The prevalence and incidence of HIV among injection drug users: A five year panel study

Six hundred and one injection drug users (IDUs) who attended drug treatment programs in Miami, Florida, were enrolled in a panel study to determine the prevalence and incidence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and associated risk factors. A structured questionnaire which elicited injection and sexual behaviors was administered and blood was obtained by venipduncture. All participants were reassessed at six month intervals for 5 years. The baseline prevalence of HIV was 16.3%. African–Americans had a prevalence of HIV (37.1%) that was significantly higher than that of non-Hispanic whites (7.6%); the prevalence of HIV among Hispanics was 27.2%. Persons who were more than thirty years of age were more likely to test HIV positive (17.8%) than were younger participants (9.7%). The annual incidence per 1000 person-years of exposure for the 503 initially seronegative participants was consistently low for each year of the study. The 5 year incidence was 4.1 per 1000 person years; 7.5 for men and 1.7 for women, 7.5 for African–Americans and 3.8 for non-Hispanic whites. No Hispanic participants seroconverted. Multivariate logistic techniques were used to identify the independent risk factors for HIV prevalence. Earlier injection, ethnicity, and income were independently associated with HIV serostatus. A history of a sexually transmitted disease was marginally associated with HIV prevalence. Low incidence probably is a function of the reduction of risk behavior that occurred over the course of the study and the stage of the epidemic.     

Social connectedness and life satisfaction: Comparing mean levels for 2 undergraduate samples and testing for improvement based on brief counseling

ABSTRACT

Objectives: Comparing the mean levels of social connectedness and life satisfaction, and analyzing their relationship for 2 undergraduate samples, and testing for an increase in their means for a brief counseling sample. Participants: Between October 2013 and May 2015, 3 samples were collected: not-in-counseling (NIC; n = 941), initial counseling session (ICS; ie, triage session only; n = 168), and brief counseling (BC; ie, median of 4 additional counseling sessions; n = 28). Methods: Online surveys measuring demographic and background control variables, social connectedness, and life satisfaction. Results: NIC students exhibited higher social connectedness and life satisfaction than ICS students. Social connectedness significantly explained life satisfaction beyond controlled-for variables for both samples. There was a significant increase in social connectedness and life satisfaction for the BC sample. Conclusions: Social connectedness is an important antecedent of life satisfaction for undergraduates. Brief counseling can increase transition students' social connectedness and life satisfaction.     

The effect of gender on arbitration decisions

The effect of grievant’s and arbitrator’s gender on arbitration decisions is investigated using 169 arbitration cases fromLabor Arbitration Awards. Three hypotheses were tested: (1) arbitrators treat female grievants less severely than male grievants; (2) female arbitrators render less severe judgments than their male counterparts; and (3) arbitrator’s gender and grievant’s gender interact so that female arbitrators will treat female grievants more favorably than male arbitrators and male arbitrators will treat male grievants more favorably than female arbitrators. The empirical findings supported none of these hypotheses and the authors conclude that the arbitration process is free of gender bias.     

An analysis of multi-union elections involving incumbent unions

This article investigates the extent and outcomes of multi-union elections involving incumbent unions between 1974 and 1986. During this 13 year period a total of 1423 raid elections (an average of 109 per year) were conducted. The data reveal that the number of raid elections is declining and that unions, as opposed to no-union, continue to be victorious in the majority of cases, although there is considerable regional, industrial, union, and bargaining unit size variance in union victory rates.     

Counter-movement within the labor movement: Workers' education and the American federation of labor, 1900–1937

This article examines the historical development and sudden collapse of the workers' education movement from 1900 to 1937. Workers' education was a vital component of early dissident strategies to overturn the AFL's dominant philosophy of business unionism with a broader and more politicized philosophy of social unionism. The article concludes that the pattern of events leading to the demise of workers' education as an opposition movement provides strong support for Piven and Cloward's theory of how social movements fail.     

Nonresponse Bias in a Dual Frame Sample of Cell and Landline Numbers

We conducted a dual frame survey of landline and cell phonenumbers in 2004 to evaluate the feasibility of including cellphone numbers in random digit dial telephone surveys in theUnited States. By sampling cell phone numbers, the coveragebias associated with households that have only cell phones iseliminated. However, we discovered two major sources of nonresponsebias in the dual frame sample. In an attempt to reduce thesebiases, we applied several different estimation schemes. Buta comparison to the 2004 Current Population Survey Cell PhoneSupplement showed that none of the estimation schemes substantiallyreduced the nonresponse bias of the estimates. We suggest othermethods that might be used in future surveys that include cellphones and discuss the need for additional data collection andresearch on this issue.     

Validation Theory and Research for a Population-Level Measure of Children’s Development,Wellbeing, and School Readiness

This paper delineates general validity and research questions that are underlying an ongoing program of research pertaining to the Early Development Instrument (EDI, Janus and Offord 2007), a population-level measure, on which teachers rate kindergarten children’s developmental outcomes in the social, emotional, physical, cognitive, and communicative domains. It describes the large-scale research projects that are using the EDI to measure children’s developmental outcomes for entire populations (e.g., provinces, cities). Given the uniqueness of the EDI’s use as monitoring tool, or social indicator, for children’s developmental health at an early age, we spell out the opportunities and challenges that these projects provide with regard to validation research. The article sets the stage for the special issue, as it is dedicated to showcase the different aspects of the conceptual, theoretical, and empirical validation research as well as the collaborative community-based projects that are currently being undertaken with respect to the EDI.     

Flexible empirical Bayes estimation for wavelets

Wavelet shrinkage estimation is an increasingly popular method for signal denoising and compression. Although Bayes estimators can provide excellent mean-squared error (MSE) properties, the selection of an effective prior is a difficult task. To address this problem, we propose empirical Bayes (EB) prior selection methods for various error distributions including the normal and the heavier-tailed Student t -distributions. Under such EB prior distributions, we obtain threshold shrinkage estimators based on model selection, and multiple-shrinkage estimators based on model averaging. These EB estimators are seen to be computationally competitive with standard classical thresholding methods, and to be robust to outliers in both the data and wavelet domains. Simulated and real examples are used to illustrate the flexibility and improved MSE performance of these methods in a wide variety of settings.