Browsing by Subject "Gender differences"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Gang membership, gender, and sexual behavior in and outside a romantic relationship
    (Taylor & Francis, 2021) Watkins, Adam M.; Carson, Dena C.; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
    Prior research consistently finds that gang youth, compared to nongang youth, are more involved in risky behaviors such as violence and drug sales. Less attention has been given to comparisons in sexual behavior. While research demonstrates that gang membership is associated with risky sex and many gang members indicate that sex is a motivation for joining a gang, prior research is limited in its ability to account for self-selection into a gang, variations in involvement across gender, and different forms of sexual activity. This research addresses these limitations by using Add Health data and propensity score matching to examine the relationship between gang membership and sexual behavior inside and out of a romantic relationship as well as how this relationship differs by gender. While findings indicate that gang membership increases the likelihood of sexual intercourse, nonromantic sex, and the number of nonromantic sex partners, no unique gender differences were identified.
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    Is there a genetic relationship between alcoholism and depression?
    (The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 2002) Nurnberger, John I., Jr.; Foroud, Tatiana; Flury, Leah; Meyer, Eric T.; Wiegand, Ryan; Medical and Molecular Genetics, School of Medicine
    The Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) seeks to identify genes contributing to alcoholism and related traits (i.e., phenotypes), including depression. Among alcoholic subjects the COGA study found an increased prevalence of depressive syndrome (i.e., depression that may or may not occur in conjunction with increased drinking). This combination of alcoholism and depression tends to run in families. Comorbid alcoholism and depression occurred substantially more often in first-degree relatives of COGA participants with alcoholism than in relatives of control participants. Based on these data, COGA investigators defined three phenotypes—“alcoholism,” “alcoholism and depression,” and “alcoholism or depression”—and analyzed whether these phenotypes were linked to specific chromosomal regions. These analyses found that the “alcoholism or depression” phenotype showed significant evidence for genetic linkage to an area on chromosome 1. This suggests that a gene or genes on chromosome 1 may predispose some people to alcoholism and others to depression (which may be alcohol induced).
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    What can parents do? Examining the role of parental support on the negative relationship between racial discrimination, depression, and drug use among African American youth
    (Sage, 2016-07) Zapolski, Tamika C. B.; Fisher, Sycarah; Hsu, Wei-Wen; Barnes, Jessica; Psychology, School of Science
    African American youth who experience racial discrimination are at heightened risk to use drugs as a coping response to distress. Based on the buffer-stress hypothesis, we proposed that parental support would attenuate this effect. Participants were 1,521 African American youth between 4th and 12th grade. As hypothesized, a mediation pathway was observed between racial discrimination, depression symptoms, and drug use. This effect was observed for both genders, although the pathway was partially mediated for males. Additionally, as hypothesized, parental support buffered the negative effect of depression symptomatology on drug use as a consequence of discrimination. Our findings highlight the impact racial discrimination has on health outcomes for African American youth and the importance of managing youth's emotional responses to discrimination. Moreover, findings illuminate the protective role of supportive parenting within the risk model and should thus be considered as an important component within prevention programming for this population of youth.