Melinda Pilkinton

Nonmedical Use of Prescription Stimulants: Age, Race, Gender, and Educational Attainment Patterns

Illegal stimulant use has increased for several years in the U.S., particularly prescription stimulants prescribed for Attention Deficit Disorder. The propensity for youths to use medications sans prescription or to overuse for a ‘high’ has increased. This study analyzed data from the 2009 National Survey of Drug Use and Health. Of interest were age, race, and gender use rates, pointing to higher use among Whites and 18–25 year olds. Analysis of Adderall© and Ritalin© (and other methylphenidate) use indicated more Whites and persons aged 26–34 years have used stimulants non-medically than other age and racial groups. Ritalin© and other methylphenidates were misused at higher rates than Adderall©.

Drugged Driving: Increased Traffic Risks Involving Licit and Illicit Substances.

Driving under the influence of drugs poses risks for traffic safety. Most research attention has been focused on the most prevalent drugs of abuse, such as alcohol, illegal drugs, and prescription drugs with high abuse potential. The objectives of this study were to determine the types of drugs used by convicted DUI offenders on the day of their arrest, prevalence of poly-substance use, and offender characteristics associated with different drug use patterns. Data were collected from 6,339 individuals enrolled in the court-mandated Mississippi Alcohol Safety Education Program. After alcohol, cannabis was the most frequently used substance, followed by sedative medications and prescription analgesics. Among poly-substance users, 78.4% reported combining alcohol with other drugs. Findings could be used to inform public education campaigns, law enforcement training, and highway safety policies about the prevalence of combining alcohol with other drugs, as well as how poly-substance use further impairs traffic-related risks.

Using robots to interview children about bullying: Lessons learned from an exploratory study

This article describes the results of a study that compares disclosure occurrences of bullying from children (ages 8 to 12) to either a human or a social robot. Results from an orally administered questionnaire to 60 children, split evenly between human and robotic interviewers, revealed that few significant differences in reporting were encountered between interviewer types. Overall 9 of 60 (15%) of participants reported being bullied in the past month. Participants were significantly more likely to report that fellow students were teased about their looks to the robot interviewer in comparison to the human interviewer. In addition to the examination of these results, a discussion of lessons learned for future studies of this nature are provided.

Great-Aunt Whoever’s Funeral A Lesbian Woman’s Newfound Strength

The facade of idyllic rural life can be misleading, particularly with respect to persons who are representative of diverse groups, including lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered individuals. This article presents a cross section of practice with a rural, lesbian client who harbored resentment toward family members for the majority of her life. Her anecdotal experiences during a trip to a family member’s funeral resurrected painful memories. However, her encounters deviated from previous meetings with her abusers and induced newfound strength and self-esteem. Conjoint sessions with her mother increased understanding and bonds.

HIV/AIDS: Measuring an Evolving Virus

Many social work journal articles portray HIV as a chronic illness. Although HIV medical management has evolved, it is far from chronic for most of the world. With such rapid developments in the field of HIV/AIDS, this article examines validity of knowledge measurements developed pre-HAART. Further, what place does validity hold in the maintenance of these measurement devices? The authors review several widely used measurement scales utilized in developed nations—The Beliefs About Preventing AIDS, The HIV Knowledge Questionnaire, and The International IADS Questionnaire-English Version—to answer these questions and to promote understanding for social workers in the field of HIV/AIDS regarding validity of the instruments.

TANF Recipients' Barriers to Employability: Substance Abuse and Domestic Violence

Recipients of temporary assistance for needy families (TANF) encounter a variety of expectations and sanctions. Recipients face work requirements, limited resources, and barriers to employability, including the barrier of substance use. This article addresses the sanctions that are applied to clients who do not meet expectations of the policy, barriers to employability, disparities in resources, and factors influencing referrals for substance abuse treatment for TANF clients.

He can read your mind: Perceptions of a character-guessing robot

After playing a five to seven minute character guessing game with a Nao robot, children answered questions about their perceptions of the robots abilities. Responses from interactions with 30 children, ages eight to twelve, showed that when the robot made an attempt at guessing the participants character, rather than being stumped and unable to guess, the robot was more likely to be perceived as being able to understand the participants feelings and able to provide advice. Regardless of their game experience, boys were more likely than girls to feel they could have discussions with the robot about things they could not talk to other people about. This article provides details associated with the implementation of a game used to guess a character the children selected; a twelve question verbally-administered survey that examined their perceptions of the robot; quantitative and qualitative results from the study; and a discussion of the implications, limitations, and future directions of this research.

Moving toward an intelligent interactive social engagement framework for information gathering

The objective of this research is to investigate the use of robots as intermediaries to gather sensitive information from children. The research is multidisciplinary in nature. The goals will be accomplished through the development of an integrated robotic framework that includes a novel architecture and an interactive user interface to gather information using methodologies recommended for forensic interviews with children. The Interactive Social Engagement Architecture (ISEA) is designed to integrate behavior-based robotics, human behavior models, cognitive architectures, and expert user input to increase social engagement between a human and system (e.g., robot, avatar, etc.). ISEA provides for the autonomous generation of robot behaviors for self-preservation and to convey social intelligence. The framework is designed to be modular and adaptable to different applications and domains; however for this project, the focus is on social engagement for information gathering. The interactive user interface provides interviewers with the ability to use a robot as an intermediary for gathering this information. The interface and framework have been iteratively improved through observations from user studies conducted to date with 186 children ages 8–12. This project compares the effectiveness of robot versus human interviewers to gather sensitive information from children using situations in which this would commonly occur — cases of child eyewitness memory and child reports of bullying. This research has the potential to transform how sensitive information is gathered as it relates to criminal investigations and proceedings.

Correlates of Race and Substance Abuse with Religious Support Systems: A Study of Pregnant Substance Abusers

Women who misuse substances may have decreased connections with community structures, including religious support systems. This study examined the correlates of race, age, socioeconomic status, and drug use status on 1,116 pregnant womens connections with religious support structures. Data were derived from the 2002 National Survey of Drug Abuse and the 2003 National Survey of Drug Use and Health and were used to perform a secondary analysis of the variables. Results of the analyses revealed that race is not an indicator of social connectivity; while drug use, age, and socioeconomic status are indicators.