A prospective study of sexual assault and alcohol use among first-year college women

This study prospectively examined the relation between alcohol use and sexual assault in a sample (N = 319) of first-year college women. Both frequency of drinking and frequency of binge drinking were measured. Over the course of their freshman year, 19.3% reported experiencing at least one sexual assault. Frequent binge drinking and frequent drinking predicted a subsequent sexual assault; however, experiencing a sexual assault did not predict changes in alcohol use. Frequent binge drinking demonstrated a stronger association with sexual assault than did frequent drinking. Findings help clarify the relation between alcohol use and sexual assault in college women and call for continued differentiation in assessment of alcohol use.     

Ascertaining the Perspectives of Young Children in Care: Case Studies in the Use of Reality Boxes

This article describes the use of an innovative method, reality boxes, to elicit the perspectives of children, ages four to seven years, in state care. Using examples from a broader research project based on children in Northern Ireland, which was concerned with their participation rights, the article considers how the children used the boxes to express their views. Informed by a child rights‐based approach, the article highlights the processes and practices involved and concludes by stressing the potential importance of this method, used in the context of this framework, in social work practice with young children.     

Measurement of Race and Ethnicity in a Changing, Multicultural America

It is well accepted that concepts of race, ethnicity, and ancestry are changing constructs that reflect the social, economic, and political climate of the times. Studying the history of the collection of data on race, place of birth, Hispanic origin, and ancestry in US decennial censuses provides a better understanding of the race and ethnic concepts currently in use for official federal statistics. This history can help guide the evolution of these concepts for research on alternative measurement approaches, future censuses, and future statistics. The purpose of this paper is threefold. The first objective is to provide a historical overview of race and ethnic measurement in US decennial censuses. The second and third objectives are to present Census Bureau plans to experiment with alternative approaches to measuring race and ethnicity in the 2010 Census and to discuss race and ethnic measurement issues for future decennial censuses.     

Variations in carbon dioxide fluxes within a city landscape: Identifying a vehicular influence

To date, studies examining carbon dioxide (CO₂) fluxes in urban areas have been limited compared to those in rural environments. The objectives of our study were to examine the relationship between traffic volume and CO₂ fluxes. We demonstrated that CO₂ fluxes were strongly linked with surrounding land use, specifically impervious surfaces and traffic volume. A site near downtown Syracuse in New York State (USA) had relatively constant positive fluxes (source: +39 μmol CO₂ m^?2 s^?1) throughout the year as a result of strong vehicular traffic influence from two nearby interstate highways. There was a strong positive relationship between traffic and CO₂ fluxes (r²?=?0.93, p?<?0.0001) with marked differences between the weekend days versus the workweek days. In contrast, a residential site in Syracuse was dominated by vegetative influences during the leaf-on period due to CO₂ uptake by photosynthesis, reaching a maximum negative mean diurnal flux of ?11 μmol CO₂ m^?2 s^?1 around midday (sink). The spatial variations of CO₂ fluxes identify the critical role played by local traffic volumes in affecting the CO₂ dynamics of urban environments. Understanding the dynamic fluxes of CO₂ in urban environments has important implications for local, regional and global evaluations of CO₂ budgets and inventories, and carbon cycle and climate modeling.     

Trends in Cohabitation Outcomes: Compositional Changes and Engagement Among Never‐Married Young Adults

Cohabitation is now the modal first union for young adults, and most marriages are preceded by cohabitation even as fewer cohabitations transition to marriage. These contrasting trends may be due to compositional shifts among cohabiting unions, which are increasingly heterogeneous in terms of cohabitation order, engagement, and the presence of children, as well as across socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. The author constructs 5‐year cohabitation cohorts for 18‐ to 34‐year‐olds from the 2002 and 2006–2010 cycles of the National Survey of Family Growth (n = 17,890 premarital cohabitations) to examine the outcomes of cohabitations over time. Compared to earlier cohabitations, those formed after 1995 were more likely to dissolve, and those formed after 2000 were less likely to transition to marriage even after accounting for the compositional shifts among individuals in cohabiting unions. Higher instability and decreased chances of marriage occurred among both engaged and non‐engaged individuals, suggesting society‐wide changes in cohabitation over time.     

Explaining Undocumented Migration to the U.S.

Using data from the Mexican Migration Project and the Latin American Migration Project, we find that undocumented migration from Mexico reflects U.S. labor demand and access to migrant networks and is little affected by border enforcement, which instead sharply reduces the odds of return movement. Undocumented migration from Central America follows primarily from political violence associated with the U.S. intervention of the 1980s, and return migration has always been unlikely. Mass undocumented migration from Mexico appears to have ended because of demographic changes there, but undocumented migration from Central America can be expected to grow slowly through processes of family reunification.     

An education and negotiation of differences: the ‘schooling’ experiences of English-speaking Canadian children growing up with polio during the 1940s and 1950s

In this paper we present oral narratives focusing on schooling experiences of Canadians who lived with polio as children between 1940 and 1959. We argue that disabled students with polio received an education about the differences ascribed to them by individuals in authority (teachers, principals), by other young people, and through the dominant negative discourses of polio and normalizing, ableist practices of schooling. Using narrative accounts from participants’ interviews, we analyze their school experiences of difference: inaccessible physical and temporal spaces, bullying at school, exclusion from classes, and negotiating youth culture related to shoes, clothes and friendships. However, participants were not passive and they discussed how, along with families, they negotiated and occasionally defied normalizing processes. This research gives voice to a generation of disabled English-speaking Canadians, whose stories about school have not been heard before.