Francisco Perales

Objectives: Evidence pertaining to the effectiveness of specialized interventions for young people who commit harmful sexual behaviours is equivocal and sparse. The current study used a quasi-experimental design to evaluate the effectiveness of a specialized treatment program for harmful sexual behaviours in adolescence. Methods: Participants included 284 young people referred for serious sexual offences who were screened and accepted for treatment, and a comparison group of 370 untreated adolescents also adjudicated for serious sexual offences. This study builds on a previous evaluation that followed participants to age 18 by extending the follow up to age 25, thereby providing evidence on the program’s effectiveness during the transition to adulthood. Cox survival models estimated the rate of subsequent any, sexual, violent, and non-violent offending, using covariate balancing propensity score weighting and stabilised inverse probability of treatment weighting. Results: Treatment was associated with a significantly lower rate of any and sexual reoffending, but not violent and non-violent offending. Conclusions: These findings suggest that the benefits of specialized treatment in adolescence extend into adulthood. The findings are discussed in terms of cost effectiveness of specialized treatment for harmful sexual behaviours and methodological implications for evaluating low-base rate phenomenon such as sexual recidivism.

Wikström and colleagues’ (2024) Developmental Ecological Action Model of Situational Action Theory provides a framework for understanding drivers of macro- or micro- level changes in offending behaviour, with offending propensity and criminogenic exposure proposed as two key drivers of change in crime involvement across time. This study examined the role of offending propensity and criminogenic exposure as potential drivers of recent increases in high frequency youth offending behaviour in Australia. The dataset comprisedlongitudinal youth justice data capturing risk assessments, proven offences, and custody periods for 12 consecutive adolescent birth cohorts, born between 1995 and 2006. YLS-CMI risk assessment data were used to measure offending propensity and criminogenic exposure. A balanced panel design, using annual observations from ages 14 to 16, generated 7,417 person observations, and 22,251 person-year observations. Random effects panel regression models were used to assess changes in offending propensity, criminogenic exposure and high frequency youth offending across birth cohorts. Results indicated that offending propensity and criminogenic exposure had increased significantly in recent birth cohorts of justice-involved adolescents, as had the odds of high frequency offending. However, growth in criminogenic exposure, and increases in the strength of its impact across birth cohorts, provided the strongest explanation for growth in high frequency youth offending in recent years. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

To accommodate the influx of humanitarian migrants and address rural depopulation, many countries promote non-metropolitan settlement amongst incoming humanitarian migrants. Yet many humanitarian migrants subsequently leave their initial non-metropolitan settlement locations, which raises questions about the effectiveness of non-metropolitan settlement policies and the factors influencing humanitarian migrants’ relocation decisions. Within this context, this research note leverages Australian population-level administrative data from the Person Level Integrated Data Asset (PLIDA) to generate novel insights. Specifically, we analyse aggregate data comprising 3.4 million annual bilateral internal migration flows between 87 local labour markets for humanitarian migrants from different origin countries over the 2011–2019 period, comparing their patterns to those for the general Australian population and other migrant groups. Our findings indicate that non-metropolitan areas experience net losses of humanitarian migrants to metropolitan areas, and that humanitarian migrants relocate to regions with greater employment opportunities, better education options, and larger co-ethnic networks. Importantly, the patterns and determinants of internal migration for humanitarian migrants often differ to those observed for other migrant groups as humanitarian migrants are less responsive to labour- and housing-market conditions, but more responsive to co-ethnic networks. Altogether, our results highlight the difficulty of stimulating non-metropolitan population growth via humanitarian migration, with implications for other receiving countries.

Despite recent progress, gender pay gaps between men and women remain a persistent feature of modern labour markets, being observed even amongst highly skilled population groups—such as university graduates. These gaps are the product of multiple interrelated factors—including discrimination, imbalanced family responsibilities and educational and labour‐market segmentation, yet some of these factors have been examined more than others. This study offers a comprehensive examination of gender pay gaps amongst university graduates in Australia, focusing on one under‐researched contributor: fields of study and their feminisation rates. Leveraging rich and robust population‐level administrative data from the Person Level Integrated Data Asset (PLIDA) ( n = 549,893 graduates) and multilevel regression models, we first revisit key mechanisms underpinning the graduate gender pay gap within the Australian context. We then deploy this unique dataset to offer novel empirical contributions to the international literature—including the mediating and moderating effect of field of study in the relationship between gender and earnings, and their interaction with occupational gender segregation. Our results offer evidence of a substantial graduate gender pay gap in Australia, amounting to ∼17% of annual average salaries among men. While standard socio‐demographic factors fail to explain this gap, gendered differences in fields of study account for ∼14% of it. Importantly, the magnitude of the graduate gender pay gap differs markedly by field of study (from ∼2% to ∼24% of average pay), being largest amongst graduates from gender‐balanced fields. These findings bear important implications for equity policy and practice pertaining to both higher education and the labour market. Context and implications: Rationale for this study: Despite women's growing educational attainment, gender pay gaps amongst university graduates persist. Existing research has paid limited attention to the contributing role of field of study. Why the new findings matter: This study uncovers substantial variation in gender pay gaps across fields of study, providing novel evidence that disparities are largest in gender‐balanced fields. Implications for researchers, policymakers and practitioners: For researchers, our findings underscore the importance of considering detailed field‐of‐study measures and feminisation indicators in analyses of gender pay inequality. For practitioners and policymakers, the findings suggest that interventions aimed solely at altering gendered educational choices may have limited effects unless they are accompanied by efforts to address pay‐setting mechanisms and within‐field inequalities.

The University of Queensland's institutional repository, UQ eSpace, aims to create global visibility and accessibility of UQ’s scholarly research.

Background : Sexual and gender minority adults experience health inequities, including poorer health and reduced participation in health-promoting behaviors. This systematic review aims to (1) examine adherence to physical activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep guidelines within these communities and (2) compare participation and guideline attainment with cisgender and heterosexual adults. Methods : Studies published before January 2024 were included if they reported physical activity, sedentary behavior, and/or sleep outcomes for gender and/or sexual minority adults. Proportional meta-analyses were performed using random effects models. Results : Ninety-five studies were included; 79% were rated “fair” quality. Most studies were cross-sectional (76%), conducted in North America (76%), and focused on sexual orientation (80%) and physical activity (77%). Sexual minority women had higher odds of meeting aerobic physical activity guidelines compared with heterosexual women (odd ratios 1.18; 95% CI, 1.02–1.37), with no significant differences identified between sexual minority and heterosexual men (1.03; 0.86–1.23). Gender minority adults had lower odds of participating in aerobic physical activity compared with cisgender adults (0.63; 0.45–0.88). Sexual minority women, but not men, had lower odds of meeting sleep guidelines than their heterosexual counterparts (0.85; 0.74–0.97). Sedentary behavior data were limited, with no differences detected. Conclusions : Movement behaviors varied within sexual and gender minority groups, highlighting the limitation of considering the “LGBTQIA+ community” a homogenous cohort. Tailored approaches for improving movement behaviors are warranted, particularly for gender minority adults. Further research is needed for sedentary behavior, sleep, and more nuanced categorizations of gender and sexuality using representative samples.

Introduction: Academic scholarship on workplace sexual harassment has revealed vast differences in workplace-sexual-harassment victimization by individuals’ binary gender. However, fewer scholarly contributions have examined how victimization is patterned by other personal traits. This study provides a novel theoretical and empirical account of differences in sexual-harassment victimization and reporting by LGBTQ + status. Methods: We generate novel evidence on these processes by drawing on unique data from the 2022 Australian Workplace Equality Index (AWEI) Employee Survey (n = 44,939 overall; 9806 LGBTQ +) and multivariable regression models. Results: Our analyses reveal elevated risks of workplace-sexual-harassment victimization amongst LGBTQ + individuals, all else being equal. Victimization rates are particularly high amongst pansexual, queer, bisexual and gender-non-binary employees assigned female at birth. However, we observe few differences in the reporting of sexual-harassment experiences or in satisfaction with post-reporting employer actions. Conclusions: LGBTQ + individuals are disproportionately exposed to workplace sexual harassment, particularly those who were assigned female and birth. Policy Implications: Our findings underscore the need for continued investment in programs aimed at mitigating workplace sexual harassment and to ensure such programs operate hand-in-hand with LGBTQ + diversity-and-inclusion initiatives.

Over recent years, there has been increasing scholarly attention on how individuals' diversities and their intersections affect workplace experiences, which can in turn shape their work outcomes. While existing evidence often relies on workplace surveys, the diversity questions included in those surveys may not encompass all diversity aspects deemed important by those with lived experience. Within this context, the present study aims to contribute to knowledge by examining employees' perceptions of their own diversities, particularly those missing from standard survey instruments. To achieve this, we apply qualitative content analysis to 3051 responses to an open‐ended diversity question in the 2024 Australian Workplace Equality Employee Survey . Our results indicate that caring responsibilities, age/life‐course stage, socioeconomic status, diverse family structure and reproductive health were aspects of diversity relevant to employees' workplace experiences that were missing from the survey questionnaire. The analyses also revealed how a non‐negligible share of employees peruse the open‐ended diversity question within the survey to express negative ideological views about diversity‐and‐inclusion practice. These findings bear important implications for the design of socio‐demographic and diversity modules within survey instruments, particularly those concerned with workplace diversity. Amongst others, they offer novel evidence of additional and less‐well‐understood diversities to be considered, while also warning about serious challenges to the collection and use of diversity data posed by diversity‐and‐inclusion detractors.

Ensuring equitable access to higher education (HE) is not only a matter of social justice, but also a critical component to enhancing the long-term sustainability of modern societies. This study contributes to existing knowledge on socio-economic disparities in HE participation in Australia by identifying the extent to which key factors at the family, school, and individual levels mediate the relationship between socio-economic status (SES) and university enrolment. In doing so, it extends existing knowledge by simultaneously considering multiple factors at each ecological level, which enables us to disentangle their independent and joint influences on the SES differential in HE enrolment. To accomplish this, we analysed longitudinal data from the 2009 cohort of the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth (LSAY) using event-history models. Our findings reveal that students from lower-SES backgrounds are significantly less likely to enrol in university than their higher-SES peers, with persistent barriers emerging across multiple levels of influence. Indeed, after adjusting for cognitive skills, HE expectations, parental support, school climate, and access to learning resources, the estimated SES effect on HE participation was reduced by 68.6%. By systematically disentangling the relative contributions of these factors, this study provides critical insights into how sustainable education policies can be designed to mitigate social inequalities and promote inclusive growth. Intervention areas are discussed accordingly.

The increasing share of individuals adopting gender-neutral pronouns as their personal pronouns represents one of the most significant socio-linguistic shifts of the past decade. Academic research in this space, however, is surprisingly limited. This study relies on unique data from an Australian equity and diversity survey (N = 41,157) to provide first-time empirical evidence on the factors underpinning the adoption of gender-neutral pronouns, focusing on gender identity, outness, allyship, sexual orientation, and other social locations. Our results reveal a high degree of overlap between non-binary identification and adoption of gender-neutral ‘they’ pronouns. However, a non-negligible share of non-binary individuals do not use these pronouns, whereas a small-to-moderate share of individuals from binary genders do so. Not being ‘out’ about their gender identity precluded adoption of ‘they’ pronouns amongst non-binary people, whereas being an active ally, a woman, and sexuality-diverse fostered their adoption amongst binary-gender individuals. These results carry important practical lessons for diversity-and-inclusion training and interpersonal interactions in social settings.