Inconsistencies in reporting the occurence and timing of first intercourse among adolescents

Two types of reporting inconsistency for sexual initiation were analyzed--event occurrence and its timing--using data from two waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Overall, 11.1% of those who reported they were sexually active at the time of first interview denied this at the subsequent one. Males of each race/ethnic group had higher percentages of inconsistency than their female counterparts. Being older, not living with parents, or having a highly educated mother was negatively associated with rescinding. Among those reporting sexual experience at both interviews, only 22.2% reported the same date of first sex. On average, teens revised their age at first sex to older ages, and boys, especially African American boys, had large variability in reporting dates, as did teens with lower verbal ability. Seven strategies for resolving inconsistent reports are presented and implications for substantive findings are discussed.     

A Sea of Trouble: A Relational Approach to the Culturally Sensitive Treatment of a Severely Disturbed Client

In this article we will show how a relational approach provides a conceptual framework that shapes and informs culturally sensitive practice with a severely disturbed client. We argue that a relational approach facilitates therapeutic action through the intense focus on countertransference, the close attention to enactments, and the therapist's authenticity and self-disclosure. Additionally, we emphasize that a therapeutic matrix that includes the cultural, racial, socioeconomic, and institutional factors, increases the likelihood clinicians will attend to what Perez-Foster calls their dissociated and disavowed personal values. We present a case that had a less than satisfactory outcome where the therapist found herself in a sea of trouble. The case illustrates how a relational approach enhanced the therapist's understanding of the case and allowed her to continue to work with a difficult and challenging client. We conclude by suggesting that our conceptual understanding of this case exemplifies a necessary and appropriate focus for future social work research and practice.     

The Effects of Children, Dual Earner Status, Sex Role Traditionalism, and Marital Structure on Marital Happiness Over Time

In this study, the link between marital happiness and the advent of children is demonstrated, accounting for dual earner status, sex role traditionalism, and marital structure. A subset of 1,275 respondents from a longitudinal data set (Marital Instability Over the Life Course: A Three Wave Panel Study, 1980–1988) whom remained married through the 3 waves was used to compare the level of marital happiness of respondents who added children between waves to those who did not. Although the addition of children negatively affected marital structure and thus indirectly lowered marital happiness, results showed children also had positive counterbalancing direct effects. Dual-earner status, income, and sex role nontraditionalism were shown to mitigate the negative effects of children on marital happiness.     

Examining Where We Were and Where We Are: Clinical Issues in Adoption 1985–1995

This article examines the changes in adoption practices over the past decade by referencing a series of 1985 articles published by Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal that presented theoretical considerations for maintaining closed adoptions. The author uses her own experience as an adoption professional, those articles currently published in the field of adoption and the experience of those most impacted by adoption, birthparents, adoptive parents and adoptees, in examining and presenting the benefits and value of open adoption.     

Feasibility study for collecting alcohol and other drug use data among secondary school students: a web-based survey approach

This study examined the feasibility of using a Web-based survey to collect alcohol and other drug use data from secondary school students in an urban school district in the Midwest. A Web-based survey was self-administered by a random sample of 6th through 11th grade students in the spring of 2002. The final sample consisted of 1,536 secondary school students (781 women and 755 men). The sample was 57% White, 40% African American, and 3% from other racial and ethnic groups. Several indicators of data quality were examined including response rate, absenteeism, refusals, substantive data, and data processing time. The study achieved a response rate of 89.1%. The results of the present study provide evidence that a Web-based survey can be successfully implemented in an economically and racially diverse urban sample of secondary students. While researchers conducting survey research within secondary schools should consider using Web-based survey approaches, additional research is needed to compare Web-based surveys to more traditional approaches to collecting data.     

Identifying the Extent of Challenging Behaviour in Adult Learning Disability Services

Correspondence to Carol Hayden, ICJS, St. George’s Building, 141 High Street, Portsmouth PO1 2HY, UK. E-mail: carol.hayden{at}port.ac.uk Summary This article presents one part of the findings of an ongoingstudy that set out to investigate and explain the extent ofchallenging behaviour in twenty-one social service run day andresidential services in one large county authority in England.This part of the study reports on staff perceptions of problematicbehaviour from service users. It uses staff reports of levelsof problematic behaviour as indicative of potentially challengingbehaviour. The study uses an adapted version of an establishedinstrument, the BPI (Behaviour Problems Inventory), as a surveytool completed by staff for all service users in a one-monthperiod (January 2000). The findings of this exercise are basedon 1,390 service users, near to a census at the time of thesurvey. The study shows ‘non-compliance’ to be themost problematic and prevalent behaviour from the point of viewof staff. Overall the research illustrates a split between themajority of service users who present staff with problematicbehaviour in a relatively minor to moderate way and a smallgroup of individuals (less than 2 per cent) who present muchmore extreme behaviour. Brief reference is made to other datacollected in the study when it helps in the interpretation ofthe behaviour patterns identified by the BPI.     

Vstreet.com: a web-based community for at-risk teens

Most teens leaving the care of an agency are woefully unprepared and unsupported. Current approaches to aftercare are expensive and difficult to implement. This study evaluated a prototype version of Vstreet.com, an innovative website for at-risk youth designed to teach lifeskills and build community. Findings from a sample of youth in the Job Corps showed that the website was highly effective in increasing their knowledge of apartment hunting skills, feelings of peer social support, and intentions of staying in touch with their agency.     

Research in mental health: social etiology versus social consequences

This article differentiates a social etiology model focused on identifying the social antecedents of one particular mental disorder from a social consequences model concerned with the overall mental health consequences of various social arrangements. In the social etiology model, people with disorders other than the one particular disorder singled out for investigation are implicitly classified as "well." This disorder-specific model is inappropriate for the more general sociological task of identifying the consequences of various social arrangements, such as concentrated poverty, racial segregation, and gender stratification. It is problematic because these consequences are typically nonspecific, not limited to one particular disorder. From this perspective, persons classified as "well" in the disorder-specific model who have a different disorder are misclassified. Consequently, the impact of social arrangements is underestimated, and estimates of causal effects are biased. To address these problems, the full range of theoretically derived mental health outcomes needs to be simultaneously analyzed.     

Does funding for HIV and sexually transmitted disease prevention matter? Evidence from panel data

Since the onset of the AIDS epidemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has allocated several billion dollars for the prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in the United States. Using state-level data from 1981 to 1998, the authors found that greater amounts of prevention funding in a given year are associated with reductions in reported gonorrhea incidence rates in subsequent years. The authors conclude that funding for STD and HIV prevention, on the whole, appears to have a discernable impact on the incidence of STDs.     

Narratives of identity: Denying empathy in conservative discourses on race,class, and sexuality

Issues of identity are crucial in current political debate. This article analyses narratives of identity using three very different examples, namely colonial-settler Australia, lesbian romance genres, and the role of class in contemporary American and British politics. It explores both privileged and marginalized identity narratives and the tensions between them. For example, lesbian romance narratives are contrasted with religious right arguments against same-sex marriage. Some argue that the complex intersections, compatibilities, and differences between conflicting narratives of identity reveal a great deal about how specific concepts of identity are formed. The narratives examined do not produce explicit binary constructions of dominant and subordinate identity categories. Rather, being able to imagine (or not imagine) other narratives plays an important part in the process of constructing identities within these discourses. Narratives that foreclose empathy facilitate the denial that discrimination or subordination is taking place. Similarly, privileged narratives of identity facilitate subjects ability to think well of themselves and their treatment of others.