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With the final passage of the Focus on College and University Success (FOCUS) Act which was signed into law on April 19, 2016, state universities within Tennessee are heading for major transitions in governance structure and autonomy. With changes moving at a speed atypical of higher education, these six soon-to-be former Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) universities must determine the best way to proceed from the current governance structure to a localized governing board while considering the future direction of the institution. Drawing on historical precedents and current policy changes, recommendations are made to the six universities for future governance structure, appointment of the board, and proposed future directions and policy discussions for the institutions.

ObjectiveYoung women may experience social barriers to achieving their reproductive goals. This analysis explored whether low social support may contribute to the high incidence of undesired pregnancy in young women in the United States.Study designUsing 6 months of data from a prospective cohort of 970 women ages 18-22 years in the United States, we described contraceptive use and applied multivariable logistic regression and standardization to estimate adjusted odds and absolute risk of undesired pregnancy among women reporting low social support versus higher social support. We investigated several measures of contraceptive use as possible explanations for this pathway.ResultsSixty-five pregnancies were reported in the 6 months of the study, of which 30 (46%) were classified as undesired prior to conception. Among young women who reported low social support, 8% reported an undesired pregnancy during the study period as compared to 3% of the young women who reported higher levels of social support. Among non-black women, those who reported low social support had nearly seven times the odds of an undesired pregnancy as compared to women who reported higher social support (aOR: 6.8, 95%CI: 1.7, 27.1). We found no association between social support and undesired pregnancy among young black women. Contraceptive method use differed by social support at baseline, and throughout follow-up.ConclusionsLow social support - defined as the feeling of not having anyone to turn to - may be a risk factor for persistently high levels of undesired pregnancy among young women in the U.S. This association may be driven by differences in contraceptive use by level of social support.ImplicationsInterventions to increase young women's perceptions of social support may reduce the risk of undesired pregnancy for some individuals.

This paper, one of a series, reports the results of a survey of 413 children in Grades Three to Six on inclusive education in a school district in rural Alberta, Canada. The aims of the study were to examine the views of children regarding their experience in schools claiming to be inclusive, situated within a jurisdiction which also claims to be inclusive, and to try and identify any demographic differences in responses. The study found that the school district under examination was generally doing a good job of inclusion in the eyes of the students, and that there were little differences in this view between groups of children identified with exceptionality, and those who were not. Future areas of study include the addition of a qualitative aspect to the examination of student views. (Contains 2 tables.)

This paper, the first in a series on inclusive education in a rural Canadian school district, reports an attempt to develop a succinct, common cross-age scale to measure student views on important school-related aspects of inclusive education. A lengthy scale, previously developed for use in a different study, was administered to 855 children in Grades One to Twelve in a school district in rural Alberta, Canada. A succinct 12-item scale was produced, addressing four of five conceptual areas thought to be important to inclusive education from a student's perspective, and within the Canadian educational context. This scale has been named the Student Perceptions of Inclusion in Rural Canada (SPIRC) scale. Future areas of study include the addition of a component addressing sentiments towards disability and inclusion in the newly refined scale. (Contains 6 tables.)

We examined whether hormonal contraception (HC) use predicts sexual frequency throughout and across young women's intimate relationships. From 2008–2012, the Relationships Dynamics and Social Life Study collected weekly surveys over 2.5 years, and included 893 women (aged 18–19 at baseline) who reported 2,547 intimate relationships across 32,736 weeks. Three-level logistic multilevel models assessed the weekly probability of sexual intercourse based on 1) weekly HC use (vs. nonuse) and 2) duration of HC use, both accounting for several relational and individual characteristics, including relationship duration. Women had more frequent sexual intercourse when they were using HC than when they were not (predicted probabilities.65 vs.41). The weekly probability of sexual intercourse increased sharply within the first month of HC initiation (by about 27 percentage points), remained high for several months, then began to slowly decline (yet remained above that of nonuse). When separated by method type, similar trajectories were found for the pill, ring, and IUD/implant; following the initial increase, steeper declines in intercourse frequency were found for the contraceptive injectable, eventually dropping below pre-initiation levels. Findings signify the immediate influence of reduced pregnancy fears in facilitating sexual intercourse among young women, which may decline as HC use continues long-term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use an experiment based on the relationship dynamics and social life study of sexual behavior, pregnancy, and contraceptive use to investigate whether participation in weekly self-reports over one year result in differential effects on related behaviors and attitudes, compared to participation in a one-time follow-up interview requiring retrospective self-reporting for the prior year. We randomly assigned 200 subjects to either a control group or a journal group. All subjects were interviewed at the beginning of the study (baseline interview) and 12 months later (closeout interview). Subjects in the journal group also completed a five-minute web- or phone-based survey every week during the 12-month study period. We found no statistically significant difference in pregnancy rates across the two groups at closeout. Contrary to our expectation, the control group experienced a slightly larger increase in having ever used a contraceptive method, although this was mainly due to increases in the least effective methods, such as condoms and withdrawal. Respondents in the weekly interview group became slightly more positive toward childbearing in terms of one specific attitude measure, but not for the vast majority of measures. We conclude that intensive longitudinal data collection does not appear to have a large or consistent impact on respondents' pregnancy, contraceptive use, or related attitudes, relative to the more standard longitudinal approach.