Small-dollar children's saving accounts and children's college outcomes by race

This is paper three of four in the Small-Dollar Children Accounts series that studies the relationship between children's small dollar savings accounts and college enrollment and graduation. The series uses different subsamples to examine three important research questions: (a) Are children with savings of their own more likely to attend or graduate from college? (b) Does dosage (no account, only basic savings, savings designated for school of less than $1, $1 to $499, or $500 or more) matter? And (c) is designating for school more predictive of college enrollment or graduation than having basic undesignated savings alone? Using propensity score weighted data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its supplements we created multi-treatment dosages of savings accounts and amounts to answer these questions separately for black (n = 404) and white (n = 453) children. White children's savings are not significantly related to their college outcomes. Differently, compared to black children without savings accounts, black children are three times more likely to enroll in college when they have school savings of less than $1 and six times more likely when they have school savings of $1 to $499. Further, black children with school savings of $1 to $499 are four times more likely to graduate from college and black children with school savings of $500 or more are three-and-a-half times more likely to graduate from college, compared to those with no savings account. We suggest Child Development Accounts (CDAs) may be a promising tool for helping black children get to and through college.     

Imagining Social Work: A Qualitative Study of Students' Perspectives on Social Work in China

Social work education in China has expanded rapidly since it was reintroduced in 1988. This has led to a growing body of English language literature on the development of social work education in China. However, thus far, this literature lacks an empirical foundation and little research on students' perspectives has been done. To fill this gap, this paper reports on a qualitative study of a group of graduating social work students (n = 32) from four social work programmes in Jinan, the provincial capital of the Shandong Province. Three major findings are reported. Firstly, the students liken their social work learning experience to a roller coaster ride with many ups and downs. Secondly, the cultural compatibility of western social work in China has not yet been conclusively established, while an ‘indigenized’ social work needs to be compatible with Chinese family values, referred to as ‘familism’ in direct Chinese to English translation, and with the dominant socialist political ideology. Thirdly, the future of social work is bright given increasing government support for its development.     

Hyperrationality: Historical antecedents and contemporary outcomes within Japanese manufacturing

After World War II, the Japanese began to rebuild industrially by importing American formally rational technologies and fusing them with indigenous ones. Most importantly, they integrated formal rationality with practical, theoretical, and substantive rationalities to produce a “hyperrational” system. The synergy between these four types of rationality produced a level of rationality exceeding that found in formally rational American industry. It is argued that the growth in Japanese manufacturing can be traced to hyperrationality. In this paper, the existence of hyper‐rationality, its implications for the Japanese manufacturing sector, and possible avenues for future sociological research are demonstrated.     

Professionals’ attitudes toward advertising: A study of accountants,dentists and lawyers

The present study addresses the nature and types of attitudes and behavioral dispositions of accountants, dentists and lawyers toward the use of advertising and delineates professional and work related factors that impact on these attitudes and behavioral dispositions toward advertising. Findings indicate that the concept of professionalism, reduced to five major subscales, fails in the majority of instances to explain a significant amount of variance in practitioners’ feelings toward advertising. Only the subscale of autonomy consistently relates to practitioners’ attitudes and behavioral dispositions toward advertising, and then only for accountants.     

The Limits of Working with Children Cards in Protecting Children

Abstract

In 2006 Western Australia passed legislation that introduced a system to check criminal records and issue permits to those who wish to work with children. In 2007, the legislation was described by the minister responsible as a “powerful system that would prevent harm to children”. This paper explores that system and identifies limits to its effectiveness. The paper concluded that unless the system's limits are fully appreciated there is a possibility of a paradoxical outcome, whereby children's lives will be less safe. It also raises the question of whether in the area of record checking a national approach is not preferable to each state and territory developing its own system.     

The Personhood in Dementia Questionnaire (PDQ): Establishing an association between beliefs about personhood and health providers' approaches to person-centred care

Purpose of the studyInterest in person-centred dementia care has flourished in the last two decades. Despite growing interest in the development and implementation of person-centred approaches to dementia care, important empirical questions remain. For instance, although Kitwood (1997) emphasized that personhood, a status extended by others, is at the heart of person-centred care, to our knowledge, no one has demonstrated empirically that beliefs about patient status influence how care is provided. The purpose of this series of three studies was to operationalize Kitwood's definition of personhood in order to test this hypothesis.Design and methodsTo operationalize Kitwood's definition of personhood, we generated items to create the Personhood in Dementia Questionnaire (PDQ; Study 1). We then completed preliminary tests of the PDQ's convergent and discriminant validity (Study 2). Finally, we examined the PDQ's relationships with other constructs such as burnout and job satisfaction, and we used linear regression to test the hypothesis that health providers' beliefs about personhood influence intended approaches to dementia care (Study 3).ResultsIn Study 1, we generated a pool of 64 potential questionnaire items. In Study 2, a 20-item version of the PDQ demonstrated good internal consistency, resistance to socially desirable responding, and evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. In Study 3, PDQ scores accounted for a significant proportion of variance in health providers' intended approaches to dementia care, including pain management. PDQ scores were not related to job satisfaction or to most aspects of burnout.ImplicationsThese results provide the first direct empirical evidence of Kitwood's (1997) theory that beliefs about patient personhood have the potential to influence health providers' care decisions, including decisions about pain management.