How to rethink your incentive strategy and reward employees in ways that actually motivate them.
Why do bonuses sometimes backfire? It’s because each incentive design choice both signals information about your own beliefs and intentions as an employer and shapes the signaling value of employee behavior within the organization. If you don’t think through these signals carefully, you may end up approving a bonus scheme with results that are the opposite of what you intend. This article offers a way to help you align the signals your incentive scheme sends with your performance goals.
More than 30 years ago, author and lecturer Alfie Kohn, in a rather controversial but often cited HBR article , claimed that “rewards typically undermine the very processes they are intended to enhance.” Yet until recently, nearly all scientific studies that have documented such “backfiring” effects have been confined to laboratory experiments or field settings outside of the firm. This may cause some to question whether these effects are really present in commercial contexts. Our new research, which consists of two large field experiments in retail organizations, demonstrates that they do indeed occur.
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Confidence in U.S. public opinion polling was shaken by errors in 2016 and 2020. In both years’ general elections, many polls underestimated the strength of Republican candidates, including Donald Trump. These errors laid bare some real limitations of polling.
In the midterms that followed those elections, polling performed better . But many Americans remain skeptical that it can paint an accurate portrait of the public’s political preferences.
Restoring people’s confidence in polling is an important goal, because robust and independent public polling has a critical role to play in a democratic society. It gathers and publishes information about the well-being of the public and about citizens’ views on major issues. And it provides an important counterweight to people in power, or those seeking power, when they make claims about “what the people want.”
The challenges facing polling are undeniable. In addition to the longstanding issues of rising nonresponse and cost, summer 2024 brought extraordinary events that transformed the presidential race . The good news is that people with deep knowledge of polling are working hard to fix the problems exposed in 2016 and 2020, experimenting with more data sources and interview approaches than ever before. Still, polls are more useful to the public if people have realistic expectations about what surveys can do well – and what they cannot.
With that in mind, here are some key points to know about polling heading into this year’s presidential election.
Probability sampling (or “random sampling”). This refers to a polling method in which survey participants are recruited using random sampling from a database or list that includes nearly everyone in the population. The pollster selects the sample. The survey is not open for anyone who wants to sign up.
Online opt-in polling (or “nonprobability sampling”). These polls are recruited using a variety of methods that are sometimes referred to as “convenience sampling.” Respondents come from a variety of online sources such as ads on social media or search engines, websites offering rewards in exchange for survey participation, or self-enrollment. Unlike surveys with probability samples, people can volunteer to participate in opt-in surveys.
Nonresponse and nonresponse bias. Nonresponse is when someone sampled for a survey does not participate. Nonresponse bias occurs when the pattern of nonresponse leads to error in a poll estimate. For example, college graduates are more likely than those without a degree to participate in surveys, leading to the potential that the share of college graduates in the resulting sample will be too high.
Mode of interview. This refers to the format in which respondents are presented with and respond to survey questions. The most common modes are online, live telephone, text message and paper. Some polls use more than one mode.
Weighting. This is a statistical procedure pollsters perform to make their survey align with the broader population on key characteristics like age, race, etc. For example, if a survey has too many college graduates compared with their share in the population, people without a college degree are “weighted up” to match the proper share.
Pollsters are making changes in response to the problems in previous elections. As a result, polling is different today than in 2016. Most U.S. polling organizations that conducted and publicly released national surveys in both 2016 and 2022 (61%) used methods in 2022 that differed from what they used in 2016 . And change has continued since 2022.
One change is that the number of active polling organizations has grown significantly, indicating that there are fewer barriers to entry into the polling field. The number of organizations that conduct national election polls more than doubled between 2000 and 2022.
This growth has been driven largely by pollsters using inexpensive opt-in sampling methods. But previous Pew Research Center analyses have demonstrated how surveys that use nonprobability sampling may have errors twice as large , on average, as those that use probability sampling.
The second change is that many of the more prominent polling organizations that use probability sampling – including Pew Research Center – have shifted from conducting polls primarily by telephone to using online methods, or some combination of online, mail and telephone. The result is that polling methodologies are far more diverse now than in the past.
(For more about how public opinion polling works, including a chapter on election polls, read our short online course on public opinion polling basics .)
All good polling relies on statistical adjustment called “weighting,” which makes sure that the survey sample aligns with the broader population on key characteristics. Historically, public opinion researchers have adjusted their data using a core set of demographic variables to correct imbalances between the survey sample and the population.
But there is a growing realization among survey researchers that weighting a poll on just a few variables like age, race and gender is insufficient for getting accurate results. Some groups of people – such as older adults and college graduates – are more likely to take surveys, which can lead to errors that are too sizable for a simple three- or four-variable adjustment to work well. Adjusting on more variables produces more accurate results, according to Center studies in 2016 and 2018 .
A number of pollsters have taken this lesson to heart. For example, recent high-quality polls by Gallup and The New York Times/Siena College adjusted on eight and 12 variables, respectively. Our own polls typically adjust on 12 variables . In a perfect world, it wouldn’t be necessary to have that much intervention by the pollster. But the real world of survey research is not perfect.
Predicting who will vote is critical – and difficult. Preelection polls face one crucial challenge that routine opinion polls do not: determining who of the people surveyed will actually cast a ballot.
Roughly a third of eligible Americans do not vote in presidential elections , despite the enormous attention paid to these contests. Determining who will abstain is difficult because people can’t perfectly predict their future behavior – and because many people feel social pressure to say they’ll vote even if it’s unlikely.
No one knows the profile of voters ahead of Election Day. We can’t know for sure whether young people will turn out in greater numbers than usual, or whether key racial or ethnic groups will do so. This means pollsters are left to make educated guesses about turnout, often using a mix of historical data and current measures of voting enthusiasm. This is very different from routine opinion polls, which mostly do not ask about people’s future intentions.
When major news breaks, a poll’s timing can matter. Public opinion on most issues is remarkably stable, so you don’t necessarily need a recent poll about an issue to get a sense of what people think about it. But dramatic events can and do change public opinion , especially when people are first learning about a new topic. For example, polls this summer saw notable changes in voter attitudes following Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race. Polls taken immediately after a major event may pick up a shift in public opinion, but those shifts are sometimes short-lived. Polls fielded weeks or months later are what allow us to see whether an event has had a long-term impact on the public’s psyche.
The answer to this question depends on what you want polls to do. Polls are used for all kinds of purposes in addition to showing who’s ahead and who’s behind in a campaign. Fair or not, however, the accuracy of election polling is usually judged by how closely the polls matched the outcome of the election.
By this standard, polling in 2016 and 2020 performed poorly. In both years, state polling was characterized by serious errors. National polling did reasonably well in 2016 but faltered in 2020.
In 2020, a post-election review of polling by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) found that “the 2020 polls featured polling error of an unusual magnitude: It was the highest in 40 years for the national popular vote and the highest in at least 20 years for state-level estimates of the vote in presidential, senatorial, and gubernatorial contests.”
How big were the errors? Polls conducted in the last two weeks before the election suggested that Biden’s margin over Trump was nearly twice as large as it ended up being in the final national vote tally.
Errors of this size make it difficult to be confident about who is leading if the election is closely contested, as many U.S. elections are .
Pollsters are rightly working to improve the accuracy of their polls. But even an error of 4 or 5 percentage points isn’t too concerning if the purpose of the poll is to describe whether the public has favorable or unfavorable opinions about candidates , or to show which issues matter to which voters. And on questions that gauge where people stand on issues, we usually want to know broadly where the public stands. We don’t necessarily need to know the precise share of Americans who say, for example, that climate change is mostly caused by human activity. Even judged by its performance in recent elections, polling can still provide a faithful picture of public sentiment on the important issues of the day.
The 2022 midterms saw generally accurate polling, despite a wave of partisan polls predicting a broad Republican victory. In fact, FiveThirtyEight found that “polls were more accurate in 2022 than in any cycle since at least 1998, with almost no bias toward either party.” Moreover, a handful of contrarian polls that predicted a 2022 “red wave” largely washed out when the votes were tallied. In sum, if we focus on polling in the most recent national election, there’s plenty of reason to be encouraged.
Compared with other elections in the past 20 years, polls have been less accurate when Donald Trump is on the ballot. Preelection surveys suffered from large errors – especially at the state level – in 2016 and 2020, when Trump was standing for election. But they performed reasonably well in the 2018 and 2022 midterms, when he was not.
During the 2016 campaign, observers speculated about the possibility that Trump supporters might be less willing to express their support to a pollster – a phenomenon sometimes described as the “shy Trump effect.” But a committee of polling experts evaluated five different tests of the “shy Trump” theory and turned up little to no evidence for each one . Later, Pew Research Center and, in a separate test, a researcher from Yale also found little to no evidence in support of the claim.
Instead, two other explanations are more likely. One is about the difficulty of estimating who will turn out to vote. Research has found that Trump is popular among people who tend to sit out midterms but turn out for him in presidential election years. Since pollsters often use past turnout to predict who will vote, it can be difficult to anticipate when irregular voters will actually show up.
The other explanation is that Republicans in the Trump era have become a little less likely than Democrats to participate in polls . Pollsters call this “partisan nonresponse bias.” Surprisingly, polls historically have not shown any particular pattern of favoring one side or the other. The errors that favored Democratic candidates in the past eight years may be a result of the growth of political polarization, along with declining trust among conservatives in news organizations and other institutions that conduct polls.
Whatever the cause, the fact that Trump is again the nominee of the Republican Party means that pollsters must be especially careful to make sure all segments of the population are properly represented in surveys.
The real margin of error is often about double the one reported. A typical election poll sample of about 1,000 people has a margin of sampling error that’s about plus or minus 3 percentage points. That number expresses the uncertainty that results from taking a sample of the population rather than interviewing everyone . Random samples are likely to differ a little from the population just by chance, in the same way that the quality of your hand in a card game varies from one deal to the next.
The problem is that sampling error is not the only kind of error that affects a poll. Those other kinds of error, in fact, can be as large or larger than sampling error. Consequently, the reported margin of error can lead people to think that polls are more accurate than they really are.
There are three other, equally important sources of error in polling: noncoverage error , where not all the target population has a chance of being sampled; nonresponse error, where certain groups of people may be less likely to participate; and measurement error, where people may not properly understand the questions or misreport their opinions. Not only does the margin of error fail to account for those other sources of potential error, putting a number only on sampling error implies to the public that other kinds of error do not exist.
Several recent studies show that the average total error in a poll estimate may be closer to twice as large as that implied by a typical margin of sampling error. This hidden error underscores the fact that polls may not be precise enough to call the winner in a close election.
Transparency in how a poll was conducted is associated with better accuracy . The polling industry has several platforms and initiatives aimed at promoting transparency in survey methodology. These include AAPOR’s transparency initiative and the Roper Center archive . Polling organizations that participate in these organizations have less error, on average, than those that don’t participate, an analysis by FiveThirtyEight found .
Participation in these transparency efforts does not guarantee that a poll is rigorous, but it is undoubtedly a positive signal. Transparency in polling means disclosing essential information, including the poll’s sponsor, the data collection firm, where and how participants were selected, modes of interview, field dates, sample size, question wording, and weighting procedures.
There is evidence that when the public is told that a candidate is extremely likely to win, some people may be less likely to vote . Following the 2016 election, many people wondered whether the pervasive forecasts that seemed to all but guarantee a Hillary Clinton victory – two modelers put her chances at 99% – led some would-be voters to conclude that the race was effectively over and that their vote would not make a difference. There is scientific research to back up that claim: A team of researchers found experimental evidence that when people have high confidence that one candidate will win, they are less likely to vote. This helps explain why some polling analysts say elections should be covered using traditional polling estimates and margins of error rather than speculative win probabilities (also known as “probabilistic forecasts”).
National polls tell us what the entire public thinks about the presidential candidates, but the outcome of the election is determined state by state in the Electoral College . The 2000 and 2016 presidential elections demonstrated a difficult truth: The candidate with the largest share of support among all voters in the United States sometimes loses the election. In those two elections, the national popular vote winners (Al Gore and Hillary Clinton) lost the election in the Electoral College (to George W. Bush and Donald Trump). In recent years, analysts have shown that Republican candidates do somewhat better in the Electoral College than in the popular vote because every state gets three electoral votes regardless of population – and many less-populated states are rural and more Republican.
For some, this raises the question: What is the use of national polls if they don’t tell us who is likely to win the presidency? In fact, national polls try to gauge the opinions of all Americans, regardless of whether they live in a battleground state like Pennsylvania, a reliably red state like Idaho or a reliably blue state like Rhode Island. In short, national polls tell us what the entire citizenry is thinking. Polls that focus only on the competitive states run the risk of giving too little attention to the needs and views of the vast majority of Americans who live in uncompetitive states – about 80%.
Fortunately, this is not how most pollsters view the world . As the noted political scientist Sidney Verba explained, “Surveys produce just what democracy is supposed to produce – equal representation of all citizens.”
Scott Keeter is a senior survey advisor at Pew Research Center .
Courtney Kennedy is Vice President of Methods and Innovation at Pew Research Center .
How public polling has changed in the 21st century, what 2020’s election poll errors tell us about the accuracy of issue polling, a field guide to polling: election 2020 edition, methods 101: how is polling done around the world, most popular.
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ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .
© 2024 Pew Research Center
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Sera from unvaccinated, vaccinated, and previously infected and vaccinated individuals show reduced neutralizing and spike protein-binding activity towards the Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant of SARS-CoV-2 compared to other variants.
A high-throughput yeast display platform is used to analyse the profiles of mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain (RBD) that enable escape from antibodies, and suggests that most anti-RBD antibodies can be escaped by the Omicron variant.
The B.1.1.529/Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 is resistant to neutralization by serum not only from patients who recovered from COVID-19, but also from individuals vaccinated with one of the four widely used COVID-19 vaccines.
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An isolate of the Omicron variant of SARS-COV-2 was completely or partially resistant to neutralization by all nine clinically approved monoclonal antibodies tested.
Plasma from individuals vaccinated with BNT162b2 exhibits 22-fold less neutralization capacity against Omicron (B.1.1.529) than against an ancestral SARS-CoV-2 strain but residual neutralization is maintained in those with high levels of neutralization of ancestral virus.
A distinct class of broadly neutralizing antibodies to the influenza virus target a membrane-proximal anchor epitope of the haemagglutinin stalk domain.
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MicroRNAs encode sorting sequences that determine whether they are secreted in exosomal vesicles to regulate gene expression in distant cells or retained in cells that produced them, with different sequences used by individual cell types.
Archaeological and ancient DNA analyses of 35 individuals entombed at Hazleton North long cairn approximately 5,700 years ago are used to reconstruct kinship practices in Early Neolithic Britain.
Mechanisms explaining the milder clinical syndrome that is observed in children with SARS-CoV-2 infection.
PROTAC degrader–induced SWI/SNF inactivation abolishes DNA accessibility at enhancer elements of oncogenes and also tempers supra-physiologic expression of driver transcription factors, resulting in potent inhibition of tumour growth in mouse models.
Decoupling spin-polarized edge states using substitutional N-atom dopants along the edges of a zigzag graphene nanoribbon (ZGNR) reveals giant spin splitting of a N-dopant edge state, and supports the predicted emergent magnetic order in ZGNRs.
Restriction of dietary valine reduces growth of T cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia through altered valine tRNA biogenesis and reduced translation of mRNAs that encode subunits of mitochondrial complex I.
A silicon nitride microresonator is used for coherent phase modulation of a transmission electron microscope beam, with future applications in combining high-resolution microscopy with spectroscopy, holography and metrology.
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‘Candidatus Methanoliparum’ overexpresses genes encoding alkyl-coenzyme M and methyl-coenzyme M reductases—markers of archaeal multicarbon alkane and methane metabolism—and thrives on a variety of long-chain alkanes and n -alkylcyclohexanes, and n -alkylbenzenes with long n -alkyl (C ≥13 ) moieties.
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https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2024/08/us-ai-safety-institute-signs-agreements-regarding-ai-safety-research
These first-of-their-kind agreements between the u.s. government and industry will help advance safe and trustworthy ai innovation for all..
GAITHERSBURG, Md. — Today, the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute at the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced agreements that enable formal collaboration on AI safety research, testing and evaluation with both Anthropic and OpenAI.
Each company’s Memorandum of Understanding establishes the framework for the U.S. AI Safety Institute to receive access to major new models from each company prior to and following their public release. The agreements will enable collaborative research on how to evaluate capabilities and safety risks, as well as methods to mitigate those risks.
“Safety is essential to fueling breakthrough technological innovation. With these agreements in place, we look forward to beginning our technical collaborations with Anthropic and OpenAI to advance the science of AI safety,” said Elizabeth Kelly, director of the U.S. AI Safety Institute. “These agreements are just the start, but they are an important milestone as we work to help responsibly steward the future of AI.”
Additionally, the U.S. AI Safety Institute plans to provide feedback to Anthropic and OpenAI on potential safety improvements to their models, in close collaboration with its partners at the U.K. AI Safety Institute.
The U.S. AI Safety Institute builds on NIST’s more than 120-year legacy of advancing measurement science, technology, standards and related tools. Evaluations under these agreements will further NIST’s work on AI by facilitating deep collaboration and exploratory research on advanced AI systems across a range of risk areas.
Evaluations conducted pursuant to these agreements will help advance the safe, secure and trustworthy development and use of AI by building on the Biden-Harris administration’s Executive Order on AI and the voluntary commitments made to the administration by leading AI model developers.
About the U.S. AI Safety Institute
The U.S. AI Safety Institute , located within the Department of Commerce at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), was established following the Biden-Harris administration’s 2023 Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence to advance the science of AI safety and address the risks posed by advanced AI systems. It is tasked with developing the testing, evaluations and guidelines that will help accelerate safe AI innovation here in the United States and around the world.
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Vaping among younger adults and binge drinking among mid-life adults also maintained historically high levels, NIH-supported study shows
Past-year use of cannabis and hallucinogens stayed at historically high levels in 2023 among adults aged 19 to 30 and 35 to 50, according to the latest findings from the Monitoring the Future survey . In contrast, past-year use of cigarettes remained at historically low levels in both adult groups. Past-month and daily alcohol use continued a decade-long decline among those 19 to 30 years old, with binge drinking reaching all-time lows. However, among 35- to 50-year-olds, the prevalence of binge drinking in 2023 increased from five and 10 years ago. The Monitoring the Future study is conducted by scientists at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, Ann Arbor, and is funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Reports of vaping nicotine or vaping cannabis in the past year among adults 19 to 30 rose over five years, and both trends remained at record highs in 2023. Among adults 35 to 50, the prevalences of nicotine vaping and of cannabis vaping stayed steady from the year before, with long-term (five and 10 year) trends not yet observable in this age group as this question was added to the survey for this age group in 2019.
For the first time in 2023, 19- to 30-year-old female respondents reported a higher prevalence of past-year cannabis use than male respondents in the same age group, reflecting a reversal of the gap between sexes. Conversely, male respondents 35 to 50 years old maintained a higher prevalence of past-year cannabis use than female respondents of the same age group, consistent with what’s been observed for the past decade.
“We have seen that people at different stages of adulthood are trending toward use of drugs like cannabis and psychedelics and away from tobacco cigarettes,” said Nora D. Volkow, M.D., director of NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). “These findings underscore the urgent need for rigorous research on the potential risks and benefits of cannabis and hallucinogens – especially as new products continue to emerge.”
Since 1975, the Monitoring the Future study has annually surveyed substance use behaviors and attitudes among a nationally representative sample of teens. A longitudinal panel study component of Monitoring the Future conducts follow-up surveys on a subset of these participants (now totaling approximately 20,000 people per year), collecting data from individuals every other year from ages 19 to 30 and every five years after the participants turn 30 to track their drug use through adulthood. Participants self-report their drug use behaviors across various time periods, including lifetime, past year (12 months), past month (30 days), and other use frequencies depending on the substance type. Data for the 2023 panel study were collected via online and paper surveys from April 2023 through October 2023.
Full data summaries and data tables showing the trends below, including breakdowns by substance, are available in the report . Key findings include:
Cannabis use in the past year and past month remained at historically high levels for both adult age groups in 2023. Among adults 19 to 30 years old, approximately 42% reported cannabis use in the past year, 29% in the past month, and 10% daily use (use on 20 or more occasions in the past 30 days). Among adults 35 to 50, reports of use reached 29%, 19%, and 8%, respectively. While these 2023 estimates are not statistically different from those of 2022, they do reflect five- and 10-year increases for both age groups.
Cannabis vaping in the past year and past month was reported by 22% and 14% of adults 19 to 30, respectively, and by 9% and 6% of adults 35 to 50 in 2023. For the younger group, these numbers represent all-time study highs and an increase from five years ago.
Nicotine vaping among adults 19 to 30 maintained historic highs in 2023. Reports of past-year and past-month vaping of nicotine reached 25% and 19%, respectively. These percentages represent an increase from five years ago, but not from one year ago. For adults 35 to 50, the prevalence of vaping nicotine remained steady from the year before (2022), with 7% and 5% reporting past-year and past-month use.
Hallucinogen use in the past year continued a five-year steep incline for both adult groups, reaching 9% for adults 19 to 30 and 4% for adults 35 to 50 in 2023. Types of hallucinogens reported by participants included LSD, mescaline, peyote, shrooms or psilocybin, and PCP.
Alcohol remains the most used substance reported among adults in the study. Past-year alcohol use among adults 19 to 30 has showed a slight upward trend over the past five years, with 84% reporting use in 2023. However, past month drinking (65%), daily drinking (4%), and binge drinking (27%) all remained at study lows in 2023 among adults 19 to 30. These numbers have decreased from 10 years ago. Past-month drinking and binge drinking (having five or more drinks in a row in the past two week period) decreased significantly from the year before for this age group (down from 68% for past month and 31% for binge drinking reported in 2022).
Around 84% of adults 35 to 50 reported past-year alcohol use in 2023, which has not significantly changed from the year before or the past five or 10 years. Past-month alcohol use and binge drinking have slightly increased over the past 10 years for this age group; in 2023, past-month alcohol use was at 69% and binge drinking was at 27%. Daily drinking has decreased in this group over the past five years and was at its lowest level ever recorded in 2023 (8%).
Additional data: In 2023, past-month cigarette smoking, past-year nonmedical use of prescription drugs, and past-year use of opioid medications (surveyed as “narcotics other than heroin”) maintained five- and 10-year declines for both adult groups. Among adults 19 to 30 years old, past-year use of stimulants (surveyed as “amphetamines”) has decreased for the past decade, whereas for adults 35 to 50, past-year stimulant use has been modestly increasing over 10 years. Additional data include drug use reported by college/non-college young adults and among various demographic subgroups, including sex and gender and race and ethnicity.
The 2023 survey year was the first time a cohort from the Monitoring the Future study reached 65 years of age; therefore, trends for the 55- to 65-year-old age group are not yet available.
“The data from 2023 did not show us many significant changes from the year before, but the power of surveys such as Monitoring the Future is to see the ebb and flow of various substance use trends over the longer term,” said Megan Patrick, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan and principal investigator of the Monitoring the Future panel study. “As more and more of our original cohorts – first recruited as teens – now enter later adulthood, we will be able to examine the patterns and effects of drug use throughout the life course. In the coming years, this study will provide crucial data on substance use trends and health consequences among older populations, when people may be entering retirement and other new chapters of their lives.”
View more information on data collection methods for the Monitoring the Future panel study and how the survey adjusts for the effects of potential exclusions in the report . Results from the related 2023 Monitoring the Future study of substance use behaviors and related attitudes among teens in the United States were released in December 2023, and 2024 results are upcoming in December 2024.
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org . To learn how to get support for mental health, drug or alcohol conditions visit FindSupport.gov . If you are ready to locate a treatment facility or provider, you can go directly to FindTreatment.gov or call 800-662-HELP (4357) .
About the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA): NIDA is a component of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIDA supports most of the world’s research on the health aspects of drug use and addiction. The Institute carries out a large variety of programs to inform policy, improve practice, and advance addiction science. For more information about NIDA and its programs, visit www.nida.nih.gov .
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov .
About substance use disorders: Substance use disorders are chronic, treatable conditions from which people can recover. In 2022, nearly 49 million people in the United States had at least one substance use disorder. Substance use disorders are defined in part by continued use of substances despite negative consequences. They are also relapsing conditions, in which periods of abstinence (not using substances) can be followed by a return to use. Stigma can make individuals with substance use disorders less likely to seek treatment. Using preferred language can help accurately report on substance use and addiction. View NIDA’s online guide .
NIH…Turning Discovery Into Health®
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September 3, 2024 | Thomas Rettig
UConn research is on the cutting edge of research into decarbonizing aviation
UConn research is on the cutting edge of research into decarbonizing aviation ( )
In recent decades, carbon emissions in the aviation sector have grown faster than in shipping, rail, or road. What’s more, aviation presents one of the biggest challenges for decarbonization, given that there’s no aircraft equivalent of the electric cars that are becoming increasingly popular.
That might change in the future, though, if Xiao-Dong Zhou, Director of the Center for Clean Energy Engineering and the Nicholas E. Madonna Chair in Sustainability at UConn, and his students have anything to say about it.
One of their projects involves using fuel cell technology to develop electrically powered aircraft – something they’ve demonstrated can be done in a prototype. That kind of hands-on experimentation is critical, Zhou explains.
“We are not only doing research, we are also training students to get excited about this field,” he says.
September 4, 2024
Read the article
The authors also found no increased risk of leukaemia or brain cancers in children from radio or TV transmitters or mobile phone base stations.
Tuesday 3 September 2024 16:29, UK
A review of 63 studies has found no link between mobile phone use and an increased risk of brain cancer.
Commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO), it found no rise in cases despite a huge increase in wireless technology over the last 20 years.
The review was headed by experts from the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, and included investigators from 10 countries.
It looked at research on radio frequencies in the wavelengths of 300 Hz to 300 GHz - used for mobile phones, wi-fi, radar, baby monitors and other applications.
Co-author of the review Professor Mark Elwood, an honorary professor of cancer epidemiology at University of Auckland, said the team looked at cancers of the brain, pituitary gland, salivary glands, and leukaemias.
"None of the major questions studied showed increased risks," he said.
"For the main issue, mobile phones and brain cancers, we found no increased risk, even with 10+ years exposure and the maximum categories of call time or number of calls."
During the pandemic, 5G mobile phone masts were attacked in the UK and elsewhere in the baseless belief they were contributing to the virus.
The research review looked at 63 relevant articles, published between 1994 and 2022, from 22 countries.
"For mobile phones and brain cancers, there were studies with 10 or more years' use, and quite extensive use," said Professor Elwood.
"Most phone use in these studies was from past years and 1G -2G networks; the newer 3G-4G networks have substantially lower RF emissions.
"There were several studies that reported some increased risks, but these were outweighed in considering all the available evidence."
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When it comes to 5G mobile networks, Professor Elwood said there were no major studies so far, but that studies of radar - which has similar high frequencies - did not show an increased brain cancer risk.
The review is published in the Environment International journal and took four years to complete.
The risk in relation to other cancer types is due to be reported separately.
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Read more from Sky News: Brazil's Supreme Court upholds X ban Strange noises from Boeing spacecraft aren't serious - NASA
Professor Alberto Najera, a physicist and expert on radio frequencies and health at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain, praised the "exhaustive systematic review".
He said the conclusions were "robust" and "supported by quality studies".
"The main implications of this study are that, according to the best available evidence to date, exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields, such as those produced by mobile phones or telephone antennas, does not appear to significantly increase the risk of developing cancer," said Professor Najera.
Silvi shah, md, speaks with local 12 news about her latest dialysis research.
Globally, more than 2 million people undergo dialysis each year, and about 550,000 undergo the procedure in the United States. These patients may benefit from the latest research findings from Silvi Shah, MD, associate professor in the UC College of Medicine.
She led a team of researchers who found that dialysis patients using a more traditional home hemodialysis procedure have lower incidence of cardiovascular disease than patients using a less invasive peritoneal catheter for dialysis at home.
"Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in patients who have kidney failure and who are on dialysis," Shah told Local 12 News for a recent segment featuring her research.
Shah studied the medical outcomes of thousands of patients who used home hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis. The findings were published in Kidney360 , an open access journal of the American Society of Nephrology, and showed that patients on home hemodialysis had a 42% lower risk of stroke, 17% lower risk of acute coronary syndrome, 22% lower risk of cardiovascular death and 8% lower risk of death.
Knowing the health outcomes can help patients determine their options if they have the choice of home hemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis. Patients also consider lifestyle choices when deciding on dialysis options. Petritoneal dialysis can be done at night while the patient is sleeping.
View the Local 12 News segment featuring Dr. Shah’s research.
Learn more about Dr. Shah’s work online .
Local 12: music creation's impact on the brain after cancer.
August 4, 2021
UC researchers launched a new study looking treating a common brain problem that results after therapy for cancer.
January 11, 2021
COVID-19 vaccine providers across Ohio will soon get better guidance about the next steps for getting shots into arms. Brett Kissela, MD, spoke to WLWT-TV, Channel 5 and said the benefits of the vaccine outweigh any potential side effects.
March 17, 2021
Charles Prestigiacomo, MD, created the Advanced Anatomy of the Head and Neck elective, offered to fourth-year students at the UC College of Medicine who are getting ready to match in surgical residencies and begin performing procedures on patients. He and colleagues are seeing how this class is better preparing students to begin their careers with a little more “real-life” practice.
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The research review looked at 63 relevant articles, published between 1994 and 2022, from 22 countries. Advertisement Image: During the pandemic, wild theories circulated linking COVID to 5G masts.
Globally, more than 2 million people undergo dialysis each year, and about 550,000 undergo the procedure in the United States. These patients may benefit from the latest research findings from Silvi Shah, MD, associate professor in the UC College of Medicine.