Benefits and costs associated with mutual-help community-based recovery homes: The Oxford House model

We used data from a randomized controlled study of Oxford House (OH), a self-run, self-supporting recovery home, to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the program. Following substance abuse treatment, individuals that were assigned to an OH condition (n = 68) were compared to individuals assigned to a usual care condition (n = 61). Economic cost measures were derived from length of stay at an Oxford House residence, and derived from self-reported measures of inpatient and outpatient treatment utilization. Economic benefit measures were derived from self-reported information on monthly income, days participating in illegal activities, binary responses of alcohol and drug use, and incarceration. Results suggest that OH compared quite favorably to usual care: the net benefit of an OH stay was estimated to be roughly $29,000 per person on average. Bootstrapped standard errors suggested that the net benefit was statistically significant. Costs were incrementally higher under OH, but the benefits in terms of reduced illegal activity, incarceration and substance use substantially outweighed the costs. The positive net benefit for Oxford House is primarily driven by a large difference in illegal activity between OH and usual care participants. Using sensitivity analyses, under more conservative assumptions we still arrived at a net benefit favorable to OH of $17,830 per person.     

Assessing the Reliability of the Gambling Functional Assessment: Revised

Dixon and Johnson (Anal Gambl Behav 1: 44–49, 2007) proposed the Gambling Functional Assessment as a tool to identify the consequences maintaining the respondent’s gambling behavior, but subsequent studies on its psychometric properties suggested that it could use improvement. The present study investigated the internal consistency of the Gambling Functional Assessment—Revised using the responses of 1,060 undergraduate students. Temporal reliability was assessed by a second administration of the measure four (n = 87) or twelve (n = 98) weeks after the first administration. Temporal reliability was also compared to the South Oaks Gambling Screen (Lesieur and Blume in Am J Psychiatry 144: 1184–1188, 1987), which was also administered at both time points. Internal consistency measures were good to excellent, even when potential non-gamblers were excluded from the analyses. Temporal stability was also very good, with the possible exception of the consequence of “escape” at 12 weeks. The Gambling Functional Assessment—Revised represents a potentially useful tool for researchers and therapists interested in why respondents are gambling.     

Knox meets Cox: Adapting epidemiological space-time statistics to demographic studies

Many important questions and theories in demography focus on changes over time, and on how those changes differ over geographic and social space. Space-time analysis has always been important in studying fertility transitions, for example. However, demographers have seldom used formal statistical methods to describe and analyze time series of maps. One formal method, used widely in epidemiology, criminology, and public health, is Knox’s space-time interaction test. In this article, we discuss the potential of the Knox test in demographic research and note some possible pitfalls. We demonstrate how to use familiar proportional hazards models to adapt the Knox test for demographic applications. These adaptations allow for nonrepeatable events and for the incorporation of structural variables that change in space and time. We apply the modified test to data on the onset of fertility decline in Brazil over 1960–2000 and show how the modified method can produce maps indicating where and when diffusion effects seem strongest, net of covariate effects.     

Mobilisation strategies of individual and institutional actors in Brussels’ artistic and cultural scenes

Though sharing a common territory, the cultural spaces of Brussels are divided according to a complex structure where Francophone and Flemish Communities play a dominant role. These two language-based communities set separate cultural policies and programming for their residents in Brussels. Within this fragmented structure, local socio-cultural actors have mobilised promoting cross-Community collaboration towards a shared vision for the Brussels-Capital Region (ex. Cultural Plan for Brussels). Further, individual artists themselves have developed strategies to participate in Community-defined cultural programming and to gain recognition for their talent as local (Bruxellois) artists regardless of their ethnic, linguistic or migrant background. This article explores how socio-cultural actors and artists have mobilised to reframe ‘culture’ in Brussels, and to gain access to cultural venues particularly in the case of migrant and migrant-origin artists whose engagement and recognition in Brussels’ cultural scenes have been little studied.     

Twitter publics: how online political communities signaled electoral outcomes in the 2010 US house election

Online social networks are an important setting for understanding the intersection of online communities and offline political processes. This paper analyzes the different ways that people discuss elections on Twitter. Using data from a random sample totaling 113,985 tweets and 30,995 users, we examine the differences between users who employ various strategies to talk about US 2010 Congressional candidates. We show that users who simply include the text of a candidate's name in a message exhibit different behaviors than those who use platform-specific mechanisms. Users who employ free-text tend to have younger accounts, are less likely to be ‘verified’, and generate fewer messages about candidates. Furthermore, candidates’ share of the free-text Twitter public has a larger correlation with their vote tallies than @mentions or hashtags. This research has methodological implications for studying the dynamics between online discourse and offline behavior. Overall, our findings support the view that forms of communication that are more accessible are more indicative of broader social trends.     

The influence of FDA advisory information and black box warnings on individual use of prescription antidepressants

We examine how use of antidepressant medications is influenced by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warnings about the increased risk of suicidality associated with pediatric antidepressant use. With individual-level data on antidepressant use from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, we consider whether consumer responses to FDA warnings differ among targeted (children) and non-targeted (adult) age-groups. Because the warning labels specifically mentioned new users, we examine separately the effects of the warnings on initiations of antidepressant therapy and on continued use of antidepressants. We find evidence consistent with reduced initiation of antidepressant use among the intended population of children, and that usage among children with more highly educated parents responded earlier to FDA information. However, we also find spillover effects of reduced initiation among the non-targeted population of adults. Overall, our results indicate that the FDA warning may have led consumers to perceive risks beyond those specifically mentioned.     

Does the retirement consumption puzzle differ across the distribution?

Previous research has repeatedly found a puzzling one-time drop in the mean and median of consumption at retirement, contrary to the predictions of the life-cycle hypothesis. However, very little is known as to whether these effects vary across the consumption distribution. This study expands upon the previous work by examining changes in the consumption distribution between the non-retired and the retired using quantile regression techniques on pseudo-cohorts from the cross-sectional data of the 1990–2007 Consumer Expenditure Survey. The results indicate that there are insignificant changes between these groups at the lower end of the consumption distribution, while there are significant decreases at the higher end of this distribution. In addition, these changes in the distribution are gradually larger in magnitude when moving from the lower end to the higher end, which is found using several different measures of consumption. Work-related expenditures are instead shown to decrease uniformly across the consumption distribution. This evidence reveals that there is a progressive distributional component to the retirement consumption puzzle.     

Documenting Pornography Use in America: A Comparative Analysis of Methodological Approaches

Estimates of pornography use in the United States range widely. We explore the reasons for the variation in such estimates among U.S. adults using data from four different recent nationally representative samples—each of which asked a different type of question about pornography use. We attribute the notable variation in estimates to differences in question wording and answer options, and assert that a survey question asking respondents about their most recent use of pornography minimizes recall bias and is better poised to assess the overall prevalence of pornography in a population than is the more common approach of asking respondents about their historical general-use pattern. When we privileged the most-recent-use approach, survey data from 2014 reveal that 46% of men and 16% of women between the ages of 18 and 39 intentionally viewed pornography in a given week. These numbers are notably higher than most previous population estimates employing different types of questions. The results have ramifications for methods of surveying sensitive self-reported behaviors and for contextualizing scholars’ claims as well as popular conversations about the reach and implications of pornography use in the United States.     

COMBAT EXPOSURE,CIGARETTE CONSUMPTION,AND SUBSTANCE USE

This study estimates the relationship between combat exposure and several risky health behaviors: cigarette consumption, binge drinking, and drug use. We find that the U.S. active duty military personnel deployed to combat zones with enemy firefight are more likely to subsequently smoke cigarettes, consume alcohol, and use illicit drugs than their counterparts deployed to noncombat operations. Our results suggest that the mental health effects of combat can explain up to two‐thirds of the estimated association between combat exposure and risky health behaviors. (JEL H56, I12)