Community colleges are an important part of the US higher education landscape, yet the aptitude and preparedness of student transfers to baccalaureate institutions is often called into question. Examining transcript records and demographic information of nearly 70,000 students across over 15 years of registrar records at a public university, this study performed a descriptive analysis of the persistence, performance, and academic migration patterns of community college transfers, transfers from four-year institutions, and freshmen entrants. We found little difference between community college transfers and freshmen entrants in terms of post-transfer grades and persistence. Transfers from four-year institutions had higher grades but also had higher attrition rates than their peers. This study also found no strong evidence of transfer shock on students’ post-transfer grades. When examining the tendencies of students to shift fields of study during their educational pursuits, the academic migration patterns of transfer students were more concentrated than those of freshmen entrants.

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Purpose: Despite the importance of social networking sites on young adult alcohol use, few studies have examined Twitter as a conduit for sharing drinking behavior. However, this work generally uses random samples of tweets and thus cannot determine the extent to which Tweets correspond with self-reported drinking cognitions or behaviors. The primary aims of the present study were to (1) document basic patterns of alcohol-related Twitter activity in a subsample of young adult drinkers, and (2) examine whether willingness to drink, alcohol use, and negative consequences are associated with alcohol-related tweeting behavior. Methods: 186 young adults age 18-20 completed an online survey and provided Twitter handle information. From these participants, a random sample of 5,000 Tweets was coded by a trained team to determine whether tweets were related to alcohol use or not. Ordinary least squares regression analyses were conducted to determine whether the proportion of alcohol-related Tweets is associated with self-reported alcohol use willingness, behaviors, and negative consequences. Results: Results indicated that not only are alcohol-related tweets common among young adults, but that the proportion of one’s overall tweets that are related to alcohol is significantly associated with willingness to drink, alcohol use, and negative consequences. Conclusions: The results of this study are an important step to understanding how digital behavior (e.g., posting about alcohol on Twitter) is related to an individual’s self-reported drinking cognitions, alcohol use, and negative consequences and has implications for the way Twitter data can be used for public health surveillance and interventions.

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Many professional truck drivers suffer from low back pain (LBP) which is thought to be associated with exposure to whole-body vibration (WBV). The objectives of this study were to: (i) characterize general health, regional body pain and WBV exposures, (ii) evaluate the associations between different WBV parameters and health outcomes, and (iii) determine whether there were factors which affect a truck driver's WBV exposures. This study analyzed WBV exposures from 96 long-haul truck drivers over their regular work shift (6-15h) per International Standards Organization (ISO) 2631-1 and 2631-5 WBV standards. This study also evaluated regional body pain (10-point scale), low back disability (the Oswestry Disability Index), and physical and mental health (the Short Form 12-item Health Survey). The results demonstrated that the daily vector sum WBV exposures [A(8), VDV(8) and Sed(8)] were above action limits while the predominant z-axis exposures were below action limits. Among all the musculoskeletal outcomes, LBP was the most prevalent (72.5%) with average LBP score of 2.9 (SD: 2.0). The SF-12 health scores demonstrated that truck drivers in general had lower physical health status than the general US population (P's < 0.04) and that physical health status decreased as WBV exposures increased (P = 0.03). In addition, the correlations between the WBV measures and health outcomes indicated that A(8) exposure measures had a stronger link to musculoskeletal (LBP) and other health outcomes than the VDV(8) and Sed(8) measures. Finally, seat manufacturer and seat age were two factors which had a strong influence on WBV exposures.