Prevalence of Cyberbullying among Traditional Undergraduate Students Attending Faith-Based Universities: A Causal-Comparative Study

Cyberbullying among traditional undergraduate students is a relatively new issue that involves the safety of postsecondary students. The purpose of this study was to provide statistical data to faith-based universities that relate the prevalence of cyberbullying victimization experiences and the prevalence of cyberbullying offending experiences of traditional undergraduate students to biological gender (female/male) and level of religiosity (higher/lower), and to add to the small body of research conducted among this demographic. In this quantitative, causal-comparative study, traditional undergraduate students were recruited from two faith-based universities in the southern United States. Level of religiosity and cyberbullying prevalence were determined through responses to an anonymous, online survey using the Duke University Religion Index (DUREL) and the Cyberbullying and Online Aggression Survey (COAS), respectively. The researcher utilized two separate two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to analyze the data. The study had 284 participants that included 180 female students and 104 male students. Findings indicated that gender and level of religiosity did not have a significant effect on the prevalence of cyberbullying experiences scores among traditional undergraduate students attending faith-based universities. The results contribute to the growing body of knowledge on the prevalence of cyberbullying experiences among university students. Future research on the prevalence of cyberbullying experiences among university students could include comparing secular and faith-based universities and investigating cyberbullying prevalence at faith-based universities in different parts of the United States

Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences: Exploiting a Natural Experiment

In this paper, we exploit a 'natural experiment' associated with human reproduction to identify the effect of teen childbearing on subsequent educational attainment, family structure, labor market outcomes and financial self-sufficiency. In particular, we exploit the fact that a substantial fraction of women who become pregnant experience a miscarriage (spontaneous abortion) and thus do not have a birth. If miscarriages were purely random and if miscarriages were the only way, other than by live births, that a pregnancy ended, then women, who had a miscarriage as a teen, would constitute an ideal control group with which to contrast teenage mothers. Exploiting this natural experiment, we devise an Instrumental Variables (IV) estimators for the consequences of teen mothers not delaying their childbearing, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 (NLSY79). Our major finding is that many of the negative consequences of not delaying childbearing until adulthood are much smaller than has been estimated in previous studies. While we do find adverse consequences of teenage childbearing immediately following a teen mother's first birth, these negative consequences appear short- lived. By the time a teen mother reachers her late twenties, she appears to have only slightly more children, is only slightly more likely to be single mother, and has no lower levels of educational attainment than if she had delayed her childbearing to adulthood. In fact, by this age teen mothers appear to be better off in some aspects of their lives. Teenage childbearing appears to raise levels of labor supply, accumulated work experience and labor market earnings and appears to reduce the chances of living in poverty and participating in the associated social welfare programs. These estimated effects imply that the cost of teenage childbearing to U.S. taxpayers is negligible. In particular, our estimates imply that the widely held view that teenage childbearing imposes a substantial cost on government is an artifact of the failure to appropriately account for pre- existing socioeconomic differences between teen mothers and other women when estimating the causal effects of early childbearing. While teen mothers are very likely to live in poverty and experience other forms of adversity, our results imply that little of this would be changed just by getting teen mothers to delay their childbearing into adulthood.

Consortial Purchasing of E-books

This chapter of The No Shelf Required Guide to E-book Purchasing studies how a consortium of thirty-six academic libraries in Oregon took a collaborative, consortium-wide approach to e-book purchasing.The alliance reacted to the threat of individual library e-book purchases limiting resource sharing by creating several teams to investigate and develop a shared e-book program

Comparison of methods for analysis of selective genotyping survival data

Survival traits and selective genotyping datasets are typically not normally distributed, thus common models used to identify QTL may not be statistically appropriate for their analysis. The objective of the present study was to compare models for identification of QTL associated with survival traits, in particular when combined with selective genotyping. Data were simulated to model the survival distribution of a population of chickens challenged with Marek disease virus. Cox proportional hazards (CPH), linear regression (LR), and Weibull models were compared for their appropriateness to analyze the data, ability to identify associations of marker alleles with survival, and estimation of effects when all individuals were genotyped (full genotyping) and when selective genotyping was used. Little difference in power was found between the CPH and the LR model for low censoring cases for both full and selective genotyping. The simulated data were not transformed to follow a Weibull distribution and, as a result, the Weibull model generally resulted in less power than the other two models and overestimated effects. Effect estimates from LR and CPH were unbiased when all individuals were genotyped, but overestimated when selective genotyping was used. Thus, LR is preferred for analyzing survival data when the amount of censoring is low because of ease of implementation and interpretation. Including phenotypic data of non-genotyped individuals in selective genotyping analysis increased power, but resulted in LR having an inflated false positive rate, and therefore the CPH model is preferred for this scenario, although transformation of the data may also make the Weibull model appropriate for this case. The results from the research presented herein are directly applicable to interval mapping analyses

Microsatellite Markers Associated with Resistance to Marek’s Disease in Commercial Layer Chickens

The objective of the current study was to identify QTL conferring resistance to Marek\u27s disease (MD) in commercial layer chickens. To generate the resource population, 2 partially inbred lines that differed in MD-caused mortality were intermated to produce 5 backcross families. Vaccinated chicks were challenged with very virulent plus (vv+) MD virus strain 648A at 6 d and monitored for MD symptoms. A recent field isolate of the MD virus was used because the lines were resistant to commonly used older laboratory strains. Selective genotyping was employed using 81 microsatellites selected based on prior results with selective DNA pooling. Linear regression and Cox proportional hazard models were used to detect associations between marker genotypes and survival. Significance thresholds were validated by simulation. Seven and 6 markers were significant based on proportion of false positive and false discovery rate thresholds less than 0.2, respectively. Seventeen markers were associated with MD survival considering a comparison-wise error rate of 0.10, which is about twice the number expected by chance, indicating that at least some of the associations represent true effects. Thus, the present study shows that loci affecting MD resistance can be mapped in commercial layer lines. More comprehensive studies are under way to confirm and extend these results

More illness in offspring of bipolar patients from the U.S. compared to Europe.

Background Evidence suggests that patients with bipolar disorder from the United States have an earlier age of onset and a more difficult course of illness than those from Germany and the Netherlands. These characteristics were related to a greater family burden of psychiatric illness and the experience of more psychosocial adversity in childhood. We hypothesized that this greater illness burden would extend to the offspring of the US patients. Methods 968 outpatients (average age 41) with bipolar illness gave informed consent for participation in a treatment outcome network and filled out a detailed questionnaire about their illness and family history of illness, including whether their offspring had a diagnosis of depression, bipolar disorder, alcohol or substance abuse, suicide attempt or “other” illness. Of those with children, 356 were from the US and 132 were from Europe. Results Compared to the Europeans, offspring of patients from the US had significantly (p\u3c0.001) more depression, bipolar disorder, drug abuse, and “other” illnesses. The number of illnesses in the offspring was related to the bipolar parent being from the US, having had childhood adversity, more than 20 prior episodes, and more parental psychiatric illness. Conclusions While the findings are limited by their basis on self report, the distribution of the percentages in the US offspring are similar to those of Axelson et al. (2015) who used direct interviews. The higher burden of illness in the offspring and their in directprogenitors from the US compared to Europe warrant new attempts at better treatment and prevention