This study investigated the impact of drug use on employment over 20 years among men and women, utilizing data on 7,661 participants in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Growth mixture modeling was applied, and five distinct employment trajectory groups were identified for both men and women. The identified patterns were largely similar for men and women except that a U-shape employment trajectory was uniquely identified for women. Early-initiation drug users, users of "hard" drugs, and frequent drug users were more likely to demonstrate consistently low levels of employment, and the negative relationship between drug use and employment was more apparent among men than women. Also, positive associations between employment and marriage became more salient for men over time, as did negative associations between employment and childrearing among women. Processes are dynamic and complex, suggesting that throughout the life course, protective factors that reduce the risk of employment problems emerge and change, as do critical periods for maximizing the impact of drug prevention and intervention efforts.

This study investigated the influence of including a covariate and/or a distal outcome on growth mixture modeling (GMM). GMM was used to examine patterns of days of heroin use over 16 years among 471 heroin users and the relationship of those patterns to mortality (distal outcome). Comparisons were made among four types of models: without a covariate and a distal outcome (two-stage approach), with a distal outcome, with a covariate, and with a covariate and a distal outcome in conjunction with three different covariates. The two-stage approach and models with the inclusion of a distal outcome resulted in different conclusions when testing the impact of latent trajectory membership on the distal outcome. Differences in membership classifications between unconditional and conditional models were mainly determined by two factors: (1) the associations of the trajectories with the covariate and the distal outcome, and (2) the distribution of the covariate in the study sample.

To explore the accessibility of school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports (SWPBIS) for students with severe disabilities, we conducted a survey of 179 schools implementing SWPBIS during the 2015-2016 school year. Personnel from each school reported the frequency and level of importance of SWPBIS implementation across Likert-type scale items related to the domains of systems procedures, practices, and data collection procedures applicable to students with severe disabilities. Personnel from each school also responded to open-ended items to report barriers to and strategies for including students with severe disabilities in SWPBIS. Overall, school personnel reported high levels of implementation and importance across these SWPBIS domains and a range of barriers and strategies related to SWPBIS accessibility. School characteristics related to grade level, tiers of SWPBIS implementation, and the percentage of students included in general education settings for a majority of the school day contributed to statistically significant differences in ratings of frequency and importance for some aspects of the SWPBIS domains.

Over 15 years after passage of legislation requiring the use of functional behavioral assessment (FBA) to inform the development of positive behavior support plans (BSPs) in special education, schools are still struggling to implement BSPs based on FBA and the function of behavior. A primary concern is that school teams regularly fail to use function of behavior to generate behavioral interventions, even after completing an FBA and receiving training. The current study evaluated outcomes of an efficient 60-min training that taught explicit strategies for using function of behavior and FBA information to identify function-based intervention through modeling, guided practice, and feedback using student vignettes for escapemaintained and attention-maintained behaviors. The training yielded significant, positive results in participants' ability to identify function-based interventions on behavioral vignettes. Future research and next steps are suggested for expanding the training to address the challenge of extending the science of FBA to guide the implementation of effective behavioral interventions in schools.

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