Changes in sex practices and beliefs of male college students: Over 30 years∗

Abstract

Replication of an earlier survey, using the same questionnaire in the same college course, reveals an increase in proportion of male students with premarital heterosexual experience, from 45 per cent in 1943–44 to 61.8 per cent in 1967–68 and 74.9 per cent in 1969–73. While the mean number of episodes is also greatly increased, the tendency is toward reducing the number of partners. Since the proportion condoning premarital intercourse has risen to over 90 per cent, still further increments in activity may be anticipated. The number reporting homosexual behavior (most often limited to the pre‐ and early‐adolescent years) has declined from 27 per cent to 13.7 per cent, but the amount of activity during the college years has increased. Students having experienced a particular sexual activity impute that activity to a higher proportion of the general population than do the inexperienced.     

Interplay between Friends' Aggression and Friendship Quality in the Development of Child Aggression during the Early School Years

The aim of this study was to investigate the unique and combined role of friendship quality and friends' aggression in regard to the persistence of young children's physical aggression from kindergarten to grade 2. The sample included 1555 children (808 girls) assessed annually using teacher ratings. Two theoretical perspectives (i.e., the social learning and the social bonding perspectives) served as frameworks to guide the analyses and interpret the results. In line with the social learning perspective, friends' aggression was related to a significant increase in children's physical aggression. However, in line with the social bonding perspective, good friendship quality played both a compensatory and a protective role, by, respectively, reducing children's initial level of physical aggression and by mitigating, albeit marginally, the associations between friends' and children's physical aggression. These results suggest that fostering a positive relationship between friends in the early school years may decrease physical aggression even if the friends are aggressive.     

Further Beyond the Basic Background Check: Predicting Future Unethical Behavior

In this paper, we analyze the ethical issues of using honesty and integrity tests in employment screening. Our focus will be on the United States context: legal requirements related to applicant privacy differ in other countries, but we posit that our proposed balancing test is broadly applicable. We start by discussing why companies have ethical and legal obligations, based on a stakeholder analysis, to assess the integrity of potential employees. We then move to a consideration of how companies currently use background checks as a pre‐employment screening tool, noting their limitations. We then take up honesty and integrity testing, focusing particularly on the problems of false positives and due process. We offer a balancing test for the use of honesty and integrity testing that takes in three factors: (1) the potential harm posed by a dishonest employee in a particular job, (2) the linkage between the test and the assessment process, and (3) the accuracy and validity of the honesty and integrity test. We conclude with implications for practice and future research.     

A Proportional Hazards Regression Model for the Subdistribution with Covariates‐adjusted Censoring Weight for Competing Risks Data

With competing risks data, one often needs to assess the treatment and covariate effects on the cumulative incidence function. Fine and Gray proposed a proportional hazards regression model for the subdistribution of a competing risk with the assumption that the censoring distribution and the covariates are independent. Covariate‐dependent censoring sometimes occurs in medical studies. In this paper, we study the proportional hazards regression model for the subdistribution of a competing risk with proper adjustments for covariate‐dependent censoring. We consider a covariate‐adjusted weight function by fitting the Cox model for the censoring distribution and using the predictive probability for each individual. Our simulation study shows that the covariate‐adjusted weight estimator is basically unbiased when the censoring time depends on the covariates, and the covariate‐adjusted weight approach works well for the variance estimator as well. We illustrate our methods with bone marrow transplant data from the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research. Here, cancer relapse and death in complete remission are two competing risks.     

Barrios and burbs: residential context and health-risk behaviors among Angeleno adolescents

The increasing size of the Latino immigrant population in the United States underscores the need for a more complete understanding of the role that social context plays in influencing the health of immigrants and their children. This analysis explores the possibility that residential location influences the health-risk behaviors of Latino youth in Los Angeles County, California. The data come from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey. We apply multivariate, multilevel Rasch models to two scales of adolescent health-risk behaviors (substance use and delinquency). The findings suggest that residence in Census tracts characterized by above-county-average levels of Latinos and above-county-average levels of poverty is associated with increased odds of health-risk behaviors for Latino adolescents, particularly for those born in the United States. The findings lend support to the contention, put forth in the segmented assimilation literature, that disadvantaged urban contexts increase the risk that U.S.-born children of immigrants will experience downward assimilation.     

Linking Migration Intentions with Flows: Evidence and Potential Use

In the absence of reliable, internationally available migration flow data necessary for statistical forecasting, policymakers increasingly turn to survey data on emigration intentions to evaluate future migration trends. The important assumption – i.e. that there is a measurable and systematic relationship between the intention to migrate and actual migration – has not been firmly established at the international level. We examine the association between estimated population averages of emigration intentions and official migration flow data based on data for more than 160 countries. The results show a strong association between emigration intentions and recorded bilateral flows to industrialized countries, as well as between intentions and aggregated out‐migration. The results provide policymakers with a reliability assessment of survey data on emigration intentions and encourage future attempts to incorporate survey data in formal statistical migration forecasting models.     

Framing human rights: exploring storytelling within internet companies

This article explores human rights storytelling within two of the dominant internet companies, Google and Facebook. Based on interview with company staff as well as analysis of publicly available statements, the article examines how human rights are framed, made sense of and translated into company norms, products, and governance structures. The paper argues that the companies’ framing in many respects resembles that of the United States’ online freedom agenda, celebrating the liberating power of the internet and perceiving human rights as primarily safeguards against repressive governments. The companies see freedom of expression as part of their DNA and do not perceive any contradiction between this standard and business practices that may impact negatively on users’ freedom of expression, such as terms of service enforcement. Likewise, there is no sense of conflict between the online business model and their users’ right to privacy.     

Co-morbidity Between Gambling Problems and Depressive Symptoms: A Longitudinal Perspective of Risk and Protective Factors

In both adolescents and adults, gambling problems and depressive symptoms co-occur and share some common risk factors (e.g., impulsivity and socio-family risk). However, little is known about (1) the developmental course of the co-morbidity of these problems; (2) variables that may moderate the effect of these common risk factors on gambling problems and depressive symptoms. Of specific interest could be individuals’ social relationships with significant others such as parents and friends, because research shows that they moderate the effect of other risk factors on gambling problems and depressive symptoms. The goals of this study were to: (a) identify developmental pathways for gambling problems and depressive symptoms, with a focus on co-morbidity; (b) assess the moderating effect of relationship quality with parents and friends on the link between common risk factors and the trajectories of gambling problems and depressive symptoms. Study participants were 878 males. Predictors were assessed during childhood and adolescence and gambling problems and depressive symptoms were assessed in late adolescence and young adulthood. Latent class analysis revealed four distinct joint trajectories of gambling problems and depressive symptoms. Subsequent logistic regression revealed that impulsivity predicted membership in all pathogenic trajectories, and quality of the relationship with parents predicted membership in depressogenic trajectories. In addition, we found that the membership in the comorbid trajectory can be predicted by an interaction between friendship quality and socio-family risk.     

Of River Linkage and Issue Linkage: Transboundary Conflict and Cooperation on the River Meuse

Abstract

It is a truism in mainstream International Relations that issue linkage promotes regime formation and integration. The present article applies this idea to the transboundary lower river Meuse and finds its history of integration to be a tortuous one. Contextual political factors have at times promoted integration, at times fragmentation. The path towards regional integration, then, has not been not linear, but has consisted of conflict and cooperation, of (Meuse–Scheldt) river linkage and issue linkage, but also counterlinkage and non-linkage. Clearly linkage is not necessarily positive. I will argue that this does not need to be problematic, but suggest accepting more complexity in the analysis of river integration. I propose a way to create some order in the many available concepts of linkage to map out the role of linkage in integration.