Prevalence and reasons for Juul use among college students

Abstract

Objective: Examine Juul use patterns, sociodemographic and personal factors associated with Juul use, and reasons for Juul initiation and current use, among college students. Participants: Convenience sample of 371 undergraduates at a large university in the southeast; recruited April 2018. Methods: Cross-sectional design using an online survey. Logistic regression identified the personal risk factors for current use. Results: Over 80% of participants recognized Juul; 36% reported ever use and 21% past 30-day use. Significant risk factors for current Juul use were: male, White/non-Hispanic, lower undergraduate, and current cigarette smoker. Current Juul users chose ease of use and lack of a bad smell as reasons for use. Ever Juul users most commonly endorsed curiosity and use by friends as reasons for trying Juul. Conclusions: Given the propensity for nicotine addiction among youth and young adults, rates of Juul use are alarming and warrant immediate intervention.     

Delivering development? Evidence on self‐help groups as development intermediaries in South Asia and Africa

Donors and governments increasingly seek to deliver development projects through community‐based organizations such as self‐help groups (SHGs), but little is known about the effectiveness of such arrangements. This article briefly summarizes hypotheses regarding the effectiveness of interventions using SHGs and presents the results of an evidence review on the impacts of interventions delivered through SHGs on health, finance, agriculture and empowerment outcomes in South Asia and sub‐Saharan Africa. Though the impacts of SHG‐based interventions are generally positive, the evidence base is limited and does not generally test whether alternative delivery mechanisms might be more effective.     

Children's and adults' perceptions of child necessities in Hong Kong

There is growing interest in child poverty and well‐being in East Asia. However, empirical studies predominantly adopt “expert‐led” measures (such as adult‐derived child deprivation measures), which usually assume that parents or guardians provide reliable reports about all their children's needs and that the allocation of household resources is effectively equal across all members. Studies of child poverty from a child‐rights or child‐agency perspective are rare in East Asia. Using a consensual deprivation approach, this article examines the extent of agreement between children and adults about which child possessions and activities constitute necessities of life in Hong Kong. The data are drawn from the second wave of the Strategic Public Policy Research project—Trends and Implications of Poverty and Social Disadvantages in Hong Kong: A Multi‐disciplinary and Longitudinal Study. A total of 595 adults and 636 school‐aged children from the first wave of the study were reinterviewed and asked if they considered 16 possessions and activities as essential for children in contemporary Hong Kong. The results showed that adults were significantly more likely to believe that almost all material and social deprivation items were necessities compared with their children, even after controlling for individual‐level factors (i.e., gender and birthplace) and household‐level factors (i.e., number of children in the household, number of working adults, and household income). The findings highlight the importance of incorporating children's views into our understanding of child poverty.     

Reconceptualizing Social Work Behaviors From a Human Rights Perspective

Although the human rights philosophy has relevance for many segments of the social work curriculum, the latest version of accreditation standards only includes a few behaviors specific to human rights. This deficit can be remedied by incorporating innovations found in the social work literature, which provides a wealth of material for reconceptualizing social work behaviors from a human rights perspective. This article summarizes these reconceptualizations and presents corresponding behaviors for courses addressing human behavior and the social environment, policy, practice, and research.     

Profiles of High School Students’ STEM Career Aspirations

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields have a need for recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce. Understanding students’ aspiration to STEM careers is important for supporting underrepresented populations. Data from a nationally representative sample (N = 20,010) of high school students who reported career aspirations were analyzed. Analyses revealed significant relations between students’ aspirations and demographic variables, and differences in aspirations based on students’ race and gender. Findings highlight a need for counselors to implement career interventions that address students’ cultural contexts.     

The gender gap on public opinion towards genetically modified foods

Ever since genetically modified (GM) foods were introduced into the food supply in the 1990s they have provoked debate and concern. The number of GM foods approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and offered on supermarket shelves has steadily grown at the same time that public wariness about the safety of GM foods has increased. Studies within the scientific literature show a strikingly large gender gap in attitudes towards GM foods with women consistently more skeptical than men. However, there have been few efforts to understand the determinants of the gender gap on GM foods within the political science literature. This study employs a 2014 Pew Research Center survey on science issues to test several possible explanations for the gender gap in attitudes towards GM foods rooted in the different life experiences of women and men. The results show that while being a parent predicts more skeptical views about genetically modified foods overall it does not explain the gender gap in attitudes. In contrast, knowledge about science and having confidence in science do play a significant role in mediating the gender gap. By exploring the robust and pervasive gender gap on the issue of GM foods, this study sheds light on the fundamentally different ways men and women approach political issues.     

Assessment of older adults’ satisfaction with adult protective services investigation and assistance

This study examined elder self-neglect client satisfaction with services provided by an Adult Protective Services (APS) program. A total of 77 community-dwelling older adults with APS-substantiated self-neglect responded to the standardized and widely used 8-item Client Satisfaction Questionnaire. Approximately 75% of the participants reported being satisfied with the overall services. They felt that the services provided were responsive to their need(s) and helped them deal with their problem(s). Greater than 80% responded that they would refer a friend, would utilize APS in the future if necessary, and were at least satisfied with the amount of help received. The extent to which their needs were met received the lowest satisfaction scores. Future studies are needed to examine elder self-neglect client satisfaction in relation to specific services.     

Ethical leadership and employee success: Examining the roles of psychological empowerment and emotional exhaustion

The current study aims to advance ethical leadership theory and research in two ways. First, we propose that psychological empowerment is a comprehensive motivational mechanism linking ethical leadership with employee current in-role success and future success potential. Second, we propose that employee emotional exhaustion is a disruptive psychological state that dampens the empowering effects of ethical leaders. Findings from two field studies illustrate that emotional exhaustion impairs the motivational efforts of ethical leaders by attenuating the direct effects on psychological empowerment and the indirect effects on employees' current success and success potential. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Propensity score applied to survival data analysis through proportional hazards models: a Monte Carlo study

Propensity score methods are increasingly used in medical literature to estimate treatment effect using data from observational studies. Despite many papers on propensity score analysis, few have focused on the analysis of survival data. Even within the framework of the popular proportional hazard model, the choice among marginal, stratified or adjusted models remains unclear. A Monte Carlo simulation study was used to compare the performance of several survival models to estimate both marginal and conditional treatment effects. The impact of accounting or not for pairing when analysing propensity‐score‐matched survival data was assessed. In addition, the influence of unmeasured confounders was investigated. After matching on the propensity score, both marginal and conditional treatment effects could be reliably estimated. Ignoring the paired structure of the data led to an increased test size due to an overestimated variance of the treatment effect. Among the various survival models considered, stratified models systematically showed poorer performance. Omitting a covariate in the propensity score model led to a biased estimation of treatment effect, but replacement of the unmeasured confounder by a correlated one allowed a marked decrease in this bias. Our study showed that propensity scores applied to survival data can lead to unbiased estimation of both marginal and conditional treatment effect, when marginal and adjusted Cox models are used. In all cases, it is necessary to account for pairing when analysing propensity‐score‐matched data, using a robust estimator of the variance. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.