Cynthia Robbins

Occupational stress and health among men and women in the Tecumseh Community Health Study.

This paper reports data from the Tecumseh Community Health Study relating measures of occupational characteristics and stresses collected in 1967-69 to biomedical and questionnaire assessments of health behavior and morbidity taken at the same time, and to mortality over the succeeding nine-to-twelve-year period. Overall, our findings show only slight evidence of associations between job characteristics or stresses and health behavior and morbidity. Consistent with prior research, however, the few positive associations found among the employed-irrespective of sex-are strongest between job pressures or demands, and health behavior and morbidity. By contrast, job rewards and satisfactions and occupation-education discrepancies show little consistent relation to health behavior and morbidity, while differences by occupation and self-employment are modest. None of the 1967-69 reported job characteristics and stresses, all of which were ascertained in a single data collection, predicts mortality by 1979. However, in a subsample of 288 men first interviewed in 1967-69 and still working and reinterviewed in 1970, those with moderate to high levels of job pressures or tensions at both interview points were three times as likely to die between 1970 and 1979 as men whose level of pressure or tension was low on at least one interview point, even if high at the other. Future research must monitor subjectively experienced stress over time if we are to relate such stress to types of morbidity or mortality that have a long etiology.

Application of a general theory of deviant behavior: self-derogation and adolescent drug use.

The applicability of a general theory of deviant behavior to explaining drug use among junior high school students (N=3,148) is tested using data from a three-wave panel. The five-stage path model consists of eleven constructs measured at two points in time and one construct (drug use) measured at three points in time. The results of the analyses are consistent with the representation of drug use as the outcome of: (1) students recognition of the self-devaluing implications of membership group experiences, (2) exacerbation of the self-esteem motive; and of the effects of these two concurrent processes, including decreased identification with the normative structure, increased perception of the self-enhancing potential of deviant responses, increased perception of the prevalence of drug use, and increased association with friends who use drugs.

Antecedents of Psychological Distress in Young Adults: Self-Rejection, Deprivation of Social Support, and Life Events

We test models predicting psychological distress as a function of the main effects of selfrejection, deprivation of social support, and life events and as a function of buffering effects of self-esteem and social support with life events. Data are from 1,633 subjects interviewed in the seventh grade and again ten years later. Measures of self-rejection and of deprivation of social support come from the earlier data. Measures of life events refer to events in the ten years that are perceived as (1) bad, (2) disruptive of routine, and (3) imposing expectations that the subject failed to meet. Psychological distress is also measured at the later interview. Regression analyses support the predicted main effects. As well, interactions between self-derogation and life events are significant net of the main effects. However, only one of six social-support by life-events interactions is significant. After considering the contribution of the main effects, we discuss the pattern of interactions. Possible explanations relate to either the meaning offamily support and the substitutability of supportive relationships.

Gender, Styles of Deviance, and Drinking Problems*

The analyses reported here draw on recent work on gender and deviance to derive hypotheses concerning sex differences in drinking behavior, reactions of significant others to male and female intoxication, and the psychological consequences of drinking experiences. The hypotheses are evaluated in structural equation models with recent national data on drinking behavior and consequences. Consistent with the gendered deviance perspective, the results suggest that sex differences in style as well as frequency of intoxication mitigate the adverse consequences of female drinking commonly presumed on the basis of biological vulnerability or societal disapproval of female drunkenness. Compared to males, females become intoxicated less frequently and are less likely to abandon personal control while drinking (as indicated by aggression, blackouts, and rapid ingestion). As expected, these sex differences in drinking behavior are smaller among adolescents than among adults. Partly as a result of this different drinking style, significant others are no more likely to criticize girls or women for their drinking than they are to criticize boys or men. Two hypotheses concerning the greater psychological vulnerability of females to depression as a result of drinking or criticism of drinking by significant others are supported among youths but not among adults.

Antecedents of Pregnancy among Unmarried Adolescents.

Using data from 2158 young adults who were 1st surveyed as 7th grade students in a random half of the junior high schools in the Independent School District of Houston Texas in 1971 multivariate casual models were tested to predict out-of-wedlock adolescent pregnancy. Among the males having a girlfriend become pregnant is associated with school difficulties low parental socioeconomic status and high popularity. Among females pregnancy risk is related to race (black women more likely than white women to experience early nonmarital pregnancy; Hispanic women are less likely) low socioeconomic status father absence number of siblings school difficulties family stress and popularity. The 1981-83 followup study found 26% of the women but only 15% of the men reporting that they (or their girlfriends) had experienced adolescent pregnancies with most of the sex difference probably explained by the tendency of adolescent girls to date older males. The analyses do not support culture-of-poverty assumptions that culturally transmitted feelings of self-esteem and fatalism cause the disadvantaged to have more unplanned pregnancies. Powerlessness is weakly related to 18 to 20-year-old males involvement in nonmarital pregnancies; surprisingly it was found that powerlessness is inversely related to pregnancy risk for girls in father-present families possibly because girls who feel powerless may be more submissive to parental authority that discourages sexual activity. Further research might explain why family experiences can affect a girls pregnancy risk more than a boys and how school experiences influence pregnancy susceptibility.

Testing a General Theory of Deviant Behavior in Longitudinal Perspective

The following is a report of analyses testing models related to the adoption of deviant patterns. The models were derived from a previously formulated general theory of deviant behavior. Since the theory has been described in detail elsewhere (Kaplan, 1972, 1975b, 1980a, 1980c), only a brief overview will be presented here.