This paper explores 16--19-year-old Scottish smokers' experiences and attitudes towards smoking and their understandings of the ways in which this transitional period impacts on their smoking behaviour. The study involved 49 qualitative interviews conducted mostly in friendship pairs. Interviewees also completed a brief smoking questionnaire. The…

The study reported here focuses on the factors that contribute to the production or non-production of refereed publications by academics. A literature review revealed that factors associated with an academic's personal characteristics, attitude to work, and workplace circumstances could influence publication output. Academics from a large…

The empirical relationship between educational attainment and credentials with socioeconomic attainment is well established, but why this relationship arises remains in doubt. The author of this article discusses seven types of middle-range theories meant to explain the relationship: human capital, screening (including filtering), signaling,…

Purpose: This article investigates how older Americans leave their career jobs and estimates the extent of intermediate labor force activity (bridge jobs) between full-time work on a career job and complete labor-force withdrawal. Design and Methods: Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we explored the work histories and retirement…

Public and private provision of vocational education and training (or Further Education and Training in the South African usage) exist in a relationship with each other but are rarely considered together. An analysis is provided of recent quantitative evidence on both sectors in South Africa in order to advance the case for further policy and…

B. Yang and D. Lester (2007) have produced an innovative contribution to the relevant literature. Unlike previous studies, they incorporate estimates of cost savings from suicide. Their argument could be strengthened in 3 ways. First, they may have underestimated some of the cost savings by relying on inflated estimates of mental health usage by…

This paper develops and estimates a model for the choice of part-time and full-time employment and the decision to pay for childcare among single mothers. The results indicate that a lower childcare price and a higher full-time wage rate both lead to an increase in overall employment and the use of paid childcare. The part-time wage effects are…

Little is known about the effects of social context or "place" factors (e.g., characteristics of local populations) on African Americans' perceptions and experiences of racism. Using data from 42,445 U.S. black women collected during the 1997 follow-up wave of the Black Women's Health Study, we investigated the association between neighborhood…

This study compares demographic characteristics, sexual risk factors for HIV/STI, and cultural predictors of sexual risk among 254 Dominican and 1,012 Puerto Rican women using outpatient health care in New York City. More Dominicans were born outside continental United States and were employed, whereas more Puerto Ricans were single and less…

The literature on the black middle class has focused predominantly on married-couple families with children, reflecting a conception of the black middle class as principally composed of this family type. If that conception is correct, then declining rates of marriage and childrearing would imply a decline in the presence and vitality of the black…

The "Core Indicators of Effectiveness Report" delineates the performance of Wyoming's community colleges as measured by the 14 indicators set forth by the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) and adopted by the seven Wyoming community colleges and the Wyoming Community College Commission. These indicators, while providing…

The present study examined the midlife outcomes of 548 adults who became parents before the age of 20. Participants were from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) and were followed prospectively from age 18 until age 53. Their life-course development was compared to sample members who gave birth at the mean age for the WLS. Midlife outcomes were…

State and local education officials in New Jersey tout the state's high school graduation rate as the highest in the nation. At the same time, independent research indicates that 40 percent of students in Newark drop out and only half of African-American students in urban districts graduate. Meanwhile, there is increasing concern in New Jersey…

On September 7, 2007, Congress enacted H.R. 2669, the College Cost Reduction and Access Act, which will raise the maximum Pell Grant to $5,400 over five years and halve interest rates on subsidized student loans. The act is part of the budget reconciliation process, which secured billions of dollars for increasing Pell Grants and for reducing…

Depression has been extensively studied for mothers but not for fathers. This study examines the sociodemographic correlates of symptoms of depression and how depression is associated with father involvement using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview-Short Form (CIDI-SF) for major depression. The study uses a sample of 2,139 resident…