Current food insecurity surveys rely on measures that may not adequately apply to college students’ unique circumstances, and food insecurity is often used in situations beyond household measures of economic access to food. This study sought to identify students at a small southeastern university who experience situations of food hardship based on distinct conditions of college life and to examine how university services, like food pantries, support them. Quantitative data from 194 survey respondents were used to measure students’ access and barriers to food and explore the use of the campus food pantry. Although results would have benefited from a higher response rate, as an applied research study, the findings informed potential improvements to campus services necessary to support students who struggle with food hardship.
Emergency medical services (EMS) is an inherently high-stress occupation characterized by frequent exposure to traumatic events, unpredictable workloads, and organizational challenges. These stressors have negative implications for health, job satisfaction, and job performance. Social support is widely recognized as a buffer against occupational stress, yet little is known about the mechanisms that make certain sources of support more effective for EMS providers specifically. This study explores the stressors most salient to EMS personnel and examines their preferred sources of social support and the reasons for these preferences. In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 EMS providers, examining the stressors they experience most and the social support they prefer most. Thematic analysis identified the importance of experiential similarity in social support, aligning with Thoits’ “similar others” theory. This study extends the applicability of the similar others theory to high-stress health care contexts, potentially informing organizational policy regarding effective stress management. Implications for future theoretical applications are also identified, including the variations in the similar-significant others typology and the inclusion of other social statuses (age, gender, sexuality, race, etc.) for more nuanced analyses of myriad social determinants of preferred social support within the similar others’ framework.
This autoethnography argues that abolition is not simply a political stance but a process-oriented methodological framework for social science. Drawing on my transition from completing a PhD to beginning a tenure-track faculty role, I examine how academic expectations surrounding neutrality, objectivity, and scientific legitimacy often position justice-oriented scholarship as analytically suspect. Through autoethnographic reflection, I analyze how abolition shaped my research practice across three interconnected sites: abolitionist organizing through the Network to Advance Abolition in Social Work, teaching on prison abolition and structural violence, and research with Black siblings of incarcerated youth. Across these encounters, I show how abolition operates as a methodological compass, guiding question formation, interpretation, reflexivity, and accountability. Rather than offering abolition as a fixed procedure, this article demonstrates how abolitionist praxis makes visible the relational, ethical, and political dimensions of knowledge production. I conclude that integrating scholarship and activism can deepen, rather than diminish, methodological rigor in movement-accountable social work and social science research.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly embedded in digital leisure platforms, yet limited research has examined the psychological dimensions of user experience within algorithmically curated environments, particularly in non-Western contexts. This study examined how Indonesian youth experience AI-mediated features in digital leisure platforms, focusing on motivations, barriers, and psychosocial impacts. An online open-ended qualitative survey was administered to 115 participants aged 18 to 31 years; inductive thematic analysis yielded 13 themes across three domains. Engagement was primarily motivated by practical convenience and psychological gratification, with social influence as a complementary trigger. Barriers included data security concerns, dissatisfaction with the accuracy of recommendations, self-regulation difficulties, economic constraints, and ethical stigma. Psychosocial impacts were ambivalent: Enhanced ease, enjoyment, identity expression, and social participation coexisted with passive engagement, cognitive shortcuts, and habitual consumption. These findings suggest that AI-mediated digital leisure both empowers and constrains users, carrying implications for policymakers, platform developers, and mental health professionals.
Scholar activism seeks to bridge academia with the communities it studies, yet scholarship often operates at a distance from the conditions it examines, limiting opportunities for direct action. This study explores how mutual aid can be embedded within academic conference structures to support scholar activism. Using Unified Outreach as a case study, we draw on unstructured interviews with organizers and volunteers, supplemented by autoethnographic reflections. An abductive thematic analysis examines how participants experienced service integration within conference settings. Findings indicate that participants viewed mutual aid as forwarding the importance of their academic work, fostering relational connections, and addressing concerns about extractive research practices. At the same time, barriers emerged, including limited institutional support, time constraints, and uneven visibility within conference programming. This study demonstrates how conference-based service can function as a replicable model of scholar activism and offers actionable strategies for embedding community engagement into academic spaces in sustainable, structured ways.
