Young bisexual people’s experiences of microaggression: Implications for social work

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on negative identity experiences reported by young bisexual people in a 28-day daily study, and the implications of these experiences for social work practice. Participants ranged in age from 18–30 years, had Internet access, could read and write in English, and identified as bisexual or felt the label applied to them. Participants who completed at least one diary entry (n = 91) included 49 women, 30 men, and seven genderqueer people. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, data were organized according to the social ecological model. Erasure, stereotyping, and oppressive discourse microaggressions occurred at both the institutional and interpersonal levels. The majority of reported microaggressions occurred at the interpersonal level, with erasure and stereotyping being most common. Participants also reported three types of intrapersonal microaggressions: internalized oppressions, internalized stereotypes, and ambivalence about coming out. Findings can inform social workers’ efforts to increase their capacity to support bisexual people.     

Action following the discovery of a global association between the whole genome and adverse event risk in a clinical drug‐development programme

Observation of adverse drug reactions during drug development can cause closure of the whole programme. However, if association between the genotype and the risk of an adverse event is discovered, then it might suffice to exclude patients of certain genotypes from future recruitment. Various sequential and non‐sequential procedures are available to identify an association between the whole genome, or at least a portion of it, and the incidence of adverse events. In this paper we start with a suspected association between the genotype and the risk of an adverse event and suppose that the genetic subgroups with elevated risk can be identified. Our focus is determination of whether the patients identified as being at risk should be excluded from further studies of the drug. We propose using a utility function to determine the appropriate action, taking into account the relative costs of suffering an adverse reaction and of failing to alleviate the patient's disease. Two illustrative examples are presented, one comparing patients who suffer from an adverse event with contemporary patients who do not, and the other making use of a reference control group. We also illustrate two classification methods, LASSO and CART, for identifying patients at risk, but we stress that any appropriate classification method could be used in conjunction with the proposed utility function. Our emphasis is on determining the action to take rather than on providing definitive evidence of an association. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The risk of divorce as a barrier to marriage among parents of young children

Using data from the Fragile Families Study, we examine how unmarried parents’ risk of divorce influences their decision to marry. Regression results show that unmarried parents with a high predicted probability of marital dissolution (based on estimates of marital dissolution for a sample of initially married mothers with similar characteristics) had significantly lower odds of marriage to the father of their child even after controlling for individual and relationship characteristics expected to influence marriage transitions. The dissolution propensity we examine also includes a measure of the local divorce climate. As such, our results provide support for the argument that high rates of divorce in the population have led to a fear of divorce among unmarried parents which reduces their probability of marriage.     

Race, social class, and student engagement in middle school English classrooms

Student level data on participation in classroom discourse and student effort on assignments in 117 middle school English classrooms are used to investigate the social determinants of student engagement in classroom instruction. Social identity theories of race, social class, and attachment to school, and research in the social psychology of achievement motivation both suggest differential levels of student engagement among diverse student groups. Using multilevel models, the author investigates the relationship between classroom context and students’ levels of engagement. Levels of engagement among black and low SES students are mostly insensitive to classroom context, suggesting there is little collective action directed at fostering anti-school norms among these student groups. However, consistent with research in the social psychology of achievement motivation, students who begin class with weaker reading and writing skills are less likely to be engaged, setting the stage for a cycle of reduced achievement growth.     

The contribution of a history of heavy smoking to Scotland's mortality disadvantage

Scotland has a lower life expectancy than any country in Western Europe or North America, and this disadvantage is concentrated above age 50. According to the Human Mortality Database, life expectancy at age 50 has been lower in Scotland than in any other developed country since 1980. Relative to 15 developed countries that we have chosen for comparison, Scotland's life expectancy in 2009 at age 50 was lower by an average of 2.5?years for women and 1.6?years for men. We estimate that Scottish women lost 3.6?years of life expectancy at age 50 as a result of smoking, compared to 1.4?years for the comparison countries. The equivalent figures among men are 3.1 and 2.1?years. These differences are large enough for the history of heavy smoking in Scotland to account both for most of the shortfall in life expectancy for both sexes and for the country's unusually narrow sex differences in life expectancy.     

Two transformation models for estimating an ROC curve derived from continuous data

A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve is a plot of two survival functions, derived separately from the diseased and healthy samples. A special feature is that the ROC curve is invariant to any monotone transformation of the measurement scale. We propose and analyse semiparametric and parametric transformation models for this two-sample problem. Following an unspecified or specified monotone transformation, we assume that the healthy and diseased measurements have two normal distributions with different means and variances. Maximum likelihood algorithms for estimating ROC curve parameters are developed. The proposed methods are illustrated on the marker CA125 in the diagnosis of gastric cancer.     

‘To favor the side of freedom’: judicial opinions and the law of slavery

This essay uses the appellate judicial opinions in more than 800 suits for freedom from across the United States to analyze the additional commentary antebellum judges included when issuing their decisions. Judges used arguments that mirrored broader debates between abolitionists and pro-slavery advocates, while also upholding the central importance of the rule of law. In doing so, they sought to defend the judicial system from the many challenges brought by African Americans and other anti-slavery activists. Regardless of their own individual beliefs about slavery, judges often chose to frame their written opinions around appeals to morality. The use of moral arguments allowed judges to anticipate the positions of African Americans and their supporters and then render these ideas irrelevant in the face of positive laws supporting slavery. The decisions they made had real consequences for future legal pathways to freedom, and the ways judges chose to structure their decisions reveal both awareness and anxiety over the power of judicial challenges to the institution of slavery.     

Variation in the Relationship Between Education and Marriage: Marriage Market Mismatch?

Educational expansion has led to greater diversity in the social backgrounds of college students. We ask how schooling interacts with this diversity to influence marriage formation among men and women. Relying on data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 3208), we use a propensity score approach to group men and women into social strata and multilevel event history models to test differences in the effects of college attendance across strata. We find a statistically significant, positive trend in the effects of college attendance across strata, with the largest effects of college on first marriage among the more advantaged and the smallest-indeed, negative-effects among the least advantaged men and women. These findings appear consistent with a mismatch in the marriage market between individuals' education and their social backgrounds.     

Young Adults' Fertility Expectations and Events: Associations With College Enrollment and Persistence

The analyses described in this article investigated the association between adolescent fertility expectations and college enrollment (N = 7,838). They also explored the potential impact of fertility expectations and events on college persistence among 4‐year (n = 2,605) and 2‐year (n = 1,962) college students. The analysis, which used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 cohort, showed a significant association between expectations for early parenthood and the likelihood of going to a 4‐year college or 2‐year college for both men and women. In addition, the authors found that pregnancies were associated with an increased risk of college dropout for women; however, if all of the estimated effect of pregnancies on the risk of dropout were causal, they would still not be a major factor contributing to educational attainment because fertile pregnancies among college women are so rare.