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Fathers have often been ignored in the parenting literature. The current study focused on male cohabiting partners (MCPs) who can serve as "social stepfathers" and examined the association of coparent support and conflict with their positive parenting behavior (i.e., acceptance, firm control, and monitoring) of adolescents. Participants were 121 low-income urban Black cohabiting stepfamilies (mother, MCP, adolescent). The mother and MCP completed measures on coparenting support and conflict, and the young adolescent completed measures on MCP parenting. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), support, but not conflict, was associated with positive parenting. Support and conflict did not interact to influence parenting. The findings suggest that fathering in these families is contextually sensitive and that support from a mother is central for MCPs to engage in positive parenting of adolescents.

Objective: To identify the prevalence of substance use and mental health problems among veterans and student service members/veterans (SSM/V) returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to New York City's low-income neighborhoods. Participants: A sample of 122 veterans attending college and 116 veterans not enrolled recruited using respondent-driven sampling. Methods: Logistic regression analysis of variation in characteristics of those veterans attending college; linear regression examining effects of college attendance on life satisfaction. Results: Having a traumatic brain injury or disability was positively associated with college attendance. Being married, employed, or in college was predictive of overall life satisfaction. SSM/V were significantly less likely to screen positive for depression or drug use disorder. African American veterans were significantly less likely to attend college than white or Hispanic veterans. Conclusion: Substance use and some mental health disorders do not preclude inner-city veterans from entering higher education. This study contributes to the sparse literature on African American veterans and SSM/V.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is common, particularly in families with children. Observing such verbal and physical aggression has consistently been linked to unfavorable outcomes for affected children. Although cohabiting families are becoming increasingly prevalent and preliminary data suggest that rates of IPV may be high in these families, little is currently known about IPV and its impact as experienced by adolescents living in cohabiting families. This study used data from low-income urban Black cohabiting families (N = 92) to (1) examine agreement of reports of verbal and physical IPV between the adolescent and the mother and between the adolescent and the male cohabiting partner (MCP) and (2) test associations between IPV and youth mental health. A higher percentage of adolescents reported the occurrence of IPV, particularly physical violence, than did mothers and MCPs. Relative to those living in minimally violent or verbally violent homes, adolescents living in verbally and physically violent homes reported higher rates of internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors. These youth also reported higher levels of self-blame for the conflict and a worse relationship with the MCP but not the mother., Author(s): Virginia Peisch[sup.1] , Justin Parent[sup.1] , Rex Forehand[sup.1] , Andrew Golub[sup.2] , Megan Reid[sup.2] , Mathew Price[sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) University of Vermont, Dewey Hall, 2 Colchester Ave., 05405, [...]

The higher education literature continues to highlight difficulties with efforts to implement and sustain institutional effectiveness activities. This article describes an implementation effectiveness model from the field of organizational management and applies it to the implementation of institutional effectiveness initiatives in higher education. As a predictive or evaluative tool regarding implementation success, the model can assist administrators, faculty and staff in developing targeted approaches to institutional effectiveness work within any institution of higher education. The authors share their experiences at the University of New England, illustrating the importance of key variables in the model. (Contains 1 figure.)

Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) has been linked to a wide variety of adverse psychological and behavioral outcomes. This paper describes girls' sexual development in the inner city based on qualitative material from a long-term ethnographic (observational) study. For many inner-city girls, early and then continued experiences of being compelled to have sex were found to be part of a pathway leading to independent sexuality that often involved prostitution, teen pregnancy, early motherhood, school dropout, limited involvement with jobs, drug abuse, multiple children by different fathers and single-parent families. Quotes from respondents illustrate the mechanics of this process and how it is sustained by the deprivations of structural disadvantage, prevailing subcultural norms, violence and illicit drug use.

Examined 1979-97 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse data to investigate the probabilities of progression through a sequence of stages of substance use. Progression to marijuana and hard drugs was uncommon in people born before World War II. The stages phenomenon emerged with the baby boom and peaked among people born around 1960. Subsequently, progression risks at each stage declined. (SM)

Numerous African American families have struggled for generations with persistent poverty, especially in the inner city. These conditions were further strained during the 1980s and 1990s by the widespread use [...]

Measured trends in drug use can potentially reflect changes in drug use, changes in the accuracy of the measurement instrument, or both. This paper compares marijuana use trends from 1987 to 2001 using self-report and urinalysis data from arrestees interviewed at 23 sites served by the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) Program. Overall, 60% of the variation in reported use reflected changes in detected use. Most notably, reported and detected use suggested different dynamics to the increase in marijuana use during the 1990s. The growth in detected use started later, increased more, and lasted longer. Several factors appear to have clearly contributed to this divergence between the measures: the percentage of marijuana users that disclosed their activity changed over time, the accuracy of ADAM's urinalysis test increased with time, and the percentage of infrequent users changed over time (urinalysis tests are less likely to detect infrequent users). The paper concludes with recommendations for the careful analysis of marijuana use trends using self-report data, biological data, or both. Trends in cocaine, crack, heroin, and methamphetamine are also considered.

This study provides a comprehensive multivariate analysis of drug use disclosure among arrestees interviewed between 2000 and 2001 at 37 sites across the U.S. served by the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) Program. Rates varied widely by drug and across sites. The marijuana disclosure rate varied from 68% in Fort Lauderdale to 93% in Spokane. The cocaine/crack disclosure rate varied from 28% in Chicago to 70% in Kansas City. Moreover, covariates of disclosure differed across drugs. This wide variation in disclosure suggests extreme caution be used when comparing self-reports of prevalence across drugs, locations, and individual characteristics--certainly at least for arrestees.

Since the 1990s, marijuana has been the drug of choice among American youths, especially those that tend to sustain arrests. Previous birth cohorts had greater use of crack, powder cocaine, or heroin. This paper summarizes prior research that strongly suggests drug eras tend to follow a regular course. These insights then serve as the basis for projecting trends in marijuana use both for the general population nationwide and for Manhattan arrestees. To the extent that current trends persist, the prospects for the 'Marijuana/Blunts Generation' (born 1970 and later) may be relatively good. These young persons may successfully avoid 'hard drugs' as weft as the attendant health, social and legal problems for their entire life, but they may experience higher levels of smoking-related ailments. The conclusion presents issues for continued drug surveillance and ethnographic research to more accurately understand the Marijuana/Blunts Era and to provide an indicator of future changes as they occur.

Welfare reform has transformed a needs-based family income support into temporary assistance for persons entering the workforce. This paper uses observations from an ethnographic study covering the period from 1995-2001 [...]

Studies of adolescent substance use progression typically infer a sequence of initiation from self-reported ages at first use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and hard drugs. This paper examines the reliability of this procedure for a sample of 892 New Jersey youths interviewed on two occasions separated by three years. Individual responses on the second occasion differed substantially from those provided on the first. However, the inferred sequences were consistent as long as 1) first use of alcohol and/or tobacco was considered a single stage, and 2) cases in which individuals initiated the use of two substances in the same year were considered as ambiguous regarding order. The sequences reported were also consistent with the gateway theory that suggests alcohol/tobacco precedes any possible use of marijuana and hard drugs.

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Recently, Heras et al. (2018. An application of two-stage quantile regression to insurance ratemaking. Scandinavian Actuarial Journal9, 753–769) propose a two-step inference to forecast the Value-at-Risk of aggregated losses in insurance ratemaking by combining logistic regression and quantile regression without discussing the critical issue of uncertainty quantification. This paper proposes a random weighted bootstrap method to quantify the estimation uncertainty and an alternative two-step inference via weighted quantile regression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study of substance abuse progression channel in a group of serious drug abusers in New York in 1988-89 reveals that abusers do not begin substance abuse with alcohol to progress to marijuana but use marijuana before other serious substances such as cocaine, crack and heroin. The popularity of marijuana has led to the decline of alcohol use and increase of marijuana use before trying other serious drugs. Use of marijuana in teenage years exposes adolescents to serious drug abuse in the future.

Objectives. Cocaine use among youths as measured by several annual surveys was most popular from about 1979 to 1986, after which it declined. This study carefully examines the nature of the decline focusing on microdata for youthful arrestees in Manhattan. Methods. Multiple statistical analyses examine whether the decline in cocaine use detected by urinalysis is attributable to fewer arrested youths born more recently having become regular users (cohort effect), to regular users decreasing their consumption (period effect), or to changes in arrest or sampling priorities (artifact). Results. All analyses suggest that the dramatic decline in detected cocaine use among arrestees--from 69% in 1987 to 17% in 1993--was a cohort effect. Detected cocaine use, which was highest (78%) among arrestees reaching 18 in 1986 at the height of the crack epidemic in New York City, subsequently declined to a low of 10% among arrestees reaching 18 in 1993. Discussion. These findings suggests that the epidemic in use cocaine and crack entered a decline in the late 1980s. However, wi spread use of these drugs, will probably continue to prevail as an aging population with established habits persists in its use. (Am J Public (Health. 1994;84:1250-1254), The epidemic of cocaine usage among young persons appears to have declined in the late 1980s. Data were obtained from three major ongoing surveys: the Drug Use Forecasting-Manhattan program, Monitoring the Future, and the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, conducted from 1975 through 1993. There was strong evidence to suggest that cocaine usage among youth was a passing fad, with peak usage in 1986. Eighteen-year-olds arrested in that year were more likely to be cocaine users than youth of other ages. It was unknown which, if any, drug abuse prevention programs or policies influenced the drop in cocaine usage. It is also suggested that cocaine usage will continue among those who first began using it as youth, similar to the pattern of heroin usage among people who began using it as youth in the 1960s and 1970s.