DNA COLLECTION IN A RANDOMIZED SOCIAL SCIENCE STUDY OF COLLEGE PEER EFFECTS

We describe the DNA collection processes of an initial pilot and full study, which is designed to investigate joint peer and genetic effects on health behaviors and attitudes in a college campus setting. In the main study, 2664 (79.5%) students completed a Web survey and 2080 (78.7% of the survey completers after adjusting for the ineligible) provided a saliva DNA sample. The response rate for completing both the survey and the DNA portion of the study is 62.5%. Our DNA yields are of high quality. Overall, our experiences and results demonstrate that genetic data can be successfully collected as a part of traditional social science survey research projects. To aid others in doing so, we provide extensive details of our data collection experiences and offer recommendations to future researchers seeking to do or evaluate similar work.     

Acculturation and Enculturation Trajectories Among Mexican‐American Adolescent Offenders

This study examines changes over time in ethnic affirmation/belonging and ethnic identity achievement, Spanish language use, English language use, Mexican/Mexican‐American affiliation/identification and Anglo affiliation/identification in a sample of Mexican‐American adolescents participating in a longitudinal study of juvenile offenders. The Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure and the Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans‐II were completed by the Mexican‐American adolescents 7 times over a 3‐year period. The findings from longitudinal growth modeling analyses and growth mixture modeling analyses indicate that there is heterogeneity in the initial scores and changes over time on these variables that are related to markers for the cultural qualities of the home environment (i.e., generational status and mother's most frequent language use). In contrast to expectations, marginalized or assimilated acculturation trajectories/types were not overrepresented in this sample of adolescent offenders. Implications for our understanding of the nature of acculturation and enculturation processes and the way these processes are studied are discussed.     

Social Movement Strategy,Tactics, and Collective Identity1

Tactical choices and their execution are closely related to the construction of collective identities in social movements. Studying collective identity has helped scholars understand why people participate in collective action, but the array of tactics that constitute action has not been fully explored. An emerging interest in culture and strategy that situates social movement actors in a field of contention with opponents, allies, and bystanding publics raises questions about the tactics that are used and the construction of collective identity, which is formed in interaction with others. Strategies and tactics reflect collective identities but also provide opportunities for reaffirming or challenging them. Innovative methods can create tension as activists work to resolve what they do with who they feel they are. Conflict studies, nonviolent action studies, and sociological research using concepts such as framing, discourse, protest events, and tactical repertoires offer tools with which to bridge tactics and collective identity.     

Barriers and Facilitators of Responding to Problem Gambling: Perspectives from Australian Mental Health Services

Despite high rates of comorbidity between problem gambling and mental health disorders, few studies have examined barriers or facilitators to the implementation of screening for problem gambling in mental health services. This exploratory qualitative study identified key themes associated with screening in mental health services. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 30 clinicians and managers from 11 mental health services in Victoria, Australia. Major themes and subthemes were identified using qualitative content analysis. Six themes emerged including competing priorities, importance of routine screening, access to appropriate screening tools, resources, patient responsiveness and workforce development. Barriers to screening included a focus on immediate risk as well as gambling being often considered as a longer-term concern. Clinicians perceived problem gambling as a relatively rare condition, but did acknowledge the need for brief screening. Facilitators to screening were changes to system processes, such as identification of an appropriate brief screening instrument, mandating its use as part of routine screening, as well as funded workforce development activities in the identification and management of problem gambling.     

Improved estimation methods for unrelated question randomized response techniques

The randomized response technique (RRT) is an important tool, commonly used to avoid biased answers in survey on sensitive issues by preserving the respondents’ privacy. In this paper, we introduce a data collection method for survey on sensitive issues combining both the unrelated-question RRT and the direct question design. The direct questioning method is utilized to obtain responses to a non sensitive question that is related to the innocuous question from the unrelated-question RRT. These responses serve as additional information that can be used to improve the estimation of the prevalence of the sensitive behavior. Furthermore, we propose two new methods for the estimation of the proportion of respondents possessing the sensitive attribute under a missing data setup. More specifically, we develop the weighted estimator and the weighted conditional likelihood estimator. The performances of our estimators are studied numerically and compared with that of an existing one. Both proposed estimators are more efficient than the Greenberg's estimator. We illustrate our methods using real data from a survey study on illegal use of cable TV service in Taiwan.