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Homogeneous effects logistic regression is used to examine the effects of personal religiosity and denomination on adolescent self-reported frequency of alcohol use by beverage type. Survey data from a sample of 3,065 male and female adolescents in grades seven through twelve in three midwestern states are employed. The findings are somewhat consistent with a hypothesis generated from the different cultural images of alcoholic beverages. For adolescents, the use of beer and liquor are largely restricted to recreational purposes, while wine has both functional and recreational uses. Because purely recreational use of psychotropic substances violates religious standards of asceticism, the effects of religiosity on the use of beer and liquor should be stronger than on the use of wine. The results show that the effects of personal religiosity are weakest for use of wine, but are relatively identical for beer and liquor.

Homogeneous effects cumulative logistic regression is used to examine the effects of personal religiosity on adolescent self-reported frequency of drug and alcohol use. Survey data from a sample of 3,065 male and female adolescents in grades 7 through 12 in three midwestern states are employed. While the existence of an inverse religiosity-substance use relationship is well documented, questions still exist concerning the nature of these relationships. A review of the literature reveals three rival hypotheses concerning variation in the strength of these relationships across drug types: the Anti-Asceticism hypothesis, which predicts stronger relationships among the "softer" drug types; the Moral Condemnation hypothesis, which predicts stronger relationships among the "harder" drugs; and the Hellfire hypothesis, which predicts stable effects across drug types. These data provide strong support for the more general Hellfire hypothesis, with equivalent parameter estimates for the effects of religiosity observed for each drug type. However, slightly weaker effects are observed for adolescentuse of alcohol.

"One of the biggest challenges facing researchers trying to empirically test structural or institutional anomie theories is the operationalization of the key concept of anomie. This challenge is heightened by the data constraints involved in cross-national research. As a result, researchers have been forced to rely on surrogate or proxy measures of anomie and indirect tests of the theories. The purpose of this study is to examine an innovative and more theoretically sound measure of anomie and to test its ability to make cross-national predictions of serious crime. The results are supportive of the efficacy of this construct to explain cross-national variations in crime rates. Nations with the highest rates of structural anomie also have the highest predicted rates of homicide." (author's abstract)

One of the biggest challenges facing researchers trying to empirically test structural or institutional anomie theories is the operationalization of the key concept of anomie. This challenge is heightened by the data constraints involved in cross-national research. As a result, researchers have been forced to rely on surrogate or proxy measures of anomie and indirect tests of the theories. The purpose of this study is to examine an innovative and more theoretically sound measure of anomie and to test its ability to make cross-national predictions of serious crime. Our results are supportive of the efficacy of this construct to explain cross-national variations in crime rates. Nations with the highest rates of structural anomie also have the highest predicted rates of homicide. Adapted from the source document.

This study examines the extent to which the symmetry‐asymmetry distinction and offense aggregation bias obfuscate the relationship between economic conditions and crime. Specifically, we use ARIMA techniques to assess the impact of incremental and abrupt changes in oil prices on counts of total, commercial, and residential burglaries in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Taken together, the bivariate and interrupted time series analyses indicate that the causal impact of oil prices on burglary is asymmetrical and varies across the two subcategories of breaking and entering.

Drawing on the theoretical statements of Braithwaite (1989), Cullen (1994), Messner and Rosenfeld (1994), this research examines the influence of social altruism on the level of crime for a sample of U.S. cities. The multivariate analyses clearly indicate that the ratio of contributions to the United Way to aggregate city income, a behavioral approximation of the cultural value of altruism, is inversely related to property and violent crime rates. The implications of these findings for the reduction of crime are discussed.

In Crime and the American Dream, Messner and Rosenfeld contend that culturally and structurally produced pressures to secure monetary rewards, coupled with weak controls from noneconomic social institutions, promote high levels of instrumental crime. Empirically, they suggest that the effects of economic conditions on profit‐related crime depend on the strength of noneconomic institutions. This investigation evaluates this proposition with cross‐sectional data for U.S. states. In brief; the nonlinear models show considerable, indirect support for Messner and Rosenfeld's institutional anomie theory, revealing that the effects of poverty on property crime depend on levels of structural indicators of the capacity of noneconomic institutions to ameliorate the criminogenic impact of economic deprivation. The implications of these findings are discussed.