Longitudinal Bi-directional Relationships Between Sleep and Youth Substance Use

Despite the known deficits in sleep that occur during adolescence and the high prevalence of substance use behaviors among this group, relatively little research has explored how sleep and substance use may be causally related. The purpose of this study was to explore the longitudinal bi-directional relationships between sleep duration, sleep patterns and youth substance use behaviors. Participants included 704 mostly white (86.4?%) youth, 51?% female, with a baseline mean age of 14.7?years. Self-reported substance use behaviors included past month alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use. Sleep measures included sleep duration on weekends and weekdays, total sleep, weekend oversleep, and weekend sleep delay. Cross-lagged structural equation models, accounting for clustering at the school level, were run to determine the longitudinal association between sleep and substance use adjusting for socio-demographic characteristics, pubertal status, body mass index z-score, and depressive symptoms. Cigarette use and weekend sleep were bi-directionally related as were marijuana use and total sleep. No other bi-directional associations were identified. However, alcohol use predicted shorter weekend oversleep and marijuana use predicted increased weekend sleep and weekend oversleep. Sleep patterns and duration also predicted adolescents' cigarette, alcohol, and marijuana use. Sleep, both patterns and duration, and substance use among youth are intertwined. Future research is needed to explore these bi-directional relationships, as well as other important contextual factors that may moderate these associations.     

Dimensions of Conscience in Mid-adolescence: Links with Social Behavior, Parenting, and Temperament

The purpose of this study was to determine whether aspects of conscience cohere into broader dimensions and to examine how these broader dimensions of conscience relate to parenting, temperament, and social behavior. One hundred and thirteen adolescents (M age = 15.88 years, 51% female) completed measures of sympathy, guilt, empathic anger, shame, moral reasoning, and internalization. Factor analyses revealed two dimensions of conscience: moral affect (which included guilt, shame, sympathy, and empathic anger) and moral cognition (which included internalization and prosocial moral reasoning). Parental discipline related to both dimensions of conscience, albeit in different ways. High levels of parental inductive discipline and low levels of parental power assertion were associated with high levels of moral affect, whereas high levels of persistent discipline were associated with increased moral cognition. High negative reactivity, however, was only associated with high levels of moral affect. In general, higher levels of moral affect were associated with prosocial behavior and moral conduct during bullying. Higher levels of moral cognition were associated with less participation in bullying, more altruistic behavior, and more frequent helping of the victims of bullying. The discussion focuses on the dimensions of moral conscience in adolescence.

Examining the Protective Effect of Ethnic Identity on Drug Attitudes and Use Among a Diverse Youth Population

Ethnic identity is an important buffer against drug use among minority youth. However, limited work has examined pathways through which ethnic identity mitigates risk. School-aged youth (N?=?34,708; 52?% female) of diverse backgrounds (i.e., African American (n?=?5333), Asian (n?=?392), Hispanic (n?=?662), Multiracial (n?=?2129), Native American (n?=?474), and White (n?=?25718) in grades 4–12 provided data on ethnic identity, drug attitudes, and drug use. After controlling for gender and grade, higher ethnic identity was associated with lower past month drug use for African American, Hispanic, and Multiracial youth. Conversely, high ethnic identity was associated with increased risk for White youth. An indirect pathway between ethnic identity, drug attitudes, and drug use was also found for African American, Hispanic, and Asian youth. Among White youth the path model was also significant, but in the opposite direction. These findings confirm the importance of ethnic identity for most minority youth. Further research is needed to better understand the association between ethnic identity and drug use for Multiracial and Hispanic youth, best ways to facilitate healthy ethnic identity development for minority youth, and how to moderate the risk of identity development for White youth.     

Missed Opportunities and New Risks: Penal Policy in England and Wales in the Past Twenty‐Five Years

This paper discusses trends in criminal justice and penal policy over the past twenty‐five years. This period has been characterised as a time of penal populism, which originated in the failure of the 1991 Criminal Justice Act, and the competition between the main political parties to be ‘tough on crime’. However, this is not the only trend to be found in penal policy. There has continued to be a strong undertow of support for rehabilitation and community penalties, including restorative justice. There has been pressure from the left as much as the right to take domestic violence, sexual offences against women and children, and hate crimes more seriously. There have been pressures to meet performance targets—which gradually transformed into calls to build the legitimacy of the justice system. Finally, there have been pressures to privatise criminal justice agencies. These various impulses have sometimes amplified and sometimes counteracted the pressures towards tough penal policy. If the period of intense penal populism ran from 1993 to 2007, inertia in the system has ensured that there have been no significant attempts to row back from tough policies, and to reassert the values of penal parsimony. Given that money has been tight since 2007 and crime has continued to fall, this must amount to a lost opportunity of significant proportions.     

Government co-option of civil society: exploring the AKP’s role within Turkish women’s CSOs

Mainstream academic and policy literature emphasizes the nexus between an active and vibrant civil society sector and greater political accountability. As a result, support for civil society has become central to international policy efforts to strengthen democracy in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region. However, the empirical evidence presented in this article questions the validity of this assumption. Drawing on information gathered through 38 in-depth qualitative interviews with women’s organizations from across the seven administrative regions of Turkey, and key representatives from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), this article analyses the role of the AKP government in co-opting and influencing women’s organizations in Turkey. The results that emerge demonstrate that the government is actively involved in fashioning a civil society sector that advances their interests and consolidates their power. Independent women’s organizations report that they are becoming increasingly excluded from policy and legislative discussions, as seemingly civic organizations are supported and often created by the government to replace them. These organizations function to disseminate government ideas in society and to provide a cloak of democratic legitimacy to policy decisions. These findings and their implications have significant consequences for theory and policy on civil society and its role in supporting democracy.     

Postsecondary preparation and remediation: Examining the effect of the early assessment program at California State University

In this paper we investigate how participation in the Early Assessment Program, which provides California high school juniors with information about their academic readiness for college‐level work at California State University campuses, affects their college‐going behavior and need for remediation in college. Using administrative records from California State University,–Sacramento and the California Department of Education, we find that participation in the Early Assessment Program reduces the average student's probability of needing remediation at California State University by 6.1 percentage points in English and 4.1 percentage points in mathematics. Rather than discouraging poorly prepared students from applying to Sacramento State, EAP appears to lead students to increase their academic preparation while still in high school. © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

An innovative approach to building stronger coalitions: the Net-Map Toolbox

A common challenge faces development organisations, from the highest policy-making circles to local, grassroots organisations: how to work with other groups to build stronger partnerships and achieve consensus on goals? This article describes the Net-Map Toolbox, a new tool which builds and expands upon existing social-networking approaches. The article highlights the experience of using the Toolbox with the White Volta Basin Board in Ghana, a multi-stakeholder organisation responsible for overseeing local water resources. The authors discuss how the Net-Map Toolbox can assist members of development-oriented organisations to better understand and interact with each other in situations where many different actors can influence the outcome.