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Despite clear scientific evidence to support an urgent need to cut greenhouse gas emissions, societal action remains inadequate to meet international climate goals. New approaches in climate change communication are needed to motivate climate action. "World Climate" is an interactive, engaging, and socially rich role-play simulation that challenges participants to negotiate a climate agreement to limit warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels. During the simulation, participants use a computer model, C-ROADS, to test their greenhouse gas emissions decisions and get immediate feedback on the resulting expected climate outcomes. In 2019, several programs that assist high school and college students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds implemented the "World Climate" simulation. In total, 39 participants who displayed the largest gains in their sense of urgency about climate change, measured through pre- and post-simulation surveys, were invited to participate in a semi-structured interview regarding their experience. Twelve individuals from four different simulation sessions were interviewed, and their responses were transcribed and categorized into codes. Results from this study show that interviewees attributed gains in their climate change risk perception to the simulation and also experienced gains in collective efficacy as a result. We constructed a causal loop diagram to visualize relationships between aspects of the simulation and gains in climate change beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors based on interview data. Insights from this qualitative study show that group deliberation guided by interaction with a model are important components to increasing urgency and climate action for the subset of the population interviewed.

Objective. To test the hypothesis that late adolescent drinking behavior (ages 17-20) is associated with harmful and binge drinking in early adulthood (ages 30-31). Methods. We used the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), a nationally representative longitudinal data set. We used harmful and binge drinking at ages 17 to 20 to predict harmful and binge drinking at ages 30 to 31, stratifying for gender and controlling for confounders. Results. Data were available on harmful drinking at both the adolescent and the early adult age period for 3790 individuals and on binge drinking for 2387 individuals. Harmful drinking during adolescence was significantly associated with harmful drinking at ages 30 to 31 for men only. Among male adolescents, 14% of harmful drinkers continued harmful drinking at ages 30 to 31, compared with 4% of nonharmful drinkers who became harmful drinkers. In Poisson regression models, binge drinking during adolescence was associated with binge drinking at ages 30 to 31 for both men and women, generating relative risks of 2.3 (95% confidence interval: 1.8-3.0) and 3.0 (95% confidence interval: 2.4-4.8), respectively. Half of binge-drinking male adolescents and one third of binge-drinking female adolescents engaged in binge drinking into early adulthood, compared with 19% for non-binge-drinking male adolescents and 8% of non-binge-drinking female adolescents. Conclusions. Problem drinking during adolescence is associated with problem drinking in early adulthood. Efforts to prevent and treat adolescent problem drinking could have an impact on the progression of alcohol-related disease. Pediatrics 2004;114:714-719; harmful drinking, binge drinking, alcohol use, prevention, adolescence., ABBREVIATIONS. NLSY79, National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979; RR, relative risk; CI, confidence interval. Alcohol disorders are among the 3 most common psychiatric disorders, with estimates from the National Comorbidity [...]

The attitudes of protective service workers, police officers, and mental health therapists toward child sexual abuse in a rural county in Florida were determined by a mailed questionnaire. Reactions of these professionals to three cases taken from the literature showed unexpected as well as expected differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]