Implications of no recent sexual activity,casual sex,or exclusive sex for college women's sexual well-being depend on sexual attitudes

Objective: We examine how sexual activity relates to sexual well-being within the context of sexual attitudes, sexual agency, and sexual desire. Participants/Methods: We surveyed 471 college women in 2012–2014 who had ever had sex. Results: Sexual agency and sexual desire consistently predicted well-being, regardless of recent sexual activity. There was a significant interaction between recent sexual activity (none, casual, or exclusive relationship) and sexual attitudes. Exclusive sex was associated with higher than average sexual well-being, especially for women with permissive attitudes. Women who had casual sex and held permissive to average attitudes had the next highest levels of well-being, but those with non-permissive attitudes fell substantially below the overall mean. Women who had no recent sex were consistently below the mean, especially for women with more permissive attitudes. Conclusions: A disconnect between sexual attitudes and recent sexual activity may lower women's sexual well-being.     

A systematic review on community-based interventions for elder abuse and neglect

Elder abuse and neglect is a societal issue that requires prevention and intervention strategies at the practice and policy level. A systematic review on the efficacy of community-based elder abuse interventions was undertaken to advance the state of knowledge in the field. The peer-reviewed literature between 2009 and December 2015 were searched across four databases. Two raters independently reviewed all articles, assessed their methodological quality, and used a modified Sackett Scale to assign levels of evidence. Four thousand nine hundred and five articles were identified; nine were selected for inclusion. Although there was Level-1 evidence for psychological interventions (n = 2), only one study on strategies for relatives (START) led to a reported decrease in elder abuse. There was Level-4 evidence for conservatorship, an elder abuse intervention/prevention program (ECARE), and a multidisciplinary intervention (n = 4), in which one study yielded significant decreases in elder abuse and/or neglect. The remaining three were classified as Level-5 evidence (n = 3) for elder mediation and multidisciplinary interventions. There are limited studies with high levels of evidence for interventions that decrease elder abuse and neglect. The scarcity of community-based interventions for older adults and caregivers highlights the need for further work to elevate the quality of studies.     

‘I Eat the Vegetables because I Have Grown them with My Own Hands’: Children's Perspectives on School Gardening and Vegetable Consumption

Inadequate vegetable consumption is a global public health concern related to numerous health risks. A promising intervention to increase children's vegetable consumption is school gardening, although earlier studies have shown mixed results. This study explores how gardening might contribute to changed attitudes towards eating vegetables from a child's perspective. Findings are based on qualitative research with children in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. We reflect on how children enact agency regarding their vegetables. Results show that children report that changes occur in their attitudes towards vegetables as they not only eat more vegetables but also advocate the consumption of vegetables at home.     

Unmarried Coparenting in the Context of Poverty: Understanding the Relationship Between Stress,Family Resource Management,and Resilience

Due to rising rates of non-marital birth in the United States, unmarried families have been the subject of extensive research and the target of government funded interventions over the last 15 years. Despite a growing literature on this population, few studies have addressed how unmarried couples coparent in the context of poverty. In the present study we used in-depth interviews with paired mothers and fathers to explore resilience processes in unmarried coparenting. We found that unmarried couples aspired to be good coparents, but the stress of living in poverty and the challenges of parenting young children led some to experience family strain or crisis. Using family stress theory as a framework for organizing the findings, we concluded that family resource management distinguished couples that adapted successfully to the task of coparenting from those that struggled to do so. Implications for theory, future research, and practice are discussed.     

Forest cover is important across multiple scales for bird communities in vacant lots

Urban vacant lots can vary considerably in their vegetation structure, from dense, shrubby habitats to wooded remnant fragments that may provide habitat for a variety of birds. By identifying which features promote diverse bird communities, we can determine at which scale management practices should focus and the necessary habitat structure and composition features. We surveyed 150 vacant lots throughout Baltimore, Maryland for their bird communities, lot vegetation, and landscape-level forest cover. An ordination of the bird community indicated a response to a gradient of canopy cover and canopy height at the vacant lot. We also found that forest cover within 100 m of the vacant lot was the most important predictor of abundance for five bird species of interest. Species richness was spatially autocorrelated among sites, indicating that bird communities may also be driven by species’ dispersal and environmental gradients across the city. Overall, bird communities are responding to habitat features across multiple scales, from the vacant lot vegetation, to landscape-level forest cover, to city-wide dynamics. Thus, we recommend management practices to focus on increasing city-wide forest cover in order to increase species richness, yet with awareness regarding where the lot occurs within the city.     

Empathetic technologies: digital materiality and video ethnography

In this article, we advance recent theoretical and methodological discussions regarding the use of video techniques for generating empathetic encounters. We do so through a focus on how these techniques might be rendered in research conducted through sites of action and experience that are explicitly constituted through forms of digital materiality, whereby the digital and material are understood as relational and emergent. We argue for a processual view of digital materiality and in correspondence with this, of the research process, whereby empathetic imagining is itself understood as emergent from the research encounter. By way of example we draw on recent video ethnography research that has used GoPro and researcher-held video recording in collaboration with participants, in order to record and develop understandings of their experiences of self-tracking and cycle commuting.     

Perturbed robust linear estimating equations for confidentiality protection in remote analysis

National statistical agencies and other data custodians collect and hold a vast amount of survey and census data, containing information vital for research and policy analysis. However, the problem of allowing analysis of these data, while protecting respondent confidentiality, has proved challenging to address. In this paper we will focus on the remote analysis approach, under which a confidential dataset is held in a secure environment under the direct control of the data custodian agency. A computer system within the secure environment accepts a query from an analyst, runs it on the data, then returns the results to the analyst. In particular, the analyst does not have direct access to the data at all, and cannot view any microdata records. We further focus on the fitting of linear regression models to confidential data in the presence of outliers and influential points, such as are often present in business data. We propose a new method for protecting confidentiality in linear regression via a remote analysis system, that provides additional confidentiality protection for outliers and influential points in the data. The method we describe in this paper was designed for the prototype DataAnalyser system developed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, however the method would be suitable for similar remote analysis systems.     

Identifying Associations Between State Medicaid Expansion Decisions and Spatial Disparities in County Insurance Rate Changes Under the Affordable Care Act

By the end of 2014, twenty-four states rejected Medicaid expansion, providing a unique opportunity to examine changes in insurance coverage rates after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act within and between states that did versus did not expand Medicaid. Using multilevel regression analyses of county-level non-elderly adult small area health insurance estimates (N = 3135) from the US Census Bureau, several important findings emerge. Compared to counties located in states that did not expand Medicaid, counties located in states that did expand experienced significantly larger increases in adult health insurance coverage rates between 2013 and 2014, net of the county baseline insurance coverage rate, socioeconomic and demographic composition, and labor market characteristics. In states that did not expand Medicaid, counties with larger shares of vulnerable residents (i.e., poor adults and low education) experienced lagging improvements in health insurance coverage. However, counties in states that expanded Medicaid were protected from several of these exacerbated disparities, and in some cases, experienced larger insurance coverage improvements than counties with less disadvantaged populations. These findings suggest that although insurance coverage increased in nearly all counties between 2013 and 2014, increases would have been larger and disparities would have been further alleviated if more states with highly concentrated vulnerable populations had expanded Medicaid.     

Into the Wilderness—A Case Study: The Psychodynamics of Adolescent Depression and the Need for a Holistic Intervention

Adolescent depression has become epidemic in the United States, with statistics showing that one in five adolescents may suffer from depression (Brent and Birmaher in N Engl J Med 347(9), 2002). This article examines adolescent depression from a psychodynamic perspective, and identifies the psychodynamics of adolescent depression as the affective correlates that stem from unresolved developmental conflicts, issues of separation/individuation, the search for identity and the development of the true self. This article presents wilderness therapy as a holistic intervention which can be used to address the intrapsychic, developmental and relational factors that give rise to adolescent depression. Wilderness therapy is a modality of mental health treatment that takes place outdoors and utilizes challenge and adventure, group work and other structured clinical interventions. A clinical case study presents wilderness therapy as an effective intervention for adolescent depression that can promote positive self-image and enhanced coping skills, and discusses limitations and implications for social work practice.