Politics and participation: Some antecedents of young people's attitudes to the political system and political activity

The antecedents of political disaffection and political activism have been extensively studied in adult populations, producing two models of political protest, the ‘dissatisfaction model’, suggesting that protest action is rooted in political disaffection, and the ‘resource model’ which bases interest in politics in a sense of political self-efficacy. There has been a dearth of research extending this theorizing to young people of prevoting age. The present study presents the results of regression analysis applied to longitudinal data collected in a U.K. Programme of research and economic and political socialization, the ESRC 16-19 Initiative. The analysis relates ‘lack of interest in politics’, ‘intention not to vote’ and ‘political activity’, to attitudes, personality characteristics, experience and circumstances measured earlier. It is concluded that political disaffection including lack of interest and intention not to vote, is strongly associated with a growing cynicism about politics rooted in poor educational performance and a working class family background. The connections with activism are negative but much weaker, suggesting the potential for protest activity across a wider spectrum of youth. This lends support to Marsh's (1990) view that given the right circumstances, protest action under both the ‘resource model’, and the ‘dissatisfaction model’, can apply.     

Factors related to reductions in alcohol consumption among college students: The role of religious involvement

College students most at risk for engaging in binge drinking are members of Greek organizations and athletic teams (Grenier, Borskey, & Folse, 1998; Wechsler, Dowdall, Davenport, & Castillo, 1995). Membership in religious organizations may moderate binge drinking (O'Hare, 1990). One hundred thirty-nine college students completed the Core Alcohol and Drug Survey (Presley, Meilman, & Lyerla, 1994), the Group Identification Scale (Hinkle, Taylor, Fox-Cardamone, & Crook, 1989), and the ‘Age-Universal’ I-E - 12 (Maltby, 1999). The results indicate that gender is related to average number of drinks per week. Membership in low alcohol consumption organizations was related to decreases in the frequency of alcohol usage within the previous year, which indicates that decreasing alcohol consumption may be more effective by promoting low alcohol consumption organizations.     

Factors related to reductions in alcohol consumption among college students: The role of religious involvement

College students most at risk for engaging in binge drinking are members of Greek organizations and athletic teams (Grenier, Borskey, & Folse, 1998; Wechsler, Dowdall, Davenport, & Castillo, 1995). Membership in religious organizations may moderate binge drinking (O'Hare, 1990). One hundred thirty-nine college students completed the Core Alcohol and Drug Survey (Presley, Meilman, & Lyerla, 1994), the Group Identification Scale (Hinkle, Taylor, Fox-Cardamone, & Crook, 1989), and the ‘Age-Universal’ I-E - 12 (Maltby, 1999). The results indicate that gender is related to average number of drinks per week. Membership in low alcohol consumption organizations was related to decreases in the frequency of alcohol usage within the previous year, which indicates that decreasing alcohol consumption may be more effective by promoting low alcohol consumption organizations.     

Factors influencing the attitudes and commitment of volunteer alcohol counsellors

The attitudes of volunteer counsellors towards clients with alcohol problems and the counsellors' commitment to their agencies were investigated. A questionnaire was devised, incorporating the Alcohol and Alcohol Problems Perception Questionnaire, and was distributed to volunteer counsellors working within Volunteer Alcohol Counsellors' Training Scheme (VACTS) recognised agencies in England. Two hundred and thirty counsellors were eligible to complete questionnaires, representing approximately half of the total population of volunteer counsellors in VACTS agencies; 141 questionnaires were completed. The results indicated the importance of role recognition by agencies in enhancing counsellor attitudes towards their work; levels of experience, in terms of length of service and the number of clients seen, also appeared to be significant. Future agency commitment seemed to be positively influenced by four agency incentives, defined as role recognition, role support, training, and accreditation. Differing modes of supervision correlated positively with counsellors' attitudes towards clients and with their future agency commitment. It is concluded that voluntary agencies have an important role to play in maintaining positive attitudes and retaining their volunteer staff.     

Factors related to cigarette smoking and alcohol use among adolescents

Based on a national survey of Icelandic adolescents, this study examined the various predictors of cigarette smoking and alcohol use. It was found that the use of tobacco and alcohol was related to a number of different factors: sex, residence, hours of paid work, physical activities, social network, educational performance and beliefs, and psychological distress. Further, smoking and drinking had most predictors in common. It was concluded that existing theoretical perspectives on juvenile deviance do not provide an adequate account of adolescent smoking and drinking. The need to integrate existing theories into a wider explanatory framework is discussed.     

Factors related to eating disorders in young adolescent girls

The objective of this study was to identify factors related to eating disorders in young adolescent girls. Three hundred eighty-five girls who were attending a career conference at a midwestern university completed the Eating Disorder Instrument (EDI) along with a biographical data sheet. The EDI is designed for the assessment of psychological and behavior traits common in eating disorders. While 81% of the young subjects were assessed to be within the range for ideal weight or were underweight, 78% preferred to weigh less. Only 14% were satisfied with their current weight. Findings for each of the subscales used revealed significant differences among the girls based on intact versus broken family; subjects' actual and preferred weight; whether the family ate meals together; average grades; age and grade in school; fathers' occupation; future career plans; place of residence; and feelings toward their mothers.     

Alcohol drinking parties and consumption of alcohol and other drugs in youth

The main aim of this paper is to analyze the relationships of involvement in the "botellon" (meetings of youth in public places to drink, chat, etc.) with alcohol/other drug abuse and vandalism in young people. A school survey was performed in centres of Compulsory Secondary School (E.S.O.), high school, professional training and University education in Lugo, NW Spain. The sample (aged 12 to 30) was split into three groups according to alcohol use and botellon involvement; drug abuse, drug-related problems and vandalism were assessed in each group. Results indicate that regular botellon attendants display more problems with alcohol and other drugs, as well as higher involvement in vandalism; this relationship is stronger among young students. The increase in adolescent risk associated with the practice of the botellon is explained by peer group pressure to use drugs and the greater accessibility of alcohol/other drugs in these contexts.     

A review of young people's vulnerabilities to online grooming

This review explores risk factors that may make a young person vulnerable to being groomed online. Even though research in this area is extremely limited, adolescents appear to be the age group most vulnerable to online grooming. Other vulnerabilities appear to be consistent with those associated with offline sexual abuse. The review suggests that behaviors specific to online grooming include: engaging in risk taking behavior online, high levels of internet access, and lack of parental involvement in the young person's internet use. Vulnerabilities to carry out these types of behavior and be more exposed to the risk of online grooming, are set within the context of the Ecological Model of child protection, consisting of: individual, family, community, and cultural risk factors. Patterns of vulnerability regarding living environment, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and personality are tentative, but are often interconnected. The more risk taking behaviors the young person carries out, plus greater levels of vulnerability factors, the less resilient they are likely to be towards protecting themselves against online grooming. A protective factor appears to be parental involvement in their child's use of the internet. Therefore, this, in combination with internet safety education at school, is encouraged.     

A retrospective analysis of alcohol consumption on laboratory tasks as related to therapeutic outcome

The relationship between drinking on laboratory-analogue measures at the onset of inpatient alcoholism treatment and abstinence subsequent to treatment was examined. Twenty therapeutically successful and 20 unsuccessful chronic alcoholics were selected and did not differ on age, education, length of problem drinking, and length of follow-up. Retrospective analysis of responding on an operant drinking task and a ‘taste test’ assessment technique revealed significant differences between the groups, with successful patients drinking less than the unsuccessful ones. Implications for screening candidates for alcoholism treatment programs are discussed.     

A survey of people's attitudes and beliefs about false confessions

The attitudes and beliefs of jury eligible individuals regarding false confessions were investigated in order to uncover potential biases. Survey respondents provided perceptions of factors related to false confessions (e.g. their frequency and likely situational and dispositional risk variables). Results indicate that people possess an awareness that false confessions can occur and believe that a confession should not be taken as an absolute indicator of guilt. However, their understanding of predisposing and situational factors that contribute to false confessions was incomplete, as was their understanding of interrogation practices. Furthermore, respondents showed a marked bias against believing that they personally would ever falsely confess, which is discussed in the context of potential inconsistencies between people's self-report and their actual behaviors in naturalistic situations.     

Risk-taking attitudes among young drivers: the psychometric qualities and dimensionality of an instrument to measure young drivers' risk-taking attitudes

Adolescents are proportionately more frequently involved in traffic accidents than are other age groups. A strategy for promoting road safety is to change the attitudes likely to influence driving behavior. However, the lack of valid and reliable instruments to measure risk-taking attitudes makes it difficult to evaluate the effects of measures aimed at changing attitudes among young drivers and their passengers. The present study tested the psychometric qualities of a scale intended to measure adolescents' risk-taking attitudes to driving. The results are based on a self-completion questionnaire survey carried out among 3,942 adolescents and young adults, aged 16-23 years, in Norway in 1998/1999. Using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, 11 dimensions of risk-taking attitudes were identified. Parametric as well as nonparametric methods were applied to test the homogeneity of items within each attitude dimension. The reliability and validity of the dimensions were satisfactory. The attitude dimensions were significantly correlated with self-reported driving behavior, as well as accident frequency. The application of the new measurement instrument in studies aimed at evaluating safety campaigns is discussed.     

Spinoza and the problem of other substances

Most of Spinoza’s arguments for God’s existence do not rely on any special feature of God, but instead on merely general features of substance. This raises the following worry: those arguments prove the existence of non-divine substances just as much as they prove God’s existence, and yet there is not enough room in Spinoza’s system for all these substances. I argue that Spinoza attempts to solve this problem by using a principle of plenitude to rule out the existence of other substances and that the principle cannot be derived from the PSR, as many claim.

Abbreviation: PSR: Principle of Sufficient Reason     

Perception of sexual intent: The role of gender,alcohol consumption,and rape supportive attitudes

This study examined the effects of participant's gender, participant's rape supportive attitudes, and target's alcohol consumption on participant's perceptions of target's sexual intent. Female and male college students read vignettes in which a young woman and man who were socializing consumed either alcoholic or nonalcoholic beverages. At the studied university, approximately 86% of undergraduates were Caucasian, 8% were African American, 3% were Asian, and 3% had other ethnic backgrounds. As hypothesized, men perceived female targets as behaving more sexually than did women, especially men high in rape myth acceptance. Male and female targets' alcohol consumption interacted, such that when both individuals were drinking alcohol they were perceived as being most sexual and their drinking was viewed as most appropriate. The rape myth acceptance and alcohol findings are discussed in terms of their implications for sexual assault and substance abuse prevention programming.Many thanks to Mary Jo Smith for assistance with data management and analyses. ARBOR staff provided assistance with data coding.     

The influence of confidence on associations among personal attitudes, perceived injunctive norms, and alcohol consumption

Social norms theories hold that perceptions of the degree of approval for a behavior have a strong influence on one's private attitudes and public behavior. In particular, being more approving of drinking and perceiving peers as more approving of drinking, are strongly associated with one's own drinking. However, previous research has not considered that students may vary considerably in the confidence in their estimates of peer approval and in the confidence in their estimates of their own approval of drinking. The present research was designed to evaluate confidence as a moderator of associations among perceived injunctive norms, own attitudes, and drinking. We expected perceived injunctive norms and own attitudes would be more strongly associated with drinking among students who felt more confident in their estimates of peer approval and own attitudes. We were also interested in whether this might differ by gender. Injunctive norms and self-reported alcohol consumption were measured in a sample of 708 college students. Findings from negative binomial regression analyses supported moderation hypotheses for confidence and perceived injunction norms but not for personal attitudes. Thus, perceived injunctive norms were more strongly associated with own drinking among students who felt more confident in their estimates of friends' approval of drinking. A three-way interaction further revealed that this was primarily true among women. Implications for norms and peer influence theories as well as interventions are discussed.     

Lay people's and police officers' attitudes towards the usefulness of perpetrator voice identification

Expert and lay knowledge of factors that affect the identification of a voice is an area of research that is still relatively unexplored. Much more research has focused on eyewitness identification and eyewitnesses' common knowledge. However, results from ‘eyewitnessing’ studies may not be directly applicable to ‘earwitnessing’. The present study examines how knowledgeable British lay people and police officers were concerning earwitness identification performance. One hundred nine participants (i.e. 49 lay people and 60 police officers) responded to a specially designed questionnaire. Results showed respondents to be more knowledgeable than expected, although police officers were no more knowledgeable than the general population. The existence of meta‐knowledge is discussed in relation to previous studies. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Epidemiology of alcohol consumption and related problems in Latin American countries: Contributions of psychology

Alcohol consumption is the leading risk factor for morbi‐mortality in many Latin American Countries. However, epidemiologic studies are relatively scarce. Among factors such as limited research capacity, disciplinary traditions and an emphasis on psychopathology within the field of psychology, have been postulated to account for this. The aim of this article is to review epidemiologic research on alcohol in Spanish Speaking Latin American Countries, and to measure the contribution of psychology to the field. A systematic search was performed in English and Spanish using regional and international data bases. We identified 269 articles. Most focused on consumption patterns in youth, with samples from a single school and using a variety of measures. With the exception of multinational efforts like Emergency Room Collaborative Alcohol Analysis Project or those supported by World Health Organization/Pan American Health Organization, studies reviewed reflected little cross country collaboration. Mexico accounted for most of the productivity, while many countries had very few or no articles. Most research was performed by health science researchers with a small contribution from psychology, but which increased significantly over time. The results of this review provide a broad identification of patterns regarding epidemiologic research on alcohol, and demonstrate the need for national scientific policies to promote research on public health topics.     

Factors affecting agreement between severely mentally ill alcohol abusers' and collaterals' reports of alcohol and other substance abuse.

This study examined subject-collateral reports of alcohol use among a sample of 167 dually diagnosed individuals seeking outpatient treatment at a community mental health clinic. All subjects met Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) criteria for a schizophrenia-spectrum or bipolar disorder and for alcohol abuse or dependence. Subjects were recruited within 2 weeks of treatment entry and completed measures of cognitive functioning, alcohol dependence severity, psychiatric symptoms, and quantity and frequency of substance use over the previous 60 days using the Timeline Follow-Back interview (L. C. Sobell & M. B. Sobell, 1996). They also provided a urine sample, which was screened for recent drug use. Collateral interviews were conducted by phone and included an assessment of the subject's alcohol and drug use over the same 60-day period. Collaterals also reported their confidence in the accuracy of their reports. Overall, the results indicated generally poor subject-collateral agreement. However, subject-collateral agreement appeared better for those individuals (n = 97) with negative urine drug screens. The most consistent predictor of subject-collateral discrepancy scores was subjects' recent drug use. Recommendations for enhancing the validity of self-reports of substance use in a severely mentally ill population are discussed.