Political variations in pandemic lifestyles and COVID-19 vaccination by age cohort in the United States.

While recent scholarship suggests that political affiliation is a robust predictor of pandemic behaviors and COVID-19 vaccination status, research has yet to examine whether the impact of political affiliation on these outcomes vary by age. Drawing on health lifestyles theory, we contribute to the social epidemiology of infectious disease behaviors by testing whether the impact of political affiliation on risky pandemic health lifestyles and COVID vaccination varies by age cohort. We employ data collected from the 2021 Crime, Health, and Politics Survey (CHAPS), a national study of adults from the United States, to formally assess this understudied association. In all models, Democrats reported less risky pandemic lifestyles compared to their Republican counterparts. Moreover, Democrats displayed greater odds of being vaccinated than Republicans or Independents. Further, the impact of political affiliation on vaccination status varied by age cohort, such that the impact of political affiliation was stronger among the oldest adults in our sample. Our analyses contribute to the growing study of politics and health lifestyles by challenging theoretical perspectives and cultural narratives that claim that older adults are less swayed by political influence when it comes to healthcare decisions. Our results help better our understanding of the ways in which political discourse shapes adopting public health recommendations.

Gun ownership, community stress, and sleep disturbance in America.

OBJECTIVE: Although there is widespread speculation about guns helping people to sleep better, this idea has only recently faced empirical scrutiny. We test whether people who own guns tend to exhibit healthier sleep outcomes than people who do not own guns and whether the association between community stress and sleep is less pronounced for people who own guns. DESIGN: We use ordinary least squares, multinomial logistic, and binary logistic regression to model cross-sectional survey data. SETTING: Our data span the United States. PARTICIPANTS: The 2021 Crime, Health, and Politics Survey (CHAPS) is based on a national probability sample of 1714 adults. MEASUREMENTS: Our analyses include multiple measures of gun ownership (personal ownership, keeping a gun in one's bedroom, and COVID-19 pandemic gun purchases), community stress (neighborhood disorder, neighborhood danger during the pandemic, and perceptions of police protection), and sleep (insomnia symptoms, sleep duration, and pandemic sleep). RESULTS: We found that people who own guns and people who do not own guns tend to exhibit similar sleep outcomes and that people who experience community stressors tend to exhibit similar sleep outcomes regardless of gun ownership. CONCLUSION: Our analyses confirm that gun ownership is unrelated to sleep and that guns are insufficient to mitigate the detrimental effects of community stress on sleep. We extend prior work by (a) using more detailed measurements of gun ownership, community stress, and sleep, (b) assessing whether people keep a gun in their bedroom, and (c) exploring the intersection of pandemic gun purchases and pandemic sleep quality.

Sexual Dysfunction and Gun Ownership in America: When Hard Data Meet a Limp Theory.

Although there has been no direct empirical evidence linking sexual dysfunction (SD) with gun ownership, speculation has been widespread and persistent for decades. In this paper, we formally examine the association between SD and gun ownership. Our primary hypothesis, derived from the psychosexual theory of gun ownership, asserts that men experiencing SD are more likely to personally own guns than other men. To test this hypothesis, we used recently collected data from the 2021 Crime, Health, and Politics Survey (CHAPS), a national probability sample of 780 men, and binary logistic regression to model gun ownership as a function of SD. Our key finding is that men experiencing SD are no more likely to own guns than men without SD. This interpretation was supported across several indicators of SD (performance anxiety, erection trouble, and ED medication) and gun ownership (personal gun ownership, purchasing a gun during the pandemic, and keeping a gun in one's bedroom). To our knowledge, we are the first to have directly tested the association between SD and gun ownership in America. Our findings are important because they contribute to our understanding of factors associated with gun ownership by challenging the belief that phallic symbolism and masculinity somehow drive men with SD to purchase guns. Our results also remind us of the perils of gun culture rhetoric, which, in this case, function to discredit gun owners and to further stigmatize men with ED. We conclude by calling for more evidence-based discussions of SD and guns in society.

Peace through superior firepower: Belief in supernatural evil and attitudes toward gun policy in the United States.

Although debates over guns and gun control have roiled the contemporary political scene, the role of religion has received only limited attention from scholars. We contribute to this literature by developing a series of theoretical arguments linking one specific facet of religion -belief in supernatural evil (i.e., the Devil/Satan, Hell, and demons)-and a range of gun policy attitudes. Relevant hypotheses are then tested using data from the 2014 Baylor Religion Survey (n = 1572). Results show that belief in supernatural evil is a robust predictor of support for policies that expand gun rights. Overall, the estimated net effects of belief in supernatural evil withstand statistical controls for a host of sociodemographic covariates, and, importantly, political ideology. Very few other aspects of religion are associated with any of these gun policy attitudes. Implications and study limitations are discussed, and promising directions for future research on religion and guns are identified.

Modeling recent gun purchases: A social epidemiology of the pandemic arms race.

In this paper, we document the social patterning of recent gun purchases to advance a contemporary social epidemiology of the pandemic arms race. We employ cross-sectional survey data from the 2020 Health, Ethnicity and Pandemic Study, which included a national sample of 2,709 community-dwelling adults living in the United States. We use binary logistic regression to model recent pandemic gun purchases as a function of age, sex, race/ethnicity, nativity status, region of residence, marital status, number of children, education, household income, pandemic job change, religious service attendance, pandemic religion change, and political party. Overall, 6% of the sample reported purchasing a new gun during the pandemic. Multivariate regression results suggest that pandemic gun purchasers tend to be male, younger, US-born, less educated, recently unemployed, experiencing changes in their religious beliefs, Republicans, and residents of southern states. To our knowledge, we are among the first to formally document a new population of pandemic gun owners that is characterized by youth, US-nativity, and religious volatility. Our analyses underscore the need for public health initiatives designed to enhance gun-related safety during pandemics, including, for example, addressing underlying motivations for recent gun purchases and improving access to training programs.

Life-Course Religious Attendance and Cognitive Functioning in Later Life.

Although several studies suggest that religious attendance is associated with better cognitive functioning in later life, researchers have generally failed to connect with any established life-course perspectives or theories of cognitive aging. Building on previous work, we examine the effects of life-course religious attendance on a range of cognitive functioning outcomes. We employ data from the religious life histories module of the 2016 Health and Retirement Study, a subsample of 516 adults aged 65 and older. Our key findings demonstrate that older adults who attended religious services for more of their life course tend to exhibit poorer working memory and mental status and better self-rated memory than older adults who attended less often. We contribute to previous research by reconceptualizing religious attendance as a cumulative life-course exposure, exploring the effects of religious attendance net of secular social engagement, and examining a wider range of cognitive functioning outcomes.

Happiness is a warm gun? Gun ownership and happiness in the United States (1973-2018).

Although there is no empirical evidence linking gun ownership with happiness, speculation is widespread. In this paper, we assess the association between gun ownership and happiness. We use 27 years of national cross-sectional data from the General Social Survey (1973-2018) and logistic regression to model self-rated happiness as a function of gun ownership (n = 37,960). In bivariate and partially adjusted models, we observed that the odds of being very happy were higher for respondents who reported having a gun in their home. This association persisted with adjustments for age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, employment status, household income, financial satisfaction, financial change, number of children, religious attendance, political affiliation, urban residence, region of interview, and survey year. In our fully adjusted model, gun ownership was unrelated to happiness. The original association between gun ownership and happiness was entirely confounded by marital status. In other words, gun owners only appeared happier because they are more likely to be married, which increases happiness. In the first study of gun ownership and happiness, we found that people who own guns and people who do not own guns tend to exhibit similar levels of happiness. This general pattern was consistent across nearly three decades of national surveys, a wide range of subgroups, and different measures of happiness. Our analyses are important because they contribute to our understanding of the epidemiology of happiness. They also indirectly challenge theoretical perspectives and cultural narratives about how guns contribute to feelings of safety, power, and pleasure.

Gun ownership and sleep disturbance.

Although there is no empirical evidence linking gun ownership with better sleep, speculation is widespread in gun culture. We assess the direct association between gun ownership and sleep disturbance and whether gun ownership moderates the association between neighborhood fear and sleep disturbance. We use four waves of cross-sectional data from the General Social Survey (2010-2018) and logistic regression to model sleep disturbance as a function of gun ownership and test the statistical interaction of gun ownership and neighborhood fear. Our analyses demonstrate that gun ownership is unrelated to sleep disturbance across sleep specifications. None of the statistical interactions between gun ownership and neighborhood fear reached statistical significance. Although being afraid to walk alone at night in one's neighborhood is associated with restless sleep, owning a gun is no consolation. In ancillary analyses, we observed that gun ownership is unrelated to sleep disturbance across survey years and a range of subpopulations. In the first empirical study of gun ownership and sleep, we find consistent evidence to suggest that people who own guns do not report better sleep in general or in the context of living in a dangerous neighborhood. Our analyses are important because they contribute to our understanding of the epidemiology of sleep. They also challenge theoretical perspectives and cultural narratives about how having a gun in the home helps individuals and their families to feel safe, secure, and protected. Additional research is needed to replicate our findings using longitudinal data and more reliable measures of sleep disturbance.

Religious Attendance and the Social Support Trajectories of Older Mexican Americans.

In this paper, we directly assessed the extent to which the association between religious attendance and the social support trajectories of older Mexican Americans is due to selection (spurious) processes related to personality, health status, and health behavior. We employed seven waves of data from the Hispanic Established Populations for the Epidemiologic Study of the Elderly (1993-2010) to examine the association between religious attendance and perceived social support trajectories (n = 2479). We used growth mixture modeling to estimate latent classes of social support trajectories and multivariate multinomial logistic regression models to predict membership in the social support trajectory classes. Growth mixture estimates revealed three classes of social support trajectories: high, moderate, and low. Multinomial logistic regression estimates showed that the odds of membership in the low support trajectory class (versus the high social support trajectory class) were lower for respondents who attended religious services yearly, monthly, weekly, and more than weekly than for respondents who never attend religious services. Religious attendance could not distinguish between membership in the moderate and high support trajectory classes. These results persisted with adjustments for age, gender, immigrant status, language proficiency, education, income, religious affiliation, marital status, living arrangements, contact with family/friends, secular group memberships, self-esteem, smoking, heavy drinking, depression, cognitive functioning, and physical mobility. We conclude that the association between religious attendance and the social support trajectories of older Mexican Americans is primarily driven by processes related to social integration, not selection.

Gun ownership and fear.

Americans can be divided into two groups: those who own guns and those who do not. Although people who own guns and people who do not own guns are often separated along social, cultural, and political lines, it is unclear whether these divisions might extend to population differences in emotional experience. In this paper, we use national cross-sectional data from the 2014 Chapman University Survey on American Fears (n = 1385) to test whether gun owners are more or less afraid than people who do not own guns. We build on previous work by testing two hypotheses with a broad range of fear-related outcomes, including specific phobias and fears associated with being victimized. The symptom perspective argues that gun ownership is a behavioral expression of fear, that gun owners need guns to protect themselves because they are irrational cowards. Although binary logistic regression models provided minimal support for this idea, there was some evidence to suggest that the odds of gun ownership are higher for people who report being afraid of being victimized by a random/mass shooting. The palliative perspective claims that gun ownership mitigates fear, that owning a powerful weapon is somehow soothing to individuals and their families. Ordinary least squares and negative binomial regression models suggest that people who own guns tend to report lower levels of phobias and victimization fears than people who do not own guns. This general pattern is observed across multiple indicators of fear (e.g., of animals, heights, zombies, and muggings), multiple outcome specifications (continuous and count), and with adjustments for age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, household income, marital status, the presence of children, religious identity, religiosity, religious attendance, political orientation, region of residence, and urban residence. Additional longitudinal research is needed to confirm our findings with a wider range of covariates and fear-related outcomes.

Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Influenza Vaccination Coverage Among US Adolescents, 2010-2016.

OBJECTIVE: Although research suggests racial/ethnic disparities in influenza vaccination and mortality rates, few studies have examined racial/ethnic trends among US adolescents. We used national cross-sectional data to determine (1) trends in influenza vaccination rates among non-Hispanic white (hereinafter, white), non-Hispanic black (hereinafter, black), and Hispanic adolescents over time and (2) whether influenza vaccination rates among adolescents varied by race/ethnicity. METHODS: We analyzed provider-reported vaccination histories for 2010-2016 from the National Immunization Survey-Teen. We used binary logistic regression models to determine trends in influenza vaccination rates by race/ethnicity for 117 273 adolescents, adjusted for sex, age, health insurance, physician visit in the previous 12 months, vaccination facility type, poverty status, maternal education level, children in the household, maternal marital status, maternal age, and census region of residence. We calculated adjusted probabilities for influenza vaccination for each racial/ethnic group, adjusted for the same demographic characteristics. RESULTS: Compared with white adolescents, Hispanic adolescents had higher odds (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 1.11; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.06-1.16) and black adolescents had lower odds (aOR = 0.95; 95% CI, 0.90-1.00) of vaccination. Compared with white adolescents, Hispanic adolescents had significantly higher adjusted probabilities of vaccination for 2011-2013 (2011: 0.22, P < .001; 2012: 0.23, P < .001; 2013: 0.26, P < .001). Compared with white adolescents, black adolescents had significantly lower probabilities of vaccination for 2016 (2016: 0.21, P < .001). CONCLUSIONS: Targeted interventions are needed to improve adolescent influenza vaccination rates and reduce racial/ethnic disparities in adolescent vaccination coverage.