A three-city comparison of drug use and drug use before sex among young men who have sex with men in the United States

High rates of drug use have been documented among young men who have sex with men (YMSM). However, updated prevalence data are needed to understand current trends, especially for drug use before sex. We used baseline data from an HIV prevention trial to examine demographic differences in drug use and drug use before sex among YMSM in Atlanta, Chicago, and New York City. Marijuana was the most commonly used drug, but alkyl nitrites (“poppers”), cocaine, and Ecstasy were also commonly used. Drug use was more prevalent among older and White YMSM, and it was similar across cities, although use of poppers and polydrug use were more common in New York City. Our data generally support national prevention efforts.     

Ableism,ambiguity, and the Anna Stubblefield case*

This article discusses the ongoing case of Anna Stubblefield, a former Rutgers University philosophy professor who was convicted of the sexual assault of an African American man with cerebral palsy. On appeal, the conviction was reversed, and as of this submission Stubblefield is awaiting news from the state of New Jersey Supreme Court as to whether there will be a retrial. This piece engages with Sherry’s article in this journal, and dissects the many layers of ableism at play in this case, arguing that justice will not be served until the alleged victim gets to be heard.     

Capital limits: social class,motivations for term-time job searching and the consequences of joblessness among UK university students

Youth unemployment figures include large numbers of full-time students, yet student joblessness receives very little academic attention, especially at a qualitative level. Despite being relatively less deleterious than youth unemployment more broadly, we show that student unemployment remains an important site for the practice and reinforcement of social inequality. Using a Bourdieusian framework to analyse interviews with 27 undergraduate students who have been unsuccessful in term-time job searching, we expose some of the limits to the extent that social and cultural capital can be converted into positive employment outcomes. Importantly, the data reveal that it is (lack of) access to material and economic resources that is most significant in ensuring that both the experience of unemployment and, concomitantly, the experience of university, in yet another way, remain highly structured by social class. These divisions shape the imperative and timing of the need to work, and also underpin nuances in respect of desires and needs in how students talk about their motivations for part-time work. These should be important considerations if policy-makers want to create a genuinely meritocratic system or deliver equitable psychological and material well-being.     

Technology-Based Interventions and Trainings to Reduce the Escalation and Impact of Alcohol Problems

There has been a rapid increase in the development of technological innovations to reduce the escalation and impact of alcohol problems among adolescents and adults. Technology-based interventions offer the possibility of reaching individuals who otherwise might not seek treatment, (e.g., those in remote areas, those not perceiving a need for treatment, or others who might resist treatment). This article describes 4 case examples of technology-based interventions for risky drinking: (a) a freely available and interactive Web site that provides individualized feedback and information on risky drinking patterns; (b) a brief intervention for adolescents that provides individualized feedback to teens regarding their alcohol use; (c) a computer-delivered screening and brief intervention for alcohol use among pregnant women; and (d) a simulation program for training social workers in screening and brief intervention. These case examples highlight how technology could have a role in addressing the Alcohol Misuse Grand Challenge.     

Status Traps

In this article, we explore nonlinearities in the intergenerational mobility process using threshold regression models. We uncover evidence of threshold effects in children's outcomes based on parental education and cognitive and noncognitive skills as well as their interaction with offspring characteristics. We interpret these thresholds as organizing dynastic earning processes into “status traps.” Status traps, unlike poverty traps, are not absorbing states. Rather, they reduce the impact of favorable shocks for disadvantaged children and so inhibit upward mobility in ways not captured by linear models. Our evidence of status traps is based on three complementary datasets; that is, the PSID, the NLSY, and US administrative data at the commuting zone level, which together suggest that the threshold-like mobility behavior we observe in the data is robust for a range of outcomes and contexts.     

Do Public Officials Trust Citizens? A Welfare State Perspective

In this exploratory study, we investigate whether public sector officials and non‐public sector officials differ in the trust they have in members of society and whether this difference is associated with the welfare regime in which they work. Using survey data from the sixth round of the European Social Survey, we compare public sector officials' trust to that of non‐public sector officials in 13 countries with four different forms of welfare regimes. Our results demonstrate that public officials have a higher level of trust than non‐public officials do. Furthermore, trust among both public and non‐public sector officials is much higher in social‐democratic regimes, followed by corporatist countries, liberal regimes, Israel (as a unique case) and, lastly, southern European regimes. As expected, public officials' degree of trust reflects the general trends of their societies. Interestingly, in social‐democratic regimes, differences between trust among public and non‐public officials are the highest compared to the other regimes. In addition, an individual‐level analysis in five countries illustrative of each welfare regime indicates that while income, belonging to a minority group, and age are significant factors in explaining public officials' trust, socio‐demographic variables contribute little to the differences between public and non‐public officials. Given the critical role of trust in the functioning of the welfare state, our results imply that further awareness and mechanisms for increasing the degree of trust of citizens among public officials are warranted.     

MULTIFACETED AID FOR LOW‐INCOME STUDENTS AND COLLEGE OUTCOMES: EVIDENCE FROM NORTH CAROLINA

We study the evolution of a campus‐based aid program for low‐income students that began with grant‐heavy financial aid and later added a suite of nonfinancial supports. We find little to no evidence that program eligibility during the early years (2004–2006), in which students received additional institutional grant aid and few nonfinancial supports, improved postsecondary progress, performance, or completion. In contrast, program‐eligible students in more recent cohorts (2007–2010), when the program supplemented grant‐heavy aid with an array of nonfinancial supports, were more likely to meet credit accumulation benchmarks toward timely graduation and earned higher grade point averages than their barely ineligible counterparts. (JEL I21, I23, I24, J08)