A K Cohen
Biographic Data
| ID | 48777 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A K Cohen |
| GIVEN NAMES | A K |
| FAMILY NAME | Cohen |
| SIGNATURE | COHEN A K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, San Francisco |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9848-934X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 60 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 98 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 60 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1950 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Establishing a Reciprocal and Recursive Relationship Between Sociopolitical Development and Wellbeing for Early Emerging Adult College Students When “There Was a lot Happening in Both the World. . . a…
The existing, primarily quantitative literature suggests that for emerging adult college students (EACS), wellbeing has a complex relationship with sociopolitical development (i.e., the development of one’s awareness of and capacity to transform societal oppressions) that merits further unpacking. This study aimed to understand EACS’ reflections on their wellbeing and sociopolitical development pre-pandemic and during the pandemic, from 2019 to 2…
Examining associations between school suspension and expulsion in early life and later-life cognitive health: A mediation analysis of lifecourse educational pathways
Exclusionary school discipline (e.g., suspension, expulsion) - a documented facilitator of structural marginalization - is associated with lower midlife cognitive health, a predictor of later-life dementia risk. No studies have examined through which mechanisms this might unfold. Using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979) data, a study of US adults followed prospectively since adolescence (N = 8138), we evaluated if lifecourse educational…
A Sentiment Analysis Study on Gender and Racial Inequities in College Students’ Perceptions of the Covid-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated health inequities among emerging adult college students, and their experiences navigating intersectional systems of marginalization and institutional environments may have shaped their emotional wellbeing. We applied sentiment analysis of students’ reflections during the first 18 months of the pandemic to categorize and quantify the most common emotions, including by gender, race/ethnicity, and the type of instit…
The I-Acted study (investigating action civics training through an experimental design): A cluster randomized controlled trial of a school-based action civics education intervention on adolescent well…
NCT04514133 (date of registration September 25, 2020)
White Youths’ Allyship on Instagram During the 2020 Black Lives Matter Movement: A Photovoice-Inspired Qualitative Study
During the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement resurgence in 2020, some white youth engaged in BLM-related allyship online. Using photovoice-inspired methodology and reflexive thematic analysis, we examined Instagram posts and reflections from 29 white youth with college experience (ages 18–22; 72% women; 7% transgender or gender diverse; 58% LGBQ+) from across the USA. First, we identified overarching content and motives for white youths’ posts. S…
Discriminatory experiences, critical consciousness development, and well-being among emerging adults in and beyond the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic
As part of the developmental stage of emerging adulthood, youth may cultivate critical consciousness (CC) to transform oppressive systems. CC development may be influenced by discriminatory experiences and may affect well-being. To better understand longitudinal CC development and its relationship to discrimination and well-being (i.e., perceived stress, anxiety, hopefulness), we studied a U.S. national longitudinal cohort of emerging adult colle…
Covid-19-Related Experiences and Perspectives of Peruvian College Students: A Descriptive Study
The COVID-19 pandemic drastically affected higher education and higher education students around the world, but few studies of college students’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic have been conducted in Latin America. This study describes the COVID-19-related experiences and perspectives of Peruvian college students. We surveyed 3,427 full-time college students (average age: 23 years) attending a multi-campus Peruvian university in fall 202…
It’s a Matter of Trust: How Thirty Years of History Prepared a Community-Based Organization to Respond to the Covid-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic drew public attention to the essential work and vulnerability of low-income Latina immigrants. Less recognized were the ways immigrant community organizations mobilized under exceptional conditions to provide immediate support to their communities while continuing to work toward durable systematic change. This paper analyzes the approach of Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA) in the San Francisco Bay Area. Over three decades, MUA…
Who has to act? A qualitative exploration of emerging adults' critical consciousness during the Covid‐19 pandemic
The COVID‐19 pandemic and violence against people of Color during 2020 brought troubling racial inequities to the forefront of American discourse. In line with the Critical Consciousness (CC) and Social Justice Youth Development (SJYD) frameworks, emerging adults may have developed their capacity for critical reflection, motivation, and action against systemic inequities. We drew from interviews with 27 emerging adults (ages 18–23) across the US,…
Educational Attainment Past the Traditional Age of Completion for Two Cohorts of US Adults: Inequalities by Gender and Race/Ethnicity
The vast majority of studies investigating participation in, persistence through, and consequences of postsecondary education focus on educational attainment status among the so-called traditional population of collegegoers between the ages of 18 and 24. This narrow focus leaves largely invisible the role that an expanding set of educational trajectories throughout adulthood plays in shaping social stratification. Using 35-plus and 20 years of fo…
Sociopolitical Influences in Early Emerging Adult College Students’ Pandemic-Related Civic Engagement
The COVID-19 pandemic has had wide-ranging impacts on college-going emerging adults and their communities, which may prompt them to engage civically. Using spring 2020 survey data from a national sample of college students aged 18–22 ( N = 707), we document the prevalence of pandemic-related civic engagement as well as differences in engagement by sociopolitical perspectives. The majority of participants (70.4%) reported engaging civically at lea…
Emotional Distancing”: Change and Strain in U.S. Young Adult College Students’ Relationships During Covid-19
We analyzed qualitative data from 707 USA college students aged 18-22 in late April 2020 regarding if and how their relationships had changed at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most (69%) participants experienced relationship changes, most of whom (77%) described negative changes: less overall contact, feeling disconnected, and increased tension, some of which was due to conflict over pandemic-related public health precautions. Physical dista…
We Keep Each Other Safe”: San Francisco Bay Area Community-Based Organizations Respond to Enduring Crises in the Covid-19 Era
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed ways in which communities take care of themselves in deeply unequal times. Tracing a pandemic-year evolution of community-based organizations (CBOs) in the San Francisco Bay Area through twenty-seven semi-structured interviews with CBO staff, we argue that, through diverse approaches that we characterize as a politics of care , Bay Area CBOs are reshaping their work in ways that could address social and structural d…
Unsuitable’ environments: A qualitative study of US college youth learning online while sheltering-in-place in spring 2020
Exploring civic behaviors amongst college students in a year of national unrest
This study examined the role of demographics, civic beliefs, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in association with distinct forms of civic participation. College students were recruited across 10 institutions of higher education to complete an online survey. Bivariate, multivariable linear, and logistic regressions were performed. Findings indicated that participants from traditionally marginalized backgrounds were more likely to engage in …
Associations between critical consciousness and well‐being in a national sample of college students during the Covid‐19 pandemic
Critical consciousness (CC) may promote well-being, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a national survey of 707 college students conducted in April 2020, we first validated the Short Critical Consciousness Scale (ShoCCS) among youth groups not often specifically examined in CC measurement (i.e., Asian, immigrant-origin, LGBQ+, and women youth). Next, we examined associations between ShoCCS subscales and validated measures of both anxie…
“Constant Stress Has Become the New Normal”: Stress and Anxiety Inequalities Among U.S. College Students in the Time of Covid-19
High School Composition and Health Outcomes in Adulthood: A Cohort Study
Future research should explore possible mechanisms and also if findings are similar across other populations and in other school contexts. These results suggest that education policies that seek to break the link between socioeconomic composition and negative outcomes remain important but may have few spillover effects onto health
A Systematic Review of the Last Decade of Civic Education Research in the United States
Understanding the Benefits of Different Types and Timing of Education for Mental Health: A Sequence Analysis Approach
Both type and timing of educational credential predicted mental health. Black women's mental higher especially benefited from higher educational credentials
Examining school dropout among rural youth in Honduras: Evidence from a mixed-methods longitudinal study
Teaching Students to be Political in a Nonpartisan Way: Reflections from Action Civics Education Across Red and Blue States
Using a student-centered approach, Generation Citizen’s (GC) action civics model helps students gain civic knowledge and skills as they work together to take action on a local issue in their community. This paper draws upon reflections from GC’s decade-plus of teaching action civics at scale in middle and high schools across the United States, highlighting drivers for nonpartisan civics education efforts in Texas, Oklahoma, California, Alabama, M…
Civic Education and Civic Capacity in Public Schools: The State of the Field and Directions for the Future
The global COVID-19 pandemic’s social, economic, and health consequences are far-reaching, and the pandemic’s disproportionate impact, coupled with movements against systemic racism, have exposed d
Fostering youth civic engagement through effective mentorship: Understanding the college student volunteer mentors who succeed
College student volunteers play a critical role in many school-based educational programs and can foster valuable near-peer relationships with adolescents, yet how to best select these volunteers has been understudied. We studied college student volunteer mentors for Generation Citizen, a non-profit that provides school-based action civics education programming, and their adolescent students. We identify three common characteristics possessed by …
Youth Civic Action Across the United States: Projects, Priorities, and Approaches
Youth civic engagement is relatively low in the United States. However, when students are involved in an action civics class (like Generation Citizen), they enthusiastically take action on a wide variety of topics. To systematically assess what issues youth are interested in, we analyzed administrative data from 1,651 action projects conducted by students in Generation Citizen classes across the United States from fall 2012 through fall 2017. We …
Education: A Missed Opportunity for Public Health Intervention
Educational attainment is a well-established social determinant of health. It affects health through many mechanisms such as neural development, biological aging, health literacy and health behaviors, sense of control and empowerment, and life chances. Education—from preschool to beyond college—is also one of the social determinants of health for which there are clear policy pathways for intervention. We reviewed evidence from studies of early ch…
Through a maze of studies: Health questions and ‘undone science’ in a French industrial region
Near the city of Marseille is one of France’s largest industrial regions, home to over 400 industrial facilities. Adjacent to these facilities are towns whose residents have complained of myriad health problems, from respiratory illness and autoimmune disease to cancers. While human environmental health in this region has been studied repeatedly by state agencies and allied organizations, the studies focused on tightly constructed questions answe…
Diverging Paths: Understanding Racial Differences in Civic Engagement Among White, African American, and Latina/o Adolescents Using Structural Equation Modeling
There is increasing concern about the large civic engagement gap between Whites and Latina/o and African American youth. Some suggest this may be because traditional models and measures of civic engagement may not be as applicable for youth from historically marginalized groups. With an urban sample of middle and high school‐age youth ( n = 903, 52% female), we used structural equation modeling to identify differences in civic pathways between yo…
Action Civics for Promoting Civic Development: Main Effects of Program Participation and Differences by Project Characteristics
Using both quantitative and qualitative data, this study examined the effect of participating in an action civics intervention, Generation Citizen ( GC ), on civic commitment, civic self‐efficacy, and two forms of civic knowledge. The sample consisted of 617 middle and high schools students in 55 classrooms who participated, or were soon to participate, in Generation Citizen. Hierarchical linear models revealed that participating in Generation Ci…
The relationship between five different measures of structural social capital, medical examination outcomes, and mortality
Education and obesity at age 40 among American adults
Although many have studied the association between educational attainment and obesity, studies to date have not fully examined prior common causes and possible interactions by race/ethnicity or gender. It is also not clear if the relationship between actual educational attainment and obesity is independent of the role of aspired educational attainment or expected educational attainment. The authors use generalized linear log link models to examin…
Revitalizing Communities Together: The Shared Values, Goals, and Work of Education, Urban Planning, and Public Health
The Concept of Criminal Organisation
Journal Article THE CONCEPT OF CRIMINAL ORGANISATION Get access A. K. COHEN A. K. COHEN *Professor, Department of Sociology, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Connecticut Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 17, Issue 2, April 1977, Pages 97–111, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.bjc.a046820 Published: 01 April 1977
Who has to act? A qualitative exploration of emerging adults' critical consciousness during the Covid‐19 pandemic
The COVID‐19 pandemic and violence against people of Color during 2020 brought troubling racial inequities to the forefront of American discourse. In line with the Critical Consciousness (CC) and Social Justice Youth Development (SJYD) frameworks, emerging adults may have developed their capacity for critical reflection, motivation, and action against systemic inequities. We drew from interviews with 27 emerging adults (ages 18–23) across the US,…
Associations between critical consciousness and well‐being in a national sample of college students during the Covid‐19 pandemic
Critical consciousness (CC) may promote well-being, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a national survey of 707 college students conducted in April 2020, we first validated the Short Critical Consciousness Scale (ShoCCS) among youth groups not often specifically examined in CC measurement (i.e., Asian, immigrant-origin, LGBQ+, and women youth). Next, we examined associations between ShoCCS subscales and validated measures of both anxie…
We Keep Each Other Safe”: San Francisco Bay Area Community-Based Organizations Respond to Enduring Crises in the Covid-19 Era
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed ways in which communities take care of themselves in deeply unequal times. Tracing a pandemic-year evolution of community-based organizations (CBOs) in the San Francisco Bay Area through twenty-seven semi-structured interviews with CBO staff, we argue that, through diverse approaches that we characterize as a politics of care , Bay Area CBOs are reshaping their work in ways that could address social and structural d…
Exploring civic behaviors amongst college students in a year of national unrest
This study examined the role of demographics, civic beliefs, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in association with distinct forms of civic participation. College students were recruited across 10 institutions of higher education to complete an online survey. Bivariate, multivariable linear, and logistic regressions were performed. Findings indicated that participants from traditionally marginalized backgrounds were more likely to engage in …
Civic Education and Civic Capacity in Public Schools: The State of the Field and Directions for the Future
The global COVID-19 pandemic’s social, economic, and health consequences are far-reaching, and the pandemic’s disproportionate impact, coupled with movements against systemic racism, have exposed d
Use of Research Evidence Generated by Youth: Conceptualization and Applications in Diverse U.S. K‐12 Educational Settings
Youth-Led Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is a social justice-focused approach for promoting social change and positive youth development in which youth conduct systematic research and actions to improve their schools and communities. Although YPAR is oriented to generating research for action, with evidence-based recommendations often aimed at influencing adults with power over settings and systems that shape youths' lives, we have little u…
Building a culturally-responsive, family-driven early childhood system of care: Understanding the needs and strengths of ethnically diverse families of children with social-emotional and behavioral co…
Excessive Gestational Weight Gain and Subsequent Maternal Obesity at Age 40: A Hypothetical Intervention
Objectives. To model the hypothetical impact of preventing excessive gestational weight gain on midlife obesity and compare the estimated reduction with the US Healthy People 2020 goal of a 10% reduction of obesity prevalence in adults. Methods. We analyzed 3917 women with 1 to 3 pregnancies in the prospective US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, from 1979 to 2012. We compared the estimated obesity prevalence between 2 scenarios: gestational…
Discriminatory experiences, critical consciousness development, and well-being among emerging adults in and beyond the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic
As part of the developmental stage of emerging adulthood, youth may cultivate critical consciousness (CC) to transform oppressive systems. CC development may be influenced by discriminatory experiences and may affect well-being. To better understand longitudinal CC development and its relationship to discrimination and well-being (i.e., perceived stress, anxiety, hopefulness), we studied a U.S. national longitudinal cohort of emerging adult colle…
Examining school dropout among rural youth in Honduras: Evidence from a mixed-methods longitudinal study
Teaching Students to be Political in a Nonpartisan Way: Reflections from Action Civics Education Across Red and Blue States
Using a student-centered approach, Generation Citizen’s (GC) action civics model helps students gain civic knowledge and skills as they work together to take action on a local issue in their community. This paper draws upon reflections from GC’s decade-plus of teaching action civics at scale in middle and high schools across the United States, highlighting drivers for nonpartisan civics education efforts in Texas, Oklahoma, California, Alabama, M…
Youth Civic Action Across the United States: Projects, Priorities, and Approaches
Youth civic engagement is relatively low in the United States. However, when students are involved in an action civics class (like Generation Citizen), they enthusiastically take action on a wide variety of topics. To systematically assess what issues youth are interested in, we analyzed administrative data from 1,651 action projects conducted by students in Generation Citizen classes across the United States from fall 2012 through fall 2017. We …
Making civic engagement go viral: Applying social epidemiology principles to civic education
This paper explores the connections between education for youth civic engagement and theories and strategies from public health (specifically, epidemiology). We illustrate this with four applications of epidemiologic theory to youth civic engagement: social determinants and fundamental causes, vulnerable populations and cumulative disadvantage, positive spillover, and herd immunity and critical mass. Formalizing concepts of current civics, in sch…
Nouvelles perspectives en sociologie de la déviance
Robert Philippe, Kellens Georges. Nouvelles perspectives en sociologie de la déviance. In: Revue française de sociologie, 1973, 14-3. pp. 371-395
The Functional Prerequisites of a Society
Delinquency and the Education of Society
Nouvelles perspectives en sociologie de la déviance
Robert Philippe, Kellens Georges. Nouvelles perspectives en sociologie de la déviance. In: Revue française de sociologie, 1973, 14-3. pp. 371-395
The Concept of Criminal Organisation
Journal Article THE CONCEPT OF CRIMINAL ORGANISATION Get access A. K. COHEN A. K. COHEN *Professor, Department of Sociology, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Connecticut Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 17, Issue 2, April 1977, Pages 97–111, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.bjc.a046820 Published: 01 April 1977
Community Voice, Vision, and Resilience in Post-Hurricane Katrina Recovery
Hurricane Katrina has mobilized community-based environmental justice organizing and advocacy and injected a strong social justice analysis of extreme weather events and disaster recovery. Using interviews and observations with New Orleans activists and organizations, we examine three community and advocacy-based rebuilding and organizing projects that arose as a result of diminished local and federal government infrastructure and regulatory enga…
Place-Based Environmental Health Justice Education: A Community-University-Government-Middle School Partnership
In collaboration with the Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council and the Department of Environmental Management, the Brown University Superfund Research Program's Community Engagement Core piloted an environmental health justice program with middle school students in Rhode Island. Our curriculum introduces students to environmental justice and the nearby Superfund site, with the goal of building environmental health justice literacy and encourag…
Revitalizing Communities Together: The Shared Values, Goals, and Work of Education, Urban Planning, and Public Health
Educational attainment and obesity: A systematic review
Civic Studies
What is a good citizen? What does a good citizen do and what skills do we want civic actors to practice? Is citizenship, or should it be, tied to the nation-state? How does it change across non-state, local, and global contexts? What beliefs, practices, and skills ought a field of civic studies address? Should the field be geared toward involving people in the current system, particular electoral or formal politics, and/or the marketplace? Should…
Education: A Missed Opportunity for Public Health Intervention
Educational attainment is a well-established social determinant of health. It affects health through many mechanisms such as neural development, biological aging, health literacy and health behaviors, sense of control and empowerment, and life chances. Education—from preschool to beyond college—is also one of the social determinants of health for which there are clear policy pathways for intervention. We reviewed evidence from studies of early ch…
Education and obesity at age 40 among American adults
Although many have studied the association between educational attainment and obesity, studies to date have not fully examined prior common causes and possible interactions by race/ethnicity or gender. It is also not clear if the relationship between actual educational attainment and obesity is independent of the role of aspired educational attainment or expected educational attainment. The authors use generalized linear log link models to examin…
The relationship between five different measures of structural social capital, medical examination outcomes, and mortality
Invited commentary: How research on public school closures can inform research on public hospital closures
Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Inadequate Gestational Weight Gain Differ by Pre-pregnancy Weight
Surveying for Environmental Health Justice: Community Organizing Applications of Community-Based Participatory Research
Although the benefits of community-based participatory research (CBPR) for community and university partners have been well documented, these have mostly focused on disseminating research findings. However, how CBPR can function as a useful community organizing tool remains understudied. We present the CBPR process of an environmental health survey conducted by a team of community organizers and academic researchers in Richmond, CA, to describe h…
Educational Attainment and Gestational Weight Gain among U.S. Mothers
The relationship between educational attainment and GWG is nuanced and nonlinear
Through a maze of studies: Health questions and ‘undone science’ in a French industrial region
Near the city of Marseille is one of France’s largest industrial regions, home to over 400 industrial facilities. Adjacent to these facilities are towns whose residents have complained of myriad health problems, from respiratory illness and autoimmune disease to cancers. While human environmental health in this region has been studied repeatedly by state agencies and allied organizations, the studies focused on tightly constructed questions answe…
Diverging Paths: Understanding Racial Differences in Civic Engagement Among White, African American, and Latina/o Adolescents Using Structural Equation Modeling
There is increasing concern about the large civic engagement gap between Whites and Latina/o and African American youth. Some suggest this may be because traditional models and measures of civic engagement may not be as applicable for youth from historically marginalized groups. With an urban sample of middle and high school‐age youth ( n = 903, 52% female), we used structural equation modeling to identify differences in civic pathways between yo…
Action Civics for Promoting Civic Development: Main Effects of Program Participation and Differences by Project Characteristics
Using both quantitative and qualitative data, this study examined the effect of participating in an action civics intervention, Generation Citizen ( GC ), on civic commitment, civic self‐efficacy, and two forms of civic knowledge. The sample consisted of 617 middle and high schools students in 55 classrooms who participated, or were soon to participate, in Generation Citizen. Hierarchical linear models revealed that participating in Generation Ci…
Health issues in the industrial port zone of Marseille, France: The Fos Epseal community-based cross-sectional survey
Motherhood, fatherhood and midlife weight gain in a US cohort: Associations differ by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic position
While there is an association of greater short-term weight gain with childbearing among women, less is known about longer-term weight gain, whether men have similar gains, and how this varies by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic position. Our cohort consisted of a nationally representative sample of 7,356 Americans with oversampling of Black and Hispanic populations. We estimated the associations between number of biological children and parental …
Excessive Gestational Weight Gain and Subsequent Maternal Obesity at Age 40: A Hypothetical Intervention
Objectives. To model the hypothetical impact of preventing excessive gestational weight gain on midlife obesity and compare the estimated reduction with the US Healthy People 2020 goal of a 10% reduction of obesity prevalence in adults. Methods. We analyzed 3917 women with 1 to 3 pregnancies in the prospective US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, from 1979 to 2012. We compared the estimated obesity prevalence between 2 scenarios: gestational…
Similarities in Maternal Weight and Birth Weight Across Pregnancies and Across Sisters
Making civic engagement go viral: Applying social epidemiology principles to civic education
This paper explores the connections between education for youth civic engagement and theories and strategies from public health (specifically, epidemiology). We illustrate this with four applications of epidemiologic theory to youth civic engagement: social determinants and fundamental causes, vulnerable populations and cumulative disadvantage, positive spillover, and herd immunity and critical mass. Formalizing concepts of current civics, in sch…
An instrumental variables approach to assess the effect of class size reduction on student screen time
Sociology (37 works) · Psychology (35 works) · Medicine (29 works) · Political science (28 works) · Youth Development and Social Support (16 works) · Public relations (15 works) · Demography (13 works) · Pedagogy (12 works) · Politics (11 works) · Pandemic (10 works)