Using research in practice: A research information service for social care practitioners

In recent years a variety of initiatives have been created with the aim of increasing the use of research in social care practice. This article reports findings from a one‐year pilot research information service provided by the What Works for Children project. Taking note of the evidence from the research utilization literature, the service was set up to support social care practitioners in using research findings in their service‐planning. An implementation officer worked with service‐planners to identify areas where research could be helpful. Researchers provided responses to practitioners’ questions by searching for, critically appraising and summarizing the relevant literature. This article looks at the practicalities of running such a service and discusses its potential for influencing research use. The pilot underlines the importance of some of the obstacles to using research, some of which our service was able to overcome. The gap between what practitioners want from research and what research provides is discussed.     

Opportunity,outlook and coping in poor,urban, African American,late-age,female adolescent contraceptors

This article explored the concepts of resilience, equal opportunity, and coping within a person-process-context model among urban Black adolescents in the US. Data were obtained from narrative accounts and interviews among 20 pregnant and 16 nonpregnant Black female adolescents aged 17 and 19 years. Respondents were recruited from prenatal and family planning clinics of a large metropolitan hospital and were representative of a low-income community with many female household heads and at-risk behaviors. The instruments included a 24-item structured interview of demographic data, and the 56 item semi-structured Pregnancy Adulthood Negotiation of Status Interview (PANSI). The interview elicited responses based on concrete experience, dialogue for assessing knowledge, and an ethic of caring and personal accountability. Contextual analysis revealed seven themes: adulthood preparation, role model formulation, decision-making, protective sensibility, sex and gender role commitment, opportunity mobility, and mate selection. All females shared similar demographics. Most resided in female-headed households and were high school graduates. The subsample differed in behaviors and attitudes on church affiliation, college attendance, registered voter status, sense of care and protection of self and others, self expectancies of social mobility, dating, and mate selection. Nonpregnant females were more likely to have part-time work experience and have mothers with post-high school achievement. Low-income nonpregnant adolescents were effective contraceptors and had social mobility aspirations. Narratives suggest that nonpregnant adolescents had an inner strength and belief, and commitment to advancement of career and vocational goals. The affiliations acted as social supports. These women used skillful coping mechanisms. Clinical social workers should reinforce resilience and work values.     

Sodium cromoglicate: an ineffective drug or meta‐analysis misused?

Sodium cromoglicate (SCG) has been available since around 1970 for the treatment of asthma and other allergic disorders in both adults and children. It has been approved for use around the world. Over the period of its development, a number of different formulations were introduced. In 1999, a systematic review of SCG use in childhood asthma was carried out and reported initially as a poster. Further systematic reviews and papers followed from the same authors and finally a Cochrane Collaboration review was published in 2003. All concluded that SCG was ineffective in paediatric asthma. Both the British Thoracic Society Guidelines for the treatment of paediatric asthma and the Model List of Essential Drugs of the WHO now reflect these conclusions. This paper looks carefully at the conclusions of these systematic reviews and raises concerns about the interpretation of the results. These failed to take adequate account of the changes with time in both the formulations used and the age groups examined, and also failed to take adequate note of the totality of information available over all end-points. One primary end-point was based on only four out of the 24 studies included in the review. Rather than having no effect, it is demonstrated that a considerable body of evidence favours SCG compared to placebo and, far from being ineffective, the drug appears to be effective particularly in older children. This article replaces a previously published version. DOI: 10.1002/pst.258.     

Planning and analysis of measurement reliability studies

In the traditional plan for assessing the reliability of a measurement system, a number of raters each measure the same group of subjects. If the system has a large number of raters, we recommend a new set of plans that has two advantages over the traditional plan. First, the proposed plans provide greater precision for estimating the intraclass correlation coefficient with the same total number of measurements. Second, the plans are flexible and can be adapted to constraints on the number of times any subject can be assessed or the number of times any rater can make an assessment. We provide a simple tool for planning a reliability study, access to the software for the planning in the case where there are constraints and an example to demonstrate the analysis of data from the proposed plans. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 39: 344–355; 2011 © 2011 Statistical Society of Canada     

Disability,caregiving and interpellation: migrant and non‐migrant families of children with disabilities in urban Australia

The process of interpellation (and its opposite, misinterpellation) is taken as a metaphor for understanding the lived experience of personal difference. This research focuses on two interpellative experiences: disability and migrant status. Parents of children with moderate to profound intellectual disabilities were asked about their engagement with the community; their access to support programs; and their sense of well‐being. Responses were divided between the non‐migrants (who were misinterpellated once) and migrants (who were misinterpellated twice). Were the migrant parents doubly isolated due to migrant status and carer status? What differences were there between migrant and non‐migrant responses to their parental experience? Although migrant parents were more negative about their children’s future, they rated themselves as equally happy and socially connected as non‐migrant parents.     

Island refuges for surviving nuclear winter and other abrupt sunlight-reducing catastrophes

Some island nations in the Southern Hemisphere might survive a severe sun-reducing catastrophe such as nuclear winter and be well placed to help reboot-collapsed human civilization. Such islands must be resilient to the cascading effects abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios (ASRS) would impose beyond the impacts on agricultural systems. We aimed to identify island nations whose societies are most likely to survive nuclear winter or other ASRS. We also aimed to conduct a case study of one island nation to consider how it might enhance its resilience and therefore its chance of aiding a global reboot of complex technological society. We performed a threshold analysis on food self-sufficiency under severe nuclear winter conditions to identify islands. We then profiled each island across global macroindices representing resilience factors reported in the literature. We undertook a case study of the island nation of New Zealand. The island nations of Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, the Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu appear most resilient to ASRS. However, our case-study island nation of New Zealand is threatened in scenarios of no/low trade, has precarious aspects of its energy supply, and shortcomings in manufacturing of essential components. Therefore, inadequate preparations and critical failures in these systems could see rapid societal breakdown. Despite some islands’ favorable baseline conditions and apparent food security even in a severe ASRS, cascading impacts through other socioecological systems threaten complex functioning. We identified specific resilience measures, many with cobenefits, which may protect island nodes of sustained complexity in ASRS.