Prevalence and predictors of sexual assault among a college sample

Objective: This study examined the prevalence and correlates of precollege, college-onset, and repeat sexual assault (SA) within a representative student sample. Participants: A representative sample of 7,603 students. Methods: Incoming first-year students completed a survey about their exposure to broad SA prior to college, prior trauma, personality, relationships, and mental health. Broad SA was then reassessed each spring semester while enrolled. Results: Nearly 20% of the sample reported experiencing broad SA, with women endorsing significantly higher rates compared with males. Prior victimization before coming to college was related to a greater risk of victimization in college, and there was no statistically significant difference between males and females who reported revictimization. Correlates of college-onset broad SA were found and are discussed. Conclusions: Given the need for SA intervention and prevention on college campuses, identification of factors potentially contributing to exposure within this population is essential.     

Welfare state and infant mortality

This article seeks to understand the effects of welfare-state spending on infant mortality rates. Infant mortality was chosen for its importance as a social indicator and its putative sensitivity to state action over a short time span. Country fixed-effects models are used to determine that public health spending does have a significant impact in lowering infant mortality rates, net of other factors, such as economic development, and that this effect is cumulative over a five-year time span. A net effect of health spending is also found, even when controlling for the level of spending in the year after which the outcome is measured (to account for spurious effects or reverse causation). State spending effects infant mortality both through social mechanisms and through medical ones. This article also shows that the impact of state spending may vary by the institutional structure of the welfare state. Finally, this study tests for structural breaks in the relationship between health spending and infant mortality and finds none over this time period.     

Birth Weight and Development: Bias or Heterogeneity by Polygenic Risk Factors?

Population Research and Policy Review - Birth weight has long been known to be a proxy for prenatal nutrition as well as social stress during pregnancy and, in this vein, has important associations...     

Getting it together: Social and institutional obstacles to getting off the streets

Avoiding macrostructural or individualistic explanations as to why homeless individuals cannot get off the streets, this paper examines the social structure of street life as it impinges on a sample of homeless persons' chances of obtaining nonshelter housing. Specifically, by interviewing 42 homeless individuals about a housing grant offered by New York State and the possibility of obtaining shared housing arrangements with such a grant, this study documents possible ways in which the social relations homeless people have with institutions and each other may dash potential efforts to obtain nonshelter housing. The research finds that distrust of the homeless among landlords and a high level of contingency with respect to welfare cases interact with distrustful personal relations among the sample of homeless themselves to reduce the likelihood of successful utilization of the housing grant. Due to sample limitations, findings from this study cannot be generalized to all homeless; nonetheless they offer insight into a dynamic which may be similar to those at work among other homeless sub-populations as well. An earlier version of this paper was presented at a regular session of the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting on August 9, 1994.     

Probabilistic cheap talk

We consider a model in which there is uncertainty over when a one-shot game will be played. We show how a mechanism designer can implement desirable outcomes in certain economic games by manipulating only the probability that the game is played in a given round while leaving all other aspects of the game unchanged. We also show that if there is no discounting, this uncertainty imparts a sequential structure that is almost mathematically equivalent to a repeated version of the game with discounting. In particular, a folk theorem applies to such games. Thus, games of probabilistic cheap provide a third interpretation of the repeated game framework with the additional feature that expected payoff is invariant to the probability of the game ending. Received: 10 May 1999/Accepted: 16 October 2000     

An Evaluative Review of Outcome Research on Universal Mental Health Promotion and Prevention Programs for Higher Education Students

Abstract

Objective: This review is the first large-scale attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of universal promotion and prevention programs for higher education students on a range of adjustment outcomes. Participants/Methods: The current review examined 83 controlled interventions involving college, graduate, and professional students, with a focus on 3 main outcomes: social and emotional skills, self-perceptions, and emotional distress. Results/Conclusions: Skill-oriented programs that included supervised practice demonstrated the strongest benefits, thus showing promise as a successful mental health promotion and preventive intervention. In comparing different intervention strategies, mindfulness training and cognitive-behavioral techniques appear to be the most effective. Furthermore, interventions conducted as a class appear to be effective, suggesting the potential for exposing higher education students to skill training through routine curricula offerings. This review offers recommendations for improving the experimental rigor of future research, and implications for enhancing campus services to optimize student success in psychosocial—and thus ultimately academic—domains.