Risk Factors of Sexual Harassment by Peers: A Longitudinal Investigation of African American and European American Adolescents

The present research explores risk factors for, and longitudinal associations of, sexual harassment by peers during adolescence. Eight‐hundred and seventy‐two African American and European American adolescents (65.4% African American, 51.1% females) were assessed during the summer after the eighth grade (mean age=14.2 years) and then again in the 11th grade (mean age=17.1 years). At the first assessment, adolescents were asked about their experiences with sexual harassment, their psychological reactions to sexual harassment, and also about their peer relationships, perceived pubertal timing, problem behavior, and mental health. At the second assessment, adolescents reported on their problem behavior and mental health. In general, youth who associated with peers who were involved in problem behavior were at risk for victimization. Among females, those who perceived themselves to be experiencing early pubertal development were also at risk. Additionally, for some adolescents, sexual harassment predicted later adjustment difficulties.     

Does Family Structure Matter in the Relationships Between Youth Assets and Youth Alcohol,Drug and Tobacco Use?

This study investigated significant relationships between youth assets and youth alcohol, tobacco, and drug use that differ according to family structure (one- or two-parent households). Data were collected from a randomly sampled inner-city population (n=1,256 teenagers and 1,256 parents of the teenagers) using in-home, in-person interviews. Logistic regression analyses, stratifying by one- and two-parent household status, were conducted with nine youth assets as the independent variables and youth alcohol, tobacco, and drug use as the dependent variables. Results indicated that the associations between assets and risk behaviors varied depending upon whether the youth lived in one- or two-parent households. Continued research is warranted to further investigate associations among family structure, youth assets, and youth risk behaviors.     

The Declining Significance of Race in Federal Civil Rights Law: The Social Structure of Employment Discrimination Claims

We examine changes in the nature and rate of complaints filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in the past 35 years. The EEOC's role has shifted over this period from ensuring job access for racial minorities to providing diverse protections for a much broader class of incumbent workers. We first describe trends in discrimination complaints, most notably the shift from racial discrimination to other bases of discrimination, and develop a conceptual model of choice among socially structured alternatives to account for them. We then test the model with a time series analysis of changes in the complaint rate among different worker groups to evaluate the relative importance of legal, political, and socioeconomic determinants of civil rights complaints. Net of changes in the political climate, benefit compensation, inequality, and education levels, we find that legal changes and group-specific unemployment rates are the strongest and most consistent determinants of the rate of race, sex, and total discrimination complaints. Our results suggest that people will bear the costs of filing a complaint when legal options are relatively attractive and when employment options on the external labor market are unattractive.     

The influence of religiosity on charitable behavior: A COPPS investigation

We examine the role of religion in charitable giving and find that the religious preference of both the donor and the recipient organization influence giving behavior. By exploiting a panel survey of charitable giving, we demonstrate that traditional empirical analysis on charitable giving masks important differences among donor groups. Religious giving by religious individuals is least responsive to changes in price and income, while secular giving by secular individuals has the greatest sensitivity.     

One Decade of Self Exclusion: Missouri Casino Self-Excluders Four to Ten Years after Enrollment

For more than a decade, casinos around the world have offered self-exclusion programs (SEPs) to gamblers seeking help with their gambling behavior. Despite the proliferation of SEPs, little is known about the long-term outcomes for gamblers who utilize these programs. The current study assessed the experiences of a sample (N = 113) of Missouri self-excluders (SEs) for as long as 10 years after their initial enrollment in the Missouri Voluntary Exclusion Program (MVEP). Most SEs had positive experiences with MVEP and reduced their gambling and gambling problems after enrollment. However, 50% of SEs who attempted to trespass at Missouri casinos after enrollment were able to, indicating that the benefit of MVEP was attributable more to the act of enrollment than enforcement. SEs who engaged in complementary treatment or self-help groups had more positive outcomes than those who did not, suggesting that SEPs ought to encourage and provide information about additional support and treatment options to participants.     

Exploring Social Class: Voices of Inter‐Class Couples

Social class is not often discussed or examined in‐depth in couple and family therapy research and literature even though social class shapes familial relationships and is considered an important variable in marital satisfaction. In this qualitative study, we explored the perceptions of eight couples who made lasting commitments across class lines by asking them about the impact of their social class backgrounds on their relationships. Three categories of themes emerged including: (a) differences and similarities in values and attitudes toward education, work, money, and class awareness/classism, (b) relationship issues involving families of origin, friends, and class‐based couple conflict, and (c) differences in economic resources, social capital and privileges/opportunities. Implications for assessment and treatment of couples are included.     

Popular music and urban regeneration: The music industries of Merseyside

In this article I address the origins of America's national parks, particularly as they figure in the environmentalist discourse surrounding the institution of Yosemite Valley as a public park. Although technically speaking Yosemite did not become a national park until 1890, its cession to the State of California in 1864 provides an important cultural site for the emergence of environmentalism as part of a broader concern with the relations between aesthetic, social and natural agency. In mapping out these relations in Frederick Law Olmsted's 1865 report on the management of Yosemite, I claim that the preservation of Yosemite reproduces nature as a public park in which human agency can be simultaneously produced and elided by means of the aesthetic agency of nature. I read Olmsted's report as a discursive site on which we can trace the structural parallels between the preservation of Yosemite and several related cultural practices in which the origins of American environmentalism are embedded. I also read it as sketching out the configurations of human and natural agency within which these parallel practices are articulated.

My study operates from the assumption that science and technology need to be understood not simply by explaining how they are socially or culturally constructed, but also by looking at how certain fundamental ideas of metaphors (like natural agency or the reproduction of nature) are worked out at the same historical moment in different discursive practices. In taking up the idea of America as it both defines and is defined by the network of relations among science, technology and culture, I outline certain myths of American environmentalist origins as played out across a number of diverse and heterogeneous discourses and technologies of representation and reproduction. I hope also to illuminate the way in which American cultural origins are simultaneously constructed and destabilized through the act of reproducing nature.     

The place of “think family” approaches in child and family social work: Messages from a process evaluation of an English pathfinder service

Findings are reported from a process study of an English multi-disciplinary team working with families with long standing and complex problems. The approaches and methods of the team are described and placed in the context of UK policy developments and of UK and USA research on professional practice with families facing multiple difficulties. Basic data are provided on all families referred in the first year and analysed with respect to the first 100 completed cases. A broadly ethnographic research approach is used for the observational study of the team interactions and decision-making on individual cases. For a one-third sub-sample of 33 cases, process and interim outcome data are analysed from information systematically extracted from case records. These are complemented by qualitative data from interviews with managers and caseworkers and by observation of ‘team around the family’ and professionals' meetings. The researchers conclude that the service succeeds in engaging a majority of the referred families who have been hard to reach or hard to change in the past and whose children are either ‘on the edge of care’ or likely to be significantly harmed without the provision of an intensive service. The researchers concluded that improvements were made in the life chances of children in 75% of the families. Aspects of the service identified as associated with more positive outcomes are: the allocation of two key workers (one for the child/ren and one for the parent/s); the centrality of relationship-based practice and flexibility of the approach rather than strict adherence to any particular practice model; the fact that the service is firmly embedded within the statutory children's services department, allowing for continuity of relationships with team around the family members when the intensive service ends; and flexibility about case duration and intensity.