Publications by authors named "Vanessa Smith-Castro"

Article Synopsis
  • * It found that stronger beliefs in equal childcare (both in what is considered normal and what should be the case) are associated with the availability of parental leave policies.
  • * While the data suggests that changes in parental leave policies can shift perceptions of social norms over time, the study acknowledges that it cannot definitively determine cause-and-effect relationships due to its cross-sectional design.
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Objective: To generate normative data for the Verbal Fluency Test (VFT) and the Boston Naming Test (BNT) in the Costa Rican population.

Method: The sample consisted of 563 healthy older people (aged 59-90 years). Polynomial multiple regression analyses were run to evaluate the effects of the age, sex, and education variables on VFT and BNT scores.

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Objectives: The present study aimed to evaluate the measurement invariance of a general measure of the perception of governmental responses to COVID-|19 (COVID-SCORE-10) in the general population of 13 Latin American countries.

Methods: A total of 5780 individuals from 13 Latin American and Caribbean countries selected by non-probabilistic snowball sampling participated. A confirmatory factor analysis was performed and the alignment method was used to evaluate invariance.

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The present study aimed to evaluate the measurement invariance of the Obsession with COVID-19 Scale (OCS) among seven Latin American countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Although the OCS has been used in several countries and languages, there is a need for approaches that better integrate the cross-cultural equivalence of the scale. A total of 3185 people participated in the study.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study examined how fear of COVID-19 influences people's intention to get vaccinated across 13 Latin American countries, focusing on the role of conspiracy beliefs as a mediator.
  • It involved 5,779 participants and used established scales to assess fear, conspiracy beliefs, and vaccination intention, analyzing the relationships through structural equation modeling.
  • Results showed that while fear of COVID-19 promoted vaccination intentions, conspiracy beliefs negatively impacted these intentions and acted as a mediator in this relationship, with consistent findings across the countries studied.
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Parenting styles are a risk factor for adolescents overweight/obesity worldwide, but this association is not well understood in the context of Latin America. This study examines the association between the parenting styles of mothers and fathers and the risk of overweight/obesity among Costa Rican adolescents. Data are cross-sectional from a sample of adolescents (13-18 years old) enrolled in ten urban and eight rural schools ( = 18) in the province of San José, Costa Rica, in 2017.

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The role of perceived social support in the acculturation process of immigrants remains unclear. In this study, we jointly evaluated the associations between acculturative stress and negative emotions associated with discrimination as antecedents of anxiety, depression, and stress symptoms in 283 immigrants living in Chile. Three competing models were tested via structural equation modelling to assess (1) the association among these variables and mental health symptoms and (2) to clarify the role of perceived social support.

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Previous research has stated a relationship between sexist ideologies and humour appreciation. However, most research has been done in North America and Europe. In the present study, we aimed to approach in an exploratory way to the social perceptions of sexist humour in Costa Rica.

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Background: Whereas parental feeding styles (PFS) influence children's diet, less is known about this relationship in adolescents.

Methods: A cross-sectional study in 686 Costa Rican adolescents (13-18 years) evaluated 4 validated PFS scores: healthy eating verbal encouragement; scolding; directly controlling diet; instrumental/emotional. Diet was evaluated through 3-day food records, deriving a Traditional Costa Rica Adolescents Diet Score (TCRAD).

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Little is known about how parenting styles can influence the adolescent's consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB), fruits and vegetables (FV) and beans in Latin America. This study uses hierarchical moderated regression models to examine such association by area of residence, sex of the parent and of the adolescent in Costa Rica. Results showed that fathers' authoritarian style was significantly associated with lower intake of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) among boys (b = -0.

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The study aimed to develop and test the validity and reliability of a gender-based food intake stereotype scale (GBFISS) to further the understanding of gender stereotype influences on food intake. Two cross-sectional studies were conducted among adolescents. In the first one (= 611), exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed on subsamples to identify and cross-validate the scale's structure.

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Objective: To examine the association between family environment variables (parenting styles, family meal atmosphere), gender-based stereotypes and food intake in Latin American adolescents.

Design: Structural equation modelling applied to cross-sectional data, 2017.

Setting: Urban and rural sites of San José, Costa Rica.

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Background: Acculturation stress is associated with poorer physical and mental health and a lower level of psychological well-being. The causes of acculturation stress are diverse, but most are similar in the migrant population. Despite the importance of evaluating this variable, few studies have reported culturally adapted and validated instruments for specific populations.

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Knowledge of evolutionary influences on patterns of human mating, social interactions, and differential health is increasing, yet these insights have rarely been applied to historical analyses of human population dynamics. The genetic and evolutionary forces behind biases in interethnic mating and in the health of individuals of different ethnic groups in Latin America and the Caribbean since the European colonization of America are still largely ignored. We discuss how historical and contemporary sociocultural interactions and practices are strongly influenced by population-level evolutionary forces.

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Background: In Latin America, more than 80% of adolescent girls are physically inactive. Inactivity may be reinforced by female stereotypes and objectification in the Latin American sociocultural context.

Methods: We examined the influence of objectification on the adoption of an active lifestyle among 192 adolescents (14 and 17 years old) from urban and rural areas in Costa Rica.

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Previous cross-cultural studies have found differences in food attitudes. For example, Americans are more concerned about weight gain than people from France and India. This study aimed to add on the literature on cross-cultural differences in food attitudes by comparing Euro-Americans with Costa Ricans on three different food attitudes: concern about gaining weight, food negativity, and the belief in the link between diet and health.

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Objective: The aim of this study was to identify psychosocial factors that influence fast-food consumption in urban and rural Costa Rican adolescents.

Methods: A self-administered questionnaire designed for the study asked about sociodemographic information, frequency of fast-food consumption, meaning of "fast food," location of purchase, and psychosocial correlates. Five psychosocial factors were extracted by using principal components analysis with Varimax rotation method and eigenvalues.

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Income inequality undermines societies: The more inequality, the more health problems, social tensions, and the lower social mobility, trust, life expectancy. Given people's tendency to legitimate existing social arrangements, the stereotype content model (SCM) argues that ambivalence-perceiving many groups as either warm or competent, but not both-may help maintain socio-economic disparities. The association between stereotype ambivalence and income inequality in 37 cross-national samples from Europe, the Americas, Oceania, Asia, and Africa investigates how groups' overall warmth-competence, status-competence, and competition-warmth correlations vary across societies, and whether these variations associate with income inequality (Gini index).

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Furthering G. W. Allport's contentions for optimal contact, the authors introduce a new construct: the perceived importance of contact.

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