Measurement of Alcohol Use and Misuse in a Cohort of Students Followed from Grade 6 Through Grade 12

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66189/1/j.1530-0277.1994.tb00938.x.pd

Effectiveness of a High School Alcohol Misuse Prevention Program

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/65153/1/j.1530-0277.1996.tb05253.x.pd

Susceptibility to Peer Pressure, Self-Esteem, and Health Locus of Control as Correlates of Adolescent Substance Abuse

As part of a school-based alcohol misuse prevention study, questionnaires were ad ministered to 2,589 fifth and sixth grade students to determine levels of use of alcohol, marijuana, and cigarettes, intentions to use these substances, and problems resulting from alcohol misuse. The questionnaire also included 45 items concerning susceptibil ity to peer pressure, self-esteem, and health locus of control. These 45 items were factor analyzed separately for two groups formed by random assignment. Six factors were identified which were both internally consistent and replicable, and indices were constructed. The indices measuring susceptibility to peer pressure, self-esteem, and internal health locus of control were significantly and negatively correlated with most of the substance use, misuse, and intention items, and an external health locus of con trol index was not significantly related to most of the substance use, misuse, and inten tion items. The "Susceptibility to Peer Pressure" index correlated more highly with the adolescent substance use, misuse, and intention items than the self-esteem or the health locus of control indices, and it had the highest alpha coefficient. Implications for the design of school-based substance abuse prevention programs are discussed.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68065/2/10.1177_109019818701400207.pd

Distributionally robust L1-estimation in multiple linear regression

Linear regression is one of the most important and widely used techniques in data analysis, for which a key step is the estimation of the unknown parameters. However, it is often carried out under the assumption that the full information of the error distribution is available. This is clearly unrealistic in practice. In this paper, we propose a distributionally robust formulation of L1-estimation (or the least absolute value estimation) problem, where the only knowledge on the error distribution is that it belongs to a well-defined ambiguity set. We then reformulate the estimation problem as a computationally tractable conic optimization problem by using duality theory. Finally, a numerical example is solved as a conic optimization problem to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach

Longitudinal Research on Alcohol Problems: The Flow of Risk, Problems, and Disorder over Time

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/65764/1/j.1530-0277.1996.tb01753.x.pd

Long-Term Follow-Up of a High School Alcohol Misuse Prevention Program's Effect on Students' Subsequent Driving

Alcohol-related injuries, particularly motor vehicle, are an important cause of adolescent mortality. School-based alcohol prevention programs have not been evaluated in terms of driving outcomes. This study examined the effects on subsequent driving of a high school-based alcohol prevention program. Methods : The Alcohol Misuse Prevention Study included a randomized test of the effectiveness of an alcohol misuse prevention curriculum conducted among 4635 10th-grade students. Students were assigned to intervention ( n = 1820) or control ( n = 2815) groups and were followed for an average of 7.6 years after licensure, which typically occurred during or shortly after 10th grade. Outcomes examined included alcohol-related and other serious offenses, and at-fault, single-vehicle, and alcohol-related crashes. Results : Only serious offenses (which included alcohol-related) had a significant treatment effect (statistically marginal) after we adjusted for sex, age, race, alcohol use/misuse, family structure, presence of prelicense offenses, age of driver licensure, and parental attitudes toward teen drinking. The effect was found only during the first year of licensure (estimated adjusted relative risk = 0.80, confidence interval = 0.63–1.01). Two first-year serious offense interactions were found. The positive effect was strongest among the largest subgroup of students, those who were drinking less than one drink per week on average before the curriculum, compared with those who drank more than one drink per week ( p = 0.009). The effect was also stronger for the small subgroup of students whose parents had not expressed disapproval of teens’ drinking, compared with those whose parents had disapproved ( p = 0.004). Conclusions : These findings suggest that a high school-based alcohol prevention program can positively affect subsequent driving, particularly that of students who do not use alcohol regularly. The results highlight the need to start prevention efforts early and extend them beyond the initial exposure to driving. Programs should incorporate the differing backgrounds of the students.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/65493/1/j.1530-0277.2001.tb02227.x.pd

Do dividends signal future earnings in the Nordic stock markets?

We study the informational content of dividends on three Nordic civil law markets, where other simultaneous but blurring motives for dividends may be weaker. Using aggregate data on real earnings per share and payout ratios, long time series from 1969 to 2010, and methodologies which address problems of endogeneity, non-stationarity and autocorrelation (including a Vector Error Correction Model approach), we find evidence on dividend signaling in Nordic markets. However, we also find heterogeneity in the relationship between dividends and earnings on markets similar in many respects, suggesting that even small variations in the institutional surroundings may be important for the results