Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: The West End neighborhood in High Point, NC is one of several racially diverse, working-class neighborhoods that make up part of a larger area known as Core City. Despite having only 30 percent of the city’s population, Core city accounts for nearly 70 percent of all crime in the city. In an effort to assist local residents in reclaiming their neighborhood from drug dealers, the High Point Police Department launched the West End Initiative in May 2004. The West End Initiative represents an innovative approach to dealing with drug related crimes by permitting offenders one last chance, with the assistance of the community, to disassociate from their criminal activities. This poster presentation reports on the collaborative efforts of residents, community leaders, community organizations and police over the past two years to reduce drug-related crime in the West End. Drawing from both primary (a self-administered survey, focus groups, participation observation) and secondary data (newspaper stories, census data, unpublished reports) I examine the implications these efforts have had to date and will likely have in the future, on community development efforts in the West End.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Almost sixty years after its foundation, the question of what NATO is still preoccupies a lot of IR scholars. Common characterizations range from alignment over alliance to security community, and from United Nations? subcontractor to an instrument of maintaining Western predominance by military means.Puzzling enough, especially the rationalist-inspired accounts of NATO leave aside the important question of what the appropriate level of analysis is. But making statements about NATO requires taking NATO as NATO seriously.Obviously, NATO is constituted by its member states, but as a structure that enables coordinated, common and collective action, it always produces effects of a genuine quality that cannot be grasped entirely from a perspective that reduces international institutions to mere products of states? willingness to co-operate and to pursue their own interests.Analyzing NATO as NATO means to examine the secretary-general?s as well as the North Atlantic Council?s capacity of creative action.The paper will illustrate the theoretical and methodological implications of the suggested perspective by focusing on NATO?s policy on the devastating situation in Sudan which might become the occasion for the institution?s first engagement in Africa, thereby finally manifesting its latent influence on North-South relations.

Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: The New Immigrant Survey (NIS) s a multi-cohort prospective-retrospective panel survey of new legal immigrants to the United States based on probability samples of administrative records from the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. A survey pilot project (NIS-P) was carried out in 1996 to test sampling procedures, questionnaire design, and tracking procedures to inform the implementation of the full NIS.

The first full cohort (NIS-2003-1) was sampled during May through November of 2003, yielding data on 8,573 Adult Sample respondents, 4,336 spouses, and 1,072 children aged 8-12. The baseline survey was conducted from June 2003 to June 2004. The geographic sampling design takes advantage of the natural clustering of immigrants. It includes all top 85 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and all top 38 counties, plus a random sample of MSAs and counties.

The NIS content includes the following information: demographic, health and insurance, migration history, living conditions, transfers, employment history, income, assets, social networks, religion, housing environment, and child assessment tests. At the present, follow-up interviews (NIS-2003-2) are conducted.

Purpose:
Immigration has a major impact on American society – it accounts for one-third of U.S. population growth, and the United States takes in more immigrants than all other countries combined. In perhaps no other area of public policy is there such a large gap between information needs and existing data. Immigration processes and immigration policy continue to be the subject of much political and scientific debate. What are the contributions and costs of immigrants to the economy? What is the relationship between legal and illegal immigration? What is known about the origins of legal immigrants, how many return to their home countries, and what factors affect their assimilation?
The main objective is to provide a public use database on new legal immigrants to the United States that can address scientific and policy questions about migration behavior and the impacts of migration.

Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: In the sociology of youth drug use, research has demonstrated that aggregate changes in drug (i.e., marijuana) specific factors such as perceived risk of harm and disapproval of use are the strongest and most likely determinants of fluctuations in prevalence of marijuana use over the past several decades (Bachman et al. 1988, 1990, 1998).

The direct causal link or direct effects of perceived risk of harm and disapproval of marijuana use on actual use in youth has been proposed for some time (Bachman et al. 1988, 1990, 2002), but actual tests have been limited in several ways. Utilizing these findings to explain the direct effects of perceived risk of harm and disapproval on use at the individual level is problematic (Bachman et al. 1988, 1990, 1998, 2002; Lee, Su and Hazard 1998). Bachman and colleagues (1988, 1990) and Johnston (2003) have argued that perceived risk of harm from drug use likely has direct effects on disapproval of drug use, which in turn has direct influence on actual use. Though this causal chain has been proposed, it has yet to be fully explored (Bachman et al. 2002).

The proposed research poster will present a social influence model of marijuana use in a national sample of youth aged 12-17 for the year 2002. Data is derived from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). The social influence model is tested using structural equation modeling, and includes a measurement model and structural relationships among variables based on a confluence of theoretical orientations concerning the social construction of perceived risk of harm and disapproval. Furthermore, the hypothesized direct causal relationship between perceived risk of harm, disapproval, and frequency of marijuana use was modeled based on the existing empirical literature suggesting this causal chain of influence.

The model will be able to determine if social processes involving perceived risk of harm, disapproval, and marijuana use that operate at the aggregate level over time (Bachman et al. 1988, 1990, 1998) are applicable at the individual level for a single cross-sectional sample. Furthermore, theory in the sociology of risk literature suggests that risk perception is relative to social location (e.g., Lupton 1999); thus, goodness of fit and structural relationships of the model are tested separately for lower and upper class youth, as well as for males and females. In this way, the conceptual model hypothesizing the direct causal link between perceived risk of harm, disapproval and marijuana use can be evaluated for different social groups whose evaluation of risk may be mediated through different social perspectives.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The sex difference in depression is well documented in westernized, developed societies, although there has been little quantitative cross-cultural research on the topic. Sociologists have argued that the sex difference in depression is primarily a result of unequal social and economic roles in westernized, developed societies. Conversely, evolutionary psychologists have argued that the greater tendency of women towards depression is an evolved predisposition. In this study, we examine gender differences in depression across 26 westernized and non-westernized countries using data from the U.S. General Social Survey and the World Values Survey. Consistent with evolutionary arguments, young women across all types of countries are more likely to report depressive symptoms than young men. Consistent with sociological arguments, the gender difference in depression among those over 50 is only found in westernized, developed countries.