Unmet demand for short-acting hormonal and long-acting reversible contraception among community college students in Texas

Objective: To identify preferences for and use of short-acting hormonal (e.g., oral contraceptives, injectable contraception) or long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) among community college students in Texas. Participants: Female community college students, ages 18 to 24, at risk of pregnancy, sampled in Fall 2014 or Spring 2015 (N = 966). Methods: We assessed characteristics associated with preference for and use of short-acting hormonal or LARC methods (i.e., more-effective contraception). Results: 47% preferred short-acting hormonal methods and 21% preferred LARC, compared to 21% and 9%, respectively, who used these methods. A total of 63% of condom and withdrawal users and 78% of nonusers preferred a more effective method. Many noted cost and insurance barriers as reasons for not using their preferred more-effective method. Conclusions: Many young women in this sample who relied on less-effective methods preferred to use more-effective contraception. Reducing barriers could lead to higher uptake in this population at high risk of unintended pregnancy.     

Examining residence status as a risk factor for health risk behaviors among college students

Objective: The current study is aimed to evaluate college student residence as a unique risk factor for a range of negative health behaviors. Participants: We examined data from 63,555 students (66% females) from 157 campuses who completed the National College Health Assessment Survey in Spring 2011. Methods: Participants answered questions about the frequency of recent use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and illicit drugs, as well as sexual risk behavior in the last 30 days. Sexual risk behaviors were operationalized as having unprotected vaginal sex (yes/no) and the number of sexual partners. Results: Logistic regression analyses revealed that living off-campus is a unique predictor of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and illicit drug use, as well as engaging in unprotected sex and a greater number of sexual partners (all ps <. 01). Conclusions: Students living off-campus exhibit more substance use and sexual risk behaviors than students living on-campus, independent of gender, age, or race.     

Operationalising caseload midwifery in the Australian public maternity system: Findings from a national cross-sectional survey of maternity managers

Background

Despite high-level evidence of the benefits of caseload midwifery for women and babies, little is known about specific practice arrangements, organisational barriers and facilitators, nor about workforce requirements of caseload. This paper explores how caseload models across Australia operate.

Non-Muslim Australians’ Knowledge of Islam: Identifying and Rectifying Knowledge Deficiencies

It is more than a decade since social geographer Kevin Dunn first described non-Muslim Australians’ ignorance about Islam and its adherents and outlined a series of recommendations about how Australian governments could address this as a pressing social policy issue. Recently researchers have re-assessed non-Muslim Australians’ perceptions of their knowledge of Islam and Muslims identifying while it has improved since 2003, 70% acknowledge they know little to nothing about either. Using data from Australia’s 2016 National Social Survey, this study examines the correlation between non-Muslim Australians’ perceptions of their knowledge of Islam and Muslims and their actual knowledge. We find that perception of knowledge is a reasonable indicator of actual knowledge. Further, we find that tertiary education is the single significant demographic factor impacting actual knowledge. By examining geographical patterns of knowledge, we also find that ignorance of Islam and Muslims is consistent across Australia.     

Restricted entitlements for skilled temporary migrants: the limits of migrant consent

Temporary labour migration programmes have often attracted significant controversy, particularly with regard to provisions that restrict the social entitlements available to temporary migrant workers, compared with other categories of residents. Advocates of such restrictions have argued that migrants freely choose to participate in temporary migration schemes on the prevailing terms, and are free to leave at any time if such participation no longer serves their interests. Our central goal in this paper is to critically evaluate such consent-based justifications for restricted social entitlements of temporary migrant workers, with reference to empirical evidence concerning the practical social and economic conditions of choice experienced by these temporary migrants. Drawing on evidence from one major receiving country – Australia – we show that consent-based justifications for restricted social entitlements fail to fully account for either the practical complexity of individual migration choices, or the de facto operation of Australia’s skilled temporary migration programme as a ‘test run’ for potential future permanent residents or citizens. By bringing sociological analysis of lived migrant experiences into critical engagement with normative debates about restricted social entitlements, we contribute to the bridging of empirical and normative migration debates, which too often evolve in parallel.     

Training the Future Workforce: Social Workers in Integrated Health Care Settings

The current study explored social work skills and competencies required for work on integrated health care teams. Semi-structured, qualitative individual interviews were conducted with social workers employed in integrated health care settings. Key themes emerged around existing social work strengths, further training that is needed for this work, and fundamental skills for effective team-based collaboration. Incorporation of content, such as the social work role in integrated health care settings, advocacy in team-based treatment delivery, and incorporating medical knowledge into the social work curriculum are key to strengthening the future workforce. Education strategies can include not only infusion of integrated health care material into existing courses but also micro- and macro-specific elective courses and a range of interprofessional learning opportunities.     

Comparing community garden typologies of Baltimore,Chicago, and New York City (USA) to understand potential implications for socio-ecological services

Urban community gardens offer unique social and ecological benefits in cities. However, given the dynamic nature of cities and the profound effects of variable land uses on green space provisioning for people and wildlife, investigating community gardens from a landscape perspective offers valuable insight into the functions of these spaces in terms of ecosystem services and sustainable development. In this study, we use garden locations provided by stakeholder groups and fine-scale spatial data to compare community gardens across three cities: New York City, NY, Chicago, IL, and Baltimore, MD (USA). In each city, we assess the spatial distribution of gardens and compare the natural vegetation and impervious surface cover within these gardens to the surrounding neighborhood and landscape. We then compared these cities to clarify the role of community gardens in metropolitan development. Our findings demonstrate that gardens cluster in neighborhoods in New York City and Chicago, but they are more spatially distributed across the landscape in Baltimore. The distribution of Baltimore’s community gardens is more likely to be contributing to a greater network of ecosystem services across a broader urban landscape. Moreover, at the garden scale, gardens in NYC and Chicago have more canopy cover and built infrastructure than the more herbaceous gardens in Baltimore. This suggests that our case study cities exhibit different garden typologies, histories, and potential for ecosystem services. This work provides critical insight into the typology in and around community gardens in different cities, which is useful in understanding the potential ecosystem services and planning trajectories of these cities.

     

Pushing back the margins: power,identity and marginalia in survey research with young people

The study of marginalia has not been widely discussed in social sciences research and occupies a marginal space in terms of methodological legitimacy. We highlight the value of paying attention to the ways in which participants speak back to the researcher. This paper draws on marginalia found in surveys written or drawn by young people in classrooms across South Wales, demonstrating how various notes and marks made spontaneously by participants can tell us something important and worthwhile about how young people engage with research. We position marginalia as a manifestation of complex power dynamics in the research process that illuminate participants’ negotiation of complex and multiple subjectivities in the literal margins and between the lines of the survey pages. Whilst the sensitive and rigorous analysis of marginalia is fraught with ethical and methodological challenges, we argue that paying closer attention to marginalia presents an opportunity for deeper engagement with participants when undertaking survey research.     

How do you solve a problem like Maria? Family complexity and institutional complications in UK social work

ABSTRACT

This paper draws on UK data from an international, comparative project involving eight countries. The study examined how social workers’ conceptions and definitions of family impact on the way they engage with complex families, and how social policies that frame social work context impact on the way social workers engage with families. Focus groups were held in which social workers from four service areas (child welfare, addictions, mental health and migration) were asked to discuss a case vignette. Several factors were embedded in the vignette to represent a realistic situation a social worker may come across in their day-to-day work. Social workers clearly identified the complexity of the family’s situation in terms of the range of issues identified and candidate ‘causes’. However, typical first responses were institutional, looking for triggers that would signify certainty about their, or other agencies’ involvement. This resulted in a complicated story, through which the family was disaggregated into individual problem-service categories. This paper argues that understanding these processes and their consequences is critical for exploring the ways in which we might develop alternative, supportive professional responses with families with complex needs. It also demonstrates how organisational systems manifest themselves in everyday reasoning.