Gender and Casual Sexual Activity From Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood: Social and Life Course Correlates

The prevalence of casual sexual activity among teens and emerging adults has led to much public attention. Yet limited research has investigated whether the number of casual sexual partners per year changes as heterosexual men and women transition from adolescence into emerging adulthood. We considered the influence of social context and life course factors on the number of casual sex partners. We examined four waves of interviews from the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (TARS) and used negative binomial growth curve models to investigate patterns of change in the number of casual sex partners (N = 1,196) ages 15 to 22. Men and women both reported increases in the number of casual sex partners over time and did not differ from each other in the rate of change over time. In all, 40% of respondents reported a recent casual sex partner at age 22. Number of prior dating relationships, education status, substance use, and perceptions of peer sexual behavior significantly influenced the number of casual sex partners. Emerging adults who did not complete high school, compared to those enrolled in four-year degree programs, reported significantly more partners. The findings contribute to research on intimate relationships and provide insights for programs targeting emerging adults.     

A Bayesian estimate of the concordance correlation coefficient with skewed data

Concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) is one of the most popular scaled indices used to evaluate agreement. Most commonly, it is used under the assumption that data is normally distributed. This assumption, however, does not apply to skewed data sets. While methods for the estimation of the CCC of skewed data sets have been introduced and studied, the Bayesian approach and its comparison with the previous methods has been lacking. In this study, we propose a Bayesian method for the estimation of the CCC of skewed data sets and compare it with the best method previously investigated. The proposed method has certain advantages. It tends to outperform the best method studied before when the variation of the data is mainly from the random subject effect instead of error. Furthermore, it allows for greater flexibility in application by enabling incorporation of missing data, confounding covariates, and replications, which was not considered previously. The superiority of this new approach is demonstrated using simulation as well as real‐life biomarker data sets used in an electroencephalography clinical study. The implementation of the Bayesian method is accessible through the Comprehensive R Archive Network. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

He Said What? Guided Cognitive Reframing About the Co‐Resident Father/Stepfather–Adolescent Relationship

We studied young adolescents' seeking out support to understand conflict with their co‐resident fathers/stepfathers, and the cognitive and affective implications of such support‐seeking, phenomena we call guided cognitive reframing. Our sample included 392 adolescents (M_age = 12.5, 52.3% female) who were either of Mexican or European ancestry and lived with their biological mothers and either a stepfather or a biological father. More frequent reframing was associated with more adaptive cognitive explanations for father/stepfather behavior. Cognitions explained the link between seeking out and feelings about the father/stepfather and self. Feelings about the self were more strongly linked to depressive symptoms than cognitions. We discuss the implications for future research on social support, coping, guided cognitive reframing, and father–child relationships.     

Expanded renal transplantation: a competing risk model approach

Multi-state models (MSMs) are useful to analyze survival data when, besides the event of main interest, one or more intermediate states of the individual are identified. These models take the several existing states and the possible transitions among them into account. At the same time, covariate effects on each transition intensity may be investigated separately and, therefore, MSMs are more flexible than the standard Cox proportional hazards model. In this work, we use MSMs to investigate the impact of the quality of a transplanted kidney for a group of patients at the Hospital Universitario Central de Asturias. Specifically, we use an illness-death model to study the evolution of patients with kidney disease who received a renal transplant after a dialysis period. The intermediate state is defined as the failure of the received organ, while the terminating state is the death of the patient. In order to increase the potential number of organs available for transplant, the standards of quality for the transplanted kidneys were relaxed (the new criteria are labeled expanded criteria), and these ‘expanded kidneys’ were transplanted in appropriate candidates (older patients, with higher prevalence of diabetes mellitus). Results suggest that the expanded kidneys have a minor effect on survival, while both the kidney mortality and the risk of death increase with the patient's age and the serum creatinine and serum hemoglobin levels.     

Law and Identity in Spatial Contests

Law has had a traditional reference to land, conceived as territory, in the notion of a jurisdiction, where the law of the land applies equally to all individuals. Recent critiques of this view have suggested that a plurality of laws may apply in particular places. How this spatial pluralism impacts on dominant views of law is considered through two instances in which law has interacted with competing conceptions of place and territory in relations between European and Indigenous Australians. Space, law and identity are seen to constitute each other in complex forms. Indigenous beliefs and practices challenge the claims to universality of Western conceptions of law and space deriving from Roman law and spatial practices.     

Adoption and Termination of Employee Involvement Programs

Using an interview survey of manufacturing establishments that provide 10 years of retrospective data on labor practices, we investigate factors associated with the adoption and termination of employee involvement programs and the relation between these and other human resource policies. In the period studied, more firms introduced than terminated such programs but a sufficiently large number chose to eliminate such programs to indicate that employee involvement does not fit in all business settings. Our results show that business strategy and the use of other complementary human resource policies affect the dynamics of employee involvement use in US manufacturing establishments.     

Class voting, social change, and the left in Australia, 1943-96

The relationship between class and voting choices has been the subject of controversy in recent years, especially in connection with the apparent decline of the traditional left. This paper examines class voting in Australia, focusing on three major issues: (1) changes in the overall strength of class voting (2) realignment, or changes in the relative political positions of the classes (3) the connection between the strength of class voting and support for Labor. It finds that (1) there is a decline in 'general' class voting (2) much of this decline involves a realignment of certain middle class groups, but there is no support for the popular idea that class alignments have become more complex (3) there is no connection between the strength of class voting and Labor performance. Our results cast doubt on accounts that regard the electoral difficulties of left parties as a symptom of the decline of class.     

Cost of Living Variation,Nonmetropolitan America,and Implications for the Supplemental Poverty Measure

Population Research and Policy Review - Poverty scholarship in the United States is increasingly reliant upon the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) as opposed to the Official Poverty Measure of...