Nontraditional Families and Childhood Progress Through School: A Comment on Rosenfeld

We reexamine Rosenfeld’s (2010) study on the association between child outcomes and same-sex family structure. Using the same data set, we replicate and generalize Rosenfeld’s findings and show that the implications of his study are different when using either alternative comparison groups or alternative sample restrictions. Compared with traditional married households, we find that children being raised by same-sex couples are 35 % less likely to make normal progress through school; this difference is statistically significant at the 1 % level.     

Challenges in Rural Social Work Practice: When Support Groups Contain Your Neighbors,Church Members,and the PTA

Rural social work occurs in unique practice environments with challenges and rare opportunities. Strong social ties, commonly found in rural communities and often missing in urban areas, can serve as sources of resilience for group members facing adverse life circumstances. Therapeutic formal and informal support groups, bolstered by this support and led by social workers in rural communities, can face numerous challenges due to locale, lack of transportation, and potential worker burnout. This article highlights ethical considerations rooted in a theme of rural group work while providing helpful hints based on the IASWG Standards for Social Work Practice with Groups.     

The Aftercare Support Program: An Emerging Group Intervention for Transition-Aged Youth

The unique challenges faced by transition-aged youth have received considerable attention in the literature, but few developments for aftercare support interventions have followed. The Aftercare Support Program (ASP) is a group-based intervention designed for such youth. ASP was developed as a zero budget, low-intensity intervention delivered by volunteers from a local college/university and youth-serving agencies to encourage transition-aged youth to pursue postsecondary education and vocational training by utilizing existing community resources and services. The underlying theoretical concepts are derived from solution-focused brief therapy and a strengths-perspective in social work. Case vignettes, including feedback from participants and lessons learned are offered, along with implications for the ASP model and other aftercare support models for transition-aged youth at a time when public and private funds for such programs are limited.     

Dementia Caregiving Outcomes: The Impact of Caregiving Onset,Cognitive Impairment and Behavioral Problems

With a projected increase in the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related dementias, family caregiving is steadily increasing. Caring for an individual with AD is characterized as a “career,” and within this career are a number of key transitions, including the onset of caregiving. Research reveals a number of negative emotional health outcomes for AD caregivers, including depression and role overload, but less research has examined the influence of key transitions on the emotional adaptation of caregivers. The purpose of this study is to examine how different patterns of caregiving onset (gradual and abrupt) impact emotional health outcomes for AD caregivers. This study also explores how care-recipient cognitive impairment and behavioral problems moderate these relationships. Cross-sectional, quantitative data from 100 caregivers completing self-administered surveys were used. A series of one-way ANOVAs and multiple regression analyses were conducted to address study aims. Results indicate that care-recipient cognition and behavioral problems moderated the relationship between caregiving onset and emotional health outcomes for caregivers who experienced a more abrupt entry into the caregiving role. Results suggest the importance of considering different onset transitions and moderating factors within the caregiving career to target clinical interventions. Implications for social work practice are discussed.     

Emotions in criminological theory: Insights from social psychology

A number of scholars have noted that emotional processes have been undertheorized in criminology. Although criminologists have explored how various emotions facilitate or inhibit crime, few formal theories of crime clearly address the role of emotional processes. Sociological theories of emotions provide a number of insights that criminologists might find useful to help fill the gaps in criminological explanations of offending. We illustrate the utility of sociological theories of emotions to criminology by connecting three prominent criminological theories with complimentary social psychological theories of emotions. Specifically, we discuss how the power–status theory of emotions can clarify emotional responses to strain in general strain theory, how affect control theory can illuminate the emotions involved in identity adoption within labeling theory, and how interaction ritual chains theory can highlight emotional responses to coercion in differential coercion theory. Making connections to more clearly theorize emotions is critical to the advancement of criminological theory.     

Scientific Partisanship: The Social Geometry of Intellectual Support

The article applies D. Black's pure sociology paradigm to examine the degree to which scientific evidence supports ideas deduced from the perspective. The main argument suggests that the empirical support for pure sociology varies inversely with the social distance separating scholars in social space. Moreover, the nature of the evidence adduced and the use of qualitative or quantitative methodologies predictably vary with social distance as well, increasing the likelihood of finding confirming or disconfirming evidence. The study tests these ideas by examining the full range of refereed journal articles (n = 191) published from 1976 to 2015 with pure sociology as the main focus. L'article utilise le paradigme de la sociologie pure de D. Black afin d'examiner à quel point les évidences scientifiques soutiennent les idées proposées par cette approche. L'argument principal suggère que le soutien empirique pour la sociologie pure varie inversement avec la distance sociale séparant les spécialistes dans l'espace social. De plus, la nature des évidences obtenues et l'utilisation de méthodes qualitatives ou quantitatives varient aussi en fonction de la distance sociale, augmentant la probabilité d'obtenir des évidences confirmant ou réfutant le paradigme. Cette recherche teste ces idées en examinant l'ensemble des articles de revues avec évaluations externes (n = 191) publiés entre 1976 et 2015 avec la sociologie pure comme focus principal.     

Clearing the air: American Indian tribal college students' exposure to second hand smoke & attitudes towards smoke free campus policies

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine knowledge, awareness, and support for campus smoke-free policies. Participants: 1,256 American Indian tribal college students from three tribal colleges in the Midwest and Northern Plains. Methods: Data are from an observational cross-sectional study of American Indian tribal college students, collected through a web-based survey. Results: Only 40% of tribal college students reported not being exposed to second hand smoke in the past 7 days. A majority of nonsmokers (66%) agreed or strongly agreed with having a smoke-free campus, while 34.2% of smokers also agreed or strongly agreed. Overall, more than a third (36.6%) of tribal college students were not aware of their campus smoking policies. Conclusions: Tribal campuses serving American Indian students have been much slower in adopting smoke-free campus policies. Our findings show that tribal college students would support a smoke-free campus policy.     

Early Motherhood and Long‐Term Economic Outcomes: Findings From a 30‐Year Longitudinal Study

This study examined linkages between early motherhood (before age 20) and long‐term economic disadvantage, using data from a birth cohort of 509 New Zealand‐born women followed to age 30. Associations between early motherhood and economic outcomes were examined using linear and logistic regression models and were adjusted for a range of prepregnancy factors. The findings suggested that early motherhood was associated with several indicators of economic disadvantage at age 30, including working fewer hours, welfare dependence, lower personal incomes, and exposure to economic hardship. These associations remained statistically significant even after extensive adjustment for confounding factors. These findings suggest that having a child before age 20 leads to long‐term economic disadvantage that persists for at least a decade.