of cash income they suffer from low prices. Households continue producing at de facto wage levels below that necessary to support the household on shrimping income alone.

The purpose of this research was to improve understanding of the quality of drinking water for domestic consumption in the City of Kumul, China. The guidelines for drinking water testing in the City of Kumul were assessed and compared with actual practices. Local households in the urban center were interviewed in order to assess public attitudes towards drinking water. The results showed that the quality of treated water did not pose a direct threat to human consumers, but there were opportunities for improvements in the areas of source water protection, water treatment processes, and communication between authorities and the public. 74% of urban households personally treated their tap water prior to consumption, most commonly by boiling, to improve drinking water quality. It is recommended that the local government should seek to improve communication between the water treatment authority and the public to ensure water quality in the City of Kumul.