Late Adapters? How Social Workers Acquire Knowledge and Skills About Technology Tools

Little is understood about the scope of information and communication technology (ICT) use in practice for agency-based social work professionals, and still less is known about how such practitioners acquire and avail themselves of opportunities to learn about ICT tools. This study asked a sample of social work field supervisors (n?=?371) to describe their personal and professional ICT use, to rank the technological sophistication of their agency, to describe the barriers and facilitators to ICT use in their organizations and to operationalize environmental opportunities for acquiring new skills and knowledge. The authors examine factors that may influence technology use: asking if organizational culture is related to uptake in the professional context, and if self-reported individual resistance to innovation and change can explain voluntary adoption of ICT tools. The results offer a portrait of how agency-based social workers are using technology in personal and professional life, describe how these supervisors learn about developing technologies for practice, and highlight the gaps in technology infrastructures among agencies, pointing to directions for further exploration.     

Sense of School Membership and Associated Academic and Psychological Outcomes in Post-Institutionalized Adopted High School Students

Research highlights lasting cognitive and academic challenges in youth internationally adopted from institutional care. However, there is a lack of research examining internationally adopted students' sense of membership at school and associated academic and psychological outcomes. The current study measured sense of school membership and academic and psychological outcomes in post-institutionalized internationally adopted high school students (n = 29) compared to adolescents internationally adopted from foster care (n = 28) and non-adopted adolescents (n = 32). Post-institutionalized males had a lower sense of school membership than males adopted from foster care or non-adopted males. Group differences in school membership were mediated by academic achievement and psychological well-being.     

Persuasion: An experimental study of team decision making

This paper studies persuasion within teams and investigates why teams commonly take, by some measures, better decisions than individuals. The analysis is based on data from electronic communication within teams of two players. Thanks to the experimental design, changes of an individual’s decision can be attributed to the content of the team partner’s message. The results for knowledge-related and strategic problems show that individuals’ decisions change upon receiving more informative and sophisticated arguments and remain the same otherwise. This individual behavior is an essential part of the information aggregation in teams and can explain the advantage of teams in decision making and in games.     

Tolerance of Uncertainty: Links to Happenstance,Career Decision Self‐Efficacy,and Career Satisfaction

This study investigated the extent to which tolerance of uncertainty affects the relationship between happenstance skills and career satisfaction via career decision self‐efficacy. Moderated mediation analysis was conducted on data collected from 321 graduates (175 men, 146 women) of Korean universities making the school‐to‐work transition. Results showed that career decision self‐efficacy fully mediated the relationship between happenstance skills and career satisfaction. Furthermore, the moderation effect of tolerance of uncertainty had a significant impact on the relationship between happenstance skills and career decision self‐efficacy. Tolerance of uncertainty should be considered an important variable in happenstance career theory and intervention. Unplanned influences should also be considered important factors in the career decision‐making process.     

Children in immediate danger: Emergency removals in Finnish and Irish child protection

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of front‐line practices regarding emergency removals in Finnish and Irish child protection. It examines how the responses to children's immediate danger are framed by legislation and how front‐line practitioners assess the child's situation and make emergency placement decisions. The data consist of interviews with 16 Irish and 33 Finnish social workers. These child welfare protection systems respond differently to a task that appears to be similar. The Irish team‐based practice rests on the social workers' shared assessment of the child's needs, and the formal decision is made by the courts (or police officers at night‐time); and the Finnish practice involves only one single social worker who makes both the assessment and the removal decision. The Irish system is tightly time regulated, whereas the Finnish system provides a more flexible time frame. Both approaches put a lot of stress on social workers' practice, which also includes creative workarounds (e.g., “planned emergency removals” in Finland). Future research will need to explore these features from the point of view of a child's right to protection.     

Care without coercion – mental health rights,personal recovery and trauma‐informed care

Australian mental health services continue to use involuntary measures in response to consumers' mental distress. Regardless of the intent behind these practices, the experience of being forced to receive treatment, be secluded or restrained is traumatic and can cause further distress and harm. Other parts of the health or social service system have shifted to approaches that emphasise agency, social context, prevention, and rights. Three frameworks currently used in mental health services – human rights, personal recovery, and trauma‐informed – are consistent with a shift away from the use of force. We applied these frameworks to the text of the National Standards for Mental Health Services 2010 to analyse the degree to which it reflects a shift. We also analysed the public text of speakers' notes from the Care Without Coercion Conference 2012 concerning lived experiences of force in mental health services. The analysis highlights force in many aspects of policy. The findings have implications for directions of change, including freedom from violence; support for decision making; access and choice about community and inpatient options; safety and risk management; and greater understanding of current policy frameworks through engagement with people with lived experience about the options and impact of support processes that exclude the use of force.     

Perceptions of Randomized Security Schedules

Security of infrastructure is a major concern. Traditional security schedules are unable to provide omnipresent coverage; consequently, adversaries can exploit predictable vulnerabilities to their advantage. Randomized security schedules, which randomly deploy security measures, overcome these limitations, but public perceptions of such schedules have not been examined. In this experiment, participants were asked to make a choice between attending a venue that employed a traditional (i.e., search everyone) or a random (i.e., a probability of being searched) security schedule. The absolute probability of detecting contraband was manipulated (i.e., 1/10, 1/4, 1/2) but equivalent between the two schedule types. In general, participants were indifferent to either security schedule, regardless of the probability of detection. The randomized schedule was deemed more convenient, but the traditional schedule was considered fairer and safer. There were no differences between traditional and random schedule in terms of perceived effectiveness or deterrence. Policy implications for the implementation and utilization of randomized schedules are discussed.     

An Integrated Risk Assessment Model of Township‐Scaled Land Subsidence Based on an Evidential Reasoning Algorithm and Fuzzy Set Theory

Land subsidence risk assessment (LSRA) is a multi‐attribute decision analysis (MADA) problem and is often characterized by both quantitative and qualitative attributes with various types of uncertainty. Therefore, the problem needs to be modeled and analyzed using methods that can handle uncertainty. In this article, we propose an integrated assessment model based on the evidential reasoning (ER) algorithm and fuzzy set theory. The assessment model is structured as a hierarchical framework that regards land subsidence risk as a composite of two key factors: hazard and vulnerability. These factors can be described by a set of basic indicators defined by assessment grades with attributes for transforming both numerical data and subjective judgments into a belief structure. The factor‐level attributes of hazard and vulnerability are combined using the ER algorithm, which is based on the information from a belief structure calculated by the Dempster‐Shafer (D‐S) theory, and a distributed fuzzy belief structure calculated by fuzzy set theory. The results from the combined algorithms yield distributed assessment grade matrices. The application of the model to the Xixi‐Chengnan area, China, illustrates its usefulness and validity for LSRA. The model utilizes a combination of all types of evidence, including all assessment information—quantitative or qualitative, complete or incomplete, and precise or imprecise—to provide assessment grades that define risk assessment on the basis of hazard and vulnerability. The results will enable risk managers to apply different risk prevention measures and mitigation planning based on the calculated risk states.     

Impact of Race on the Implementation of Empirically Supported Treatments in Substance Abuse Treatment

The effort to address the gap between research and practice in substance abuse treatment has largely neglected the role of local resources and political trends. This study seeks to clarify the role of the local environment in implementing empirically supported treatments (ESTs). The study consisted of secondary data analysis of substance abuse treatment centers (N = 13,079) and U.S. Census data to determine the likelihood of using EST by substance abuse treatment centers in counties with 50% or more Black residents. Bivariate and multivariate models were employed. After controlling for various factors, results indicate that substance use disorder treatment agencies that accept federal funding are less likely to use ESTs if they are located in counties with predominantly (> 50%) Black residents. Implementation of ESTs could be influenced by community racial distribution (% Black), but environmental constraints and events might shift implementation patterns.     

The Role of Behavioral Responses in the Total Economic Consequences of Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Air Travel Targets

U.S. airports and airliners are prime terrorist targets. Not only do the facilities and equipment represent high‐value assets, but the fear and dread that is spread by such attacks can have tremendous effects on the U.S. economy. This article presents the methodology, data, and estimates of the macroeconomic impacts stemming from behavioral responses to a simulated terrorist attack on a U.S. airport and on a domestic airliner. The analysis is based on risk‐perception surveys of these two scenarios. The responses relate to reduced demand for airline travel, shifts to other modes, spending on nontravel items, and savings of potential travel expenditures by U.S. resident passengers considering flying domestic routes. We translate these responses to individual spending categories and feed these direct impact results into a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the U.S. economy to ascertain the indirect and total impacts on both the airline industry and the economy as a whole. Overall, the estimated impacts on GDP of both types of attacks exceed $10B. We find that the behavioral economic impacts are almost an order of magnitude higher than the ordinary business interruption impacts for the airliner attack and nearly two orders of magnitude higher for the airport attack. The results are robust to sensitivity tests on the travel behavior of U.S. residents in response to terrorism.