Sexual Attraction, Sexual Identity, and Psychosocial Wellbeing in a National Sample of Young Women During Emerging Adulthood

Identity-based conceptualizations of sexual orientation may not account adequately for variation in young women’s sexuality. Sexual minorities fare worse in psychosocial markers of wellbeing (i.e., depressive symptoms, anxiety, self esteem, social support) than heterosexual youth; however, it remains unclear whether these health disparities exclusively affect individuals who adopt a sexual minority identity or if they also may be present among heterosexually-identified youth who report same-sex attractions. We examined the relationship between sexual attraction, sexual identity, and psychosocial wellbeing in the female only subsample (weighted, n = 391) of a national sample of emerging adults (age 18–24). Women in this study rated on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely) their degree of sexual attraction to males and females, respectively. From these scores, women were divided into 4 groups (low female/low male attraction, low female/high male attraction, high female/low male attraction, or high female/high male attraction). We explored the relationship between experiences of attraction, reported sexual identity, and psychosocial outcomes using ordinary least squares regression. The results indicated sexual attraction to be predictive of women’s psychosocial wellbeing as much as or more than sexual identity measures. We discuss these findings in terms of the diversity found in young women’s sexuality, and how sexual minority status may be experienced by this group.     

Farm-Level Pathways to Improved Nutritional Status: Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

Global, national and local policies and programmes for agricultural development are recurrently justified based on their alleged role in improving food and nutrition security. However, strikingly little evidence is available to prove that a direct, household-level link between agricultural production and improved nutrition exists. The objective of this special issue is to systematically and empirically test, using data from Africa and South Asia, whether a relationship between household agricultural production and nutrition can be found. Overall, the studies in this special issue support the hypothesis that household agricultural production has direct and important linkages with dietary patterns and nutrition.     

Ethnicity,Islam, and Pakistani Public Opinion toward the Pakistani Taliban

This article argues that an Islamist militant group with a relatively homogenous ethnic make-up is more likely to be supported by those of the same ethnicity even if the group makes no reference to and even downplays the importance of ethnicity. Using survey data from an original survey carried out in Pakistan in 2013, with 7,656 respondents, this hypothesis is tested in a multiple regression analysis of support for the Pakistani Taliban. The results demonstrate that co-ethnicity between the respondent and the Islamist militant group is the most important predictor of support for the militant group.     

Intergovernmental Grants and Public Expenditures: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

The relationship between intergovernmental grants and public expenditures is one of the most studied phenomena in the local public finance literature. However, little is known about whether the impact of unconditional grants is fundamentally different from that of other sources of municipal revenue. We study this question by means of a large-scale randomised survey experiment among Danish local politicians, which allows for a comparison of the impact of changes in various sources of municipal revenue. Our findings challenge the conventional conception in the public finance literature that money works differently depending on which sector they are generated in. Instead, ideology plays an important role in explaining how local politicians want to allocate resources when faced with changes in local government revenue.     

Reshaping State Structure and Strategy: The Reform of Railway Policy in Germany and Italy

For almost four decades, the reform of the state has been a recurrent and relevant topic for social sciences. Has the s.c. positive state been replaced by a regulatory state, or have hybrid configurations emerged? Based on a comparative analysis of German and Italian railway policies, this article aims to contribute to the literature on regulation, considering the possibility of policy mixes in which elements of the positive and the regulatory state are interrelated. Such hybridization is the result of multiple-actor policy arenas, where regulatory tools are used to restructure state’s direct intervention rather than to bring about its retreat.     

Economic Hardship and Adolescent Problem Drinking: Family Processes as Mediating Influences

Alcohol is the most commonly used substance among adolescents in the United States, and adolescent drinking is associated with various health risk behaviors. Given the prevalence and consequences of adolescent drinking, understanding family factors that contribute to adolescent drinking is an important area for research. This study used three waves of data to evaluate a family stress model in which economic hardship is indirectly related to adolescent problem drinking through maternal psychological distress, parenting behaviors, and adolescent externalizing behaviors. Respondents included 300 mothers (71 % Black, 29 % White) and adolescents (51 % male) who were interviewed when adolescents were ages 10, 14, and 16. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized model and findings supported our hypothesized model. Economic hardship was positively related to maternal psychological distress. Maternal psychological distress was negatively associated with supportive parenting, which in turn was negatively associated with externalizing problems. Externalizing problems were positively associated with problem drinking. In support of our hypothesis regarding indirect effects, economic hardship was indirectly related to problem drinking through maternal psychological distress, parenting behaviors, and adolescent externalizing problems. The findings from this study highlight the role of family processes in adolescent problem drinking.     

Institutional and Personal Spirituality/Religiosity and Psychosocial Adjustment in Adolescence: Concurrent and Longitudinal Associations

Spirituality/religiosity is hypothesized to promote positive adjustment among adolescents. The goals of this study were to assess the unique and joint associations between two dimensions of spirituality/religiosity—institutional and personal—and a range of domains of psychosocial adjustment (intrapersonal well-being, quality of parent–child relationship, substance use, and academic orientation) and to evaluate the direction of effects in these associations. Participants included 803 predominately Canadian-born adolescents (53 % female) from Ontario, Canada, who completed a survey in grade 11 and grade 12. At the concurrent level, higher personal spirituality/religiosity consistently and uniquely predicted more positive adjustment in terms of well-being, parental relationship, and academic orientation. Higher institutional spirituality/religiosity uniquely and consistently predicted lower substance use, particularly when personal spirituality/religiosity also was high. With regard to the direction of effects (i.e., longitudinal associations), institutional spirituality/religiosity predicted lower future substance use. The results imply that the personal and institutional dimensions of spirituality/religiosity may be associated differentially with psychosocial adjustment, and it may be only in the domain of substance use that spirituality/religiosity predicts change in behavior over time.     

Peer Influence and Context: The Interdependence of Friendship Groups,Schoolmates and Network Density in Predicting Substance Use

This article focuses on the degree to which friends’ influence on substance use is conditioned by the consistency between their behavior and that of schoolmates (individuals enrolled in the same school, but not identified as friends), contributing to the literature on the complexity of interactive social influences during adolescence. Specifically, it hypothesizes that friends’ influence will diminish as their norms become less similar to that of schoolmates. The authors also propose that this conditioning relationship is related to the density of the friendship group. This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (AddHealth) (n ~ 8,000, 55 % female) to examine the interactive relationship between friend and schoolmate influences on adolescent substance use (smoking and drinking). The sample contains students ranging from age 11 to 22 and is 60 % White. The findings demonstrate that, as the substance use of the friendship group becomes more dissimilar from schoolmates’ substance use, the friendship group’s influence on adolescent substance use diminishes. Further, the results demonstrate that this conditioning relationship does not emerge when the friendship group is highly dense.     

MI Implementation in Juvenile Justice: A Case Report

Motivational interviewing (MI) is a communication style focused on enhancing clients’ own motivation towards change. In the justice system MI has evidence to support that it enhances communication and change behaviors in youth. As most MI training is designed for healthcare settings training and implementation of MI must be adapted to fit the juvenile justice model. This includes both rehabilitation and restorative justice. Here we describe the details that allowed one county small county in Pennsylvania to roll out MI training and initial skills review in less than 6 months. The case reviews the details of planning, trainings, and timing of activities. We then discuss what elements of those details fit into a greater implementation plan that may be applied elsewhere. Four key elements were instrumental to implementation: 1) appreciation of JPO time constraints, 2) cost containment 3) using blending to enhance JPO flexibility with MI use, and 4) policies that normalize use of MI. This outline may assist other courts in their own implementation efforts.     

Silence of the Innocents: Undocumented Immigrants’ Underreporting of Crime and their Victimization

Do undocumented migrants underreport crimes to the police in order to avoid being deported? And do criminals exploit such vulnerability? We address these questions using victimization surveys and administrative data around the 1986 U.S. immigration amnesty. The amnesty allows us to solve two major identification issues that have plagued this literature: migrants’ legal status is endogenous and unobserved. The results show that the reporting rate of undocumented immigrants is 17 percent, which limits the immigrants’ ability to protect some of their fundamental human rights. However, right after the 1986 amnesty, which disproportionately legalized individuals of Hispanic origin, crime victims of Hispanic origin show enormous improvements in reporting behavior. The implied increase in the reporting rate by amnesty applicants is close to 20 percentage points.