Social Sciences

With a storyline that is part international documentary and part reality series, a growing coalition of University at Buffalo educators and community members has set its sights on helping to build a school for girls in a remote Tanzanian village, a community enhancement that for these young girls will give them opportunity beyond the harsh limits of their reality.

The University at Buffalo School of Social Work has put its ambitions to be a national leader in using digital technologies to teach the social work profession where they belong -- online.

Not all technology meets human needs, and some technologies provide only the illusion of having met your needs. But new research by psychologists at the University at Buffalo and Miami University, Ohio, indicates that illusionary relationships with the characters and personalities on favorite TV shows can provide people with feelings of belonging, even in the face of low self esteem or after being rejected by friends or family members.

A national study of data collected over 12 years finds that delinquent teens marry earlier than their peers, while substance-abusing teens -- especially girls who abuse marijuana -- marry later than peers, if at all. University at Buffalo sociologist Sampson Lee Blair's research is a rare look at the long-term effects of teen delinquency and drug abuse on adult role attainment.

Behavior treatment works as well as drugs for children with ADHD and bypasses the risk of medication's side effects, a meta-analysis of 174 studies on ADHD treatment conducted at the University at Buffalo, has shown.

Most research on developmental pathways leading to substance use and related disorders focuses on factors related to aggressive, acting-out behaviors in children as early risk factors for alcohol and drug use.

The University at Buffalo Regional Institute has issued a detailed analysis of Western New York's voting patterns in the 2008 presidential election. Among the key findings are that the region's most populated areas -- urban and suburban -- voted for Barack Obama, although 85 percent of the region's municipalities voted for McCain. The region also voted more Democratic in 2008 compared to 2004, especially rural areas, while the region's rank of registered Republicans shrank.

In what appears to be a match made in social research and human services heaven, the University at Buffalo School of Social Work's Buffalo Center for Social Research has entered into a five-year contract to provide research expertise to Hillside Family of Agencies, a children and family human services nonprofit headquartered in Rochester, N.Y.

The spectacular increase in the use of psychiatric drugs over the past 50 years involved what a University at Buffalo historian calls "a massive break with what we consider 'normal' mental health," one linked to myriad social and cultural changes in America.

If you and your child are romping in the park or enjoying a stroll on a warm spring day and a dog approaches, be ultra vigilant. Children, warm weather, and dogs, even family dogs, don't mix well, according to a study conducted by pediatric otolaryngologists from the University at Buffalo's School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.