Popular kids in US and Mexico more likely to smoke,

New research from the University of Southern California (USC) and University of Texas finds that popular students in seven Southern California high schools are more likely to smoke cigarettes than their less popular counterparts.

The study, which appears online this week in the Journal of Adolescent Health, confirms trends observed in previous USC-led studies of students in the sixth through 12th grades across the United States and in Mexico.

"That we're still seeing this association more than 10 years later, despite marginal declines in smoking, suggests that popularity is a strong predictor of smoking behavior," said Thomas W. Valente, Ph.D., professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and lead author of three prior studies on the subject.

In the newest study, Valente and colleagues asked 1,950 students in the ninth and 10th grades in October 2006 and 2007 whether they had ever tried smoking, how frequently they had smoked in the past 30 days, how many students their age they thought smoked cigarettes, how they perceived their close friends felt about smoking, and who their five best friends were at school. Popularity was measured by the frequency that other respondents named a student as a friend.

The researchers found that those who believed their close friends smoked were more likely to also smoke, even if their perception was incorrect. Popular students became smokers earlier than the less popular. And students who became smokers between the ninth and 10th grade were more likely to form friendships with other smokers.

Surprisingly, student perception of the norm (i.e., out of 100 students your age, how many do you think smoke cigarettes once a month or more?) was less likely to influence smoking than the perceived behavior of their close friends.

In a 2012 study that appeared in Salud Pública de México, the bi-monthly journal published by the Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública (National Institute of Public Health), Valente and colleagues at the Mexican Social Security Institute surveyed 399 teenagers at a high school in Jalisco. Two other studies — one in 2005 that polled 1,486 students in the sixth and seventh grades across Southern California and another in 2001 that polled 2,525 high-school students across the United States — also appeared in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

"Adolescence is a time when students turn to others to figure out what is important. These are four different samples, now, coming from different places — and the finding is consistent," Valente said.

Social exclusion in the playground

Being the last one picked for the team, getting left out of the clique of cool girls, having no one to sit with at lunch… For children, social exclusion can impact everything from emotional well being to academic achievements.

But what does it mean for the kids doing the excluding? Is the cure a one-size-fits-all approach that requires kids to include others, regardless of the situation at hand? Not necessarily, says new research from a professor now at Concordia University.

Unlike previous studies where researchers created hypothetical situations and pre-selected the reasons for exclusion that kids could choose from, the Concordia study asked kids to talk about a time when they excluded a peer.


Holly Recchia is an assistant professor in Concordia’s Department of Education >>

“Research that looks at kids’ own point of view about social exclusion will help us do a better job of supporting their ability to successfully navigate these situations,” says Holly Recchia, an assistant professor in Concordia’s Department of Education and member of the Centre for Research in Human Development. She is first author of the study, con-ducted while she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Utah.

The recent study published in the journal Cognitive Development shows that the expe-riences of exclusion for those doing the excluding are actually much more diverse than what previous studies have shown, and that a more nuanced approach is needed to encourage social inclusion.

This approach allowed Recchia and her colleagues at the University of Utah to form a broader picture of exclusion. The kids’ narratives included not just reasons for exclusion but also why they judged their reasons to be good or bad. For example, “it was a bad reason because now his feelings are hurt” or “it was a good reason because I don’t work well with her.”

In some cases, children tried to numb their negative feelings about exclusion by ignoring a situation, while in others they spontaneously looked for an alternative to exclusion. In both cases, they had mixed feelings about whether their reasons were good or bad.

“It’s the search for alternatives to exclusion that we want to encourage. The fact that children can do this spontaneously reflects children’s awareness of their own capacity to behave differently in the future and can be an entry point for intervention,” says Recchia.

The study also showed that the experience of exclusion changes as kids got older. Se-ven year-olds mostly reported uncontrollable circumstances and peer pressure as rea-sons for exclusion, depicting themselves as blameless. As the youngsters reached their teenage years, however, they showed more responsibility when they talked about exclu-ding others, often reporting reasons that were within their control.

This information could help researchers come up with age-specific interventions. In the case of younger kids, the best approach is to help them take responsibility for their ac-tions, which would encourage them to see what they could have done differently.

“The most useful interventions will be the ones that allow kids to weigh different goals, across different kinds of situations,” says Recchia. “This flexibility would allow them to handle exclusion in ways that minimize harm to other people while still recognizing their own legitimate desires and perspectives.”

Bullying of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder

A study based on information collected from 920 parents suggests an estimated 46.3 percent of adolescents with an autism spectrum disorder were the victims of bullying, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a JAMA Network publication.

Bullying involves negative actions toward a peer and is characterized by a power imbalance – physical, social or cognitive – between the victim and the perpetrator. Relatively little research has examined bullying involvement among adolescents with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to the study background.

Paul R. Sterzing, Ph.D., M.S.S.W., previously of Washington University, St. Louis but now affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues used nationally representative surveys to identify the prevalence of bullying involvement, compare prevalence rates of bullying involvement with adolescents with developmental disabilities that overlap with the core deficits of an ASD, and identify the social ecological correlates of bullying involvement.

The prevalence of bullying involvement for adolescents with an ASD was 46.3 percent for victimization and was "substantially higher" than the national prevalence estimates for the general adolescent population (10.6 percent). The rates of perpetration of bullying (14.8 percent) and victimization/perpetration (8.9 percent, i.e. those who perpetrate and are victimized), were about equivalent to national estimates found among typically developing adolescents, according to the study results.

Victimization was related to having a non-Hispanic ethnicity, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, lower social skills, some form of conversational ability, and more classes in general education. Perpetration was correlated with being white, having attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and getting together with friends at least once a week. Victimization/perpetration was associated with being white non-Hispanic, having attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and getting together with friends at least once a week, the results indicate.

"Future interventions should incorporate content that addresses the core deficits of adolescents with an ASD, which limits their verbal ability to report bullying incidents," the authors comment. "Schools should incorporate strategies that address conversational difficulties and the unique challenges of those with comorbid conditions."

The authors also concluded: "Inclusive classrooms need to increase the social integration of adolescents with an ASD into protective peer groups while also enhancing the empathy and social skills of typically developing students toward their peers with an ASD and other developmental disabilities."

New School Year Brings More Cuts in State Funding for Schools

States have made steep cuts to education funding since the start of the recession and, in many states, those cuts deepened over the last year. Elementary and high schools are receiving less state funding in the 2012-13 school year than they did last year in 26 states, and in 35 states school funding now stands below 2008 levels — often far below.

States made these cuts after the deepest recession in 70 years hit beginning in late 2007, precipitating a historic collapse in state revenues. Because states relied heavily on spending reductions in response to the recession, rather than on a more balanced mix of spending cuts and revenue increases, funding for schools and other public services fell sharply. While emergency aid from the federal government reduced the severity of cuts to school funding in the years immediately following the onset of the recession, Congress allowed that aid largely to expire at the end of the 2011 fiscal year, before state revenues had recovered from the recession.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ review of budget documents for the 48 states that publish education budget data in a way that allows historic comparisons finds that:

* Twenty-six states are providing less funding per student to local school districts in the new school year than they provided a year ago. These funding cuts have been modest, but, in many states, they come on top of severe cuts made in previous years.
* Some states are beginning to restore their school funding over the past year, but those restorations are, for the most part, far from sufficient to make up for cuts in past years. For example, Florida is increasing school funding by $273 per pupil this year. But that is not nearly enough to offset the state’s $569 per-pupil cut over the previous four years.
* As a result, school funding remains well below pre-recession levels. Thirty-five states are providing less funding per student than they did five years ago.
* Seventeen states have cut per-student funding by more than 10 percent from 2008 levels.
* Three states — Arizona, Alabama, and Oklahoma — each have reduced per-pupil funding to K-12 schools by more than 20 percent. (These figures, like all the comparisons in this paper, are in inflation-adjusted dollars and focus on the primary form of state aid to local schools.)

London Calling

I’ve not blogged for a while mainly because things have been changing quite a lot for me in the last couple of months. A couple of years ago (two years, I can’t believe it’s been that long!) I pretty much decided that I didn’t like the particular part of the country that the MMC lottery had placed me in. I didn’t want to spend the remainder of my youth there and I devised a plan to move.

To cut a long and convoluted story short, my plan has now come to fruition. I am now the proud owner of a training number in London and I will now complete the ret of my post-graduate training there. Since Christmas, I’ve spent most of my free time sorting out the practicalities of the move. I’ve been packing, sorting out my paperwork, having multiple conversations with various people at the deaneries

Anyway, after what seemed like an eternity, last week I finally started working in the big smoke and it’s certainly been the case of so far, so good. London hospitals have a reputation for being large, unfriendly and extremely competitive, but the people I’ve met and worked with so far have all been really nice and I feel I’m really going to enjoy working here.

On a more personal note, me and FashionGirl have moved in together and so far, things are going really well.

It’s been a bit of a long haul, but are really slotting into place for me at long last. I’ve got a feeling that I’m really going to enjoy myself over the next few months and years.

Perspective

I've had some big changes in my life over the last month or so, but not as big as some.

I sincerely wish The Little Medic all the best.

Unless it is a matter of life and death

"Severe weather warnings remain in place across the region because of the snow. The advice remains do not travel today unless it is a matter of life or death." said the weather report on the telly this morning.

I sip my mug of tea and peer through the curtains. The world outside is covered in a white blanket and it's still snowing. In the darkness, the snow makes everything look much brighter than normal and, as the snow comes down, the scene outside kind of shimmers. It's like a postcard or a scene from a Dickens novel.

"Do not travel unless it's a matter of life or death," I repeat to myself.

I briefly consider not bothering to try and get to work but I'm covering the Intensive Care unit today, so I think I can safely say the "life or death" thing applies to me. Plus, I know that if I don't turn up, the poor person who's been working on ICU all night will probably have to continue working into the day as well and that would be horrific and unfair.

No, I have to go to work.

My only question is, will I physically be able to get there? I pull on my coat and wellies and go out to survey the damage. My little car is parked on the street covered in about 10cm of snow. The council have had the gritters out and whilst my street has not been treated, the main street has been gritted and I assume that all the other roads on my route to the hospital will have been treated. I reckon if I can get my car to the main street, I'll be able to get to work. Fortunately, yesterday I had the sense to park it at the end of my street, so I'm only about 30m away from the junction.

I turn and go back inside to prepare what I'm going to take:

Hat: check

Coat: check

Gloves: check

Spare jumper: check

Scarf: check

Sandwiches: check

Wash bag: check

Toothbrush: check

Phone: check

Book: check

I pick up my spade as I head out into this particularly cold and frosty morning, crossing my fingers as I do so.