Youth alcohol use and dating abuse victimization and perpetration: a test of the relationships at the daily level in a sample of pediatric emergency department patients who use alcohol

Objective: This study retrospectively examined the daily-level associations between youth alcohol use and dating abuse (DA) victimization and perpetration for a 6-month period. Method: Timeline Followback (TLFB) interview data were collected from 397 urban emergency department patients, ages 17 to 21 years. Patients were eligible if they reported past month alcohol use and past year dating. Generalized estimating equation (GEE) analyses estimated the likelihood of DA on a given day as a function of alcohol use or heavy use (≥4 drinks per day for women, ≥5 drinks per day for men), as compared with nonuse. Results: Approximately 52% of men and 61% of women participants reported experiencing DA victimization ≥1 times during the past 6 months, and 45% of men and 55% of women reported perpetrating DA ≥1 times. For both men and women, DA perpetration was more likely on a drinking day as opposed to a nondrinking day (ORs = 1.70 and ORs = 1.69, respectively). DA victimization was also more likely on a drinking day as opposed to a nondrinking day for both men and women (ORs = 1.23 and ORs = 1.34, respectively). DA perpetration and DA victimization were both more likely on heavy drinking days as opposed to nondrinking days (2.04 and 2.03 for men's and women's perpetration, respectively, and 1.41 and 1.43 for men's and women's victimization, respectively). Conclusions: This study found that alcohol use was associated with increased risk for same day DA perpetration and victimization, for both male and female youth. We conclude that for youth who use alcohol, alcohol use is a potential risk factor for DA victimization and perpetration.     

Beyond Welfare: Framing and the Racialization of White Opinion on Social Security

In this article I argue that the framing of Social Security in political discourse has associated it symbolically with race. The linkages are subtle and symbolic, and they serve to associate Social Security with whiteness in a mirror image of the association of welfare with blackness. In turn, these associations have racialized white opinion on the program. After discussing the theoretical mechanism by which issue frames can unconsciously associate policies with citizens' racial predispositions, I review the frames surrounding Social Security. Then, drawing on two decades of nationally representative survey data, I demonstrate the racialization of opinion among whites. Using a variety of measures of racial predispositions, I find that racially conservative whites feel more positively about Social Security than do racial liberals. I conclude by considering the implications of these findings for our understanding of racialized politics and for the connections between race, whiteness, and contemporary American politics.     

Mediation and Genre

This paper examines the constitutive elements of the genre of melodrama and relates them to typical Western conflict stories. It demonstrates why a conflict narrative based on the genre of melodrama tends to work against the resolution of the conflict and proposes tragedy as a more constructive genre for a conflict narrative. The paper also discusses how the mediation situation itself can constrain the possible genres that can be constructed in the process and explores the implications of those constraints for people in conflict and for the mediators facilitating a resolution.     

Penalty notices for disorder: influences on police decision making

This research examined, via a multi-method linked design, the influences over police decision making when disorderly behaviour is being dealt with in the context of a new type of offence disposal, the penalty notice for disorder (PND). The results of a multivariate analysis of the factors predicting the real-life issuance of PNDs to offenders formed the basis of an experiment (using serving police officers as participants) that probed officers’ decision-making processes in disorder scenarios. This approach presents an opportunity to gain insight into how police use the power of arrest when an alternate, less-punitive, option is available.     

Outsmarting the Liars: The Benefit of Asking Unanticipated Questions

We hypothesised that the responses of pairs of liars would correspond less with each other than would responses of pairs of truth tellers, but only when the responses are given to unanticipated questions. Liars and truth tellers were interviewed individually about having had lunch together in a restaurant. The interviewer asked typical opening questions which we expected the liars to anticipate, followed by questions about spatial and/or temporal information which we expected suspects not to anticipate, and also a request to draw the layout of the restaurant. The results supported the hypothesis, and based on correspondence in responses to the unanticipated questions, up to 80% of liars and truth tellers could be correctly classified, particularly when assessing drawings.

Gender Bias and Selection Bias in House Elections

We demonstrate that female incumbents areof higher average candidate quality than maleincumbents. This quality difference is the result ofbarriers to entry faced by potential femalecandidates, although the observed effects of thisquality differential on vote share are partiallymasked by the fact that female incumbents are alsomore likely to be opposed or to be opposed by highquality challengers. Using data from House electionsfor 1984–1992, we estimate that the gender-baseddifferential in candidate quality yields an extra sixpercentage points of vote share for femaleincumbents.