Ideology and Education for Social Work Practice

Three approaches to social work practice (Personal Deficiency, Ecological, and Political Economy) which emerge from different ideological positions (conservative, liberal and socialistlfeminist, respectively) are summarized. Utilizing a case example demonstrates how the assumptions inherent in each approach result in different problem detinitions and practice interventions. Only one of these approaches (Political Economy) supports methods of intervention which foster social transformation. Guidelines and implications for social work practice and social work education adhering to a political economy approach are discussed. Substantively different practice methods and educational models are required if sociar transformation is to be supported.     

Merging Micro and Macro Intervention: Social Work Practice With Groups in the Community

Clinical or micro intervention predominates in social work education and practice. The prevailing assumption in social work practice and education is that one engages in either micro or macro intervention. In this article, we describe how these interventions may be merged into an integrated whole through social work practice with groups. The conceptual and evidence base of community work is summarized, as are efforts to identify practice skills that overlap both approaches. We assert that group work is ideally suited to promote individual empowerment and community change. Case examples illustrate the relative ease with which tasks and skills of group work at the micro level can be used in group work practice in the community. Implications for social work education are discussed.     

The relative validity of actuarial- and consensus-based risk assessment systems

In an effort to improve decision-making in child protective services (CPS), most states have, over the last two decades, implemented risk assessment systems to guide staff faced with making critical decisions in limited time frames. Generally, these systems are characterized as consensus-based or actuarial models. This study is the first to directly compare the relative validity of these two approaches. Three risk assessment instruments, two consensus-based and one actuarial, were completed on cohorts of cases from four different jurisdictions and outcome information was collected over an 18-month follow-up period. Rates of subsequent investigations, substantiations, and placements were computed for cases classified at low, moderate, and high risk levels in each model. Results clearly demonstrate that the actuarial approach more accurately classifies cases to different risk levels. These actuarial models, therefore, have the greatest potential to improve CPS decision making and better protect America's at risk children.     

Hypnotic analysis of the recognition of a sex symbol

Evolutionary and environmental theories of erotic response, sometimes termed “sociobiology” and “socialization” theories, respectively, are compared on the basis of the structural strengths and weaknesses of each approach. More space is devoted to the evolutionary approach because sociobiologists have offered a more detailed theoretical analysis, thereby allowing for greater criticism and, also, because these theories are not directly testable. Examination of socialization theories is more straightforward. The review focuses on how the presence of an effect favors either an environmental or an evolutionary interpretation. This review is concerned with the basic methodology and the sharpening of theoretical concepts which may be used to develop more complex accounts of erotic response. The term “erotic response” refers to sexual arousal and/or attraction. A sequel to this article will examine the utility of these approaches within specific content domains     

Sociology and New Wars in the Era of Globalisation

The sociology of war has used a number of analytical perspectives to explain why the end of the Cold War saw outbreaks of violence around the world in the form of 'new wars', rather than universal peace. Factors often considered are globalisation, nationalist ideology, political elites, the Revolution in Military Affairs, international crime and migration. Sociological analysis of these new wars often makes use of comparative historical sociology, but these are wars of state disintegration rather than of state formation. This summary undertakes a critical evaluation of different approaches, arguing that they mostly follow a model of war inherited from Clausewitz which conceives of war only as an encounter between two states and so cannot successfully explain new war, where armed forces no longer primarily fight each other but target civilians.     

Family risk and resiliency factors, substance use, and the drug resistance process in adolescence

Recent approaches to drug prevention have emphasized risk and resiliency factors. Two models have been developed to explain these factors, one which posits that separate elements make up each set and the other which posits that a single factor can be either a risk or a resiliency factor depending on, for example, if it is present (resiliency) or absent (risk). This study tested these models and attempted to compare the effects of risk and resiliency across gender and ethnicity. Results support the model in which risk and resiliency are discrete sets of factors and demonstrate that overall resiliency factors play a larger role than risk factors in substance use and drug resistance processes. However, gender proved to be an important moderator of these effects. For adolescent males, resiliency has an indirect effect on overall substance use through age of first use, while risk has a direct effect on overall substance use. For adolescent females, resiliency has a direct effect on overall substance use and risk has an indirect effect through age of first use. This indicates that while early interventions are important for both genders, resiliency factors must be dealt with before initiation of substance use for males. Findings did not differ substantially across ethnicity, although the small African-American sample size may have limited power to detect differences.     

Existentialism and Constructivism: A Bi-Polar Model of Subjectivity

The philosophical systems of existentialism and constructivism have generated distinct clinical approaches based on seemingly incompatible conceptions of subjectivity and its role in clinical work. The premise of this paper is that, taken together, existential and constructivist perspectives provide an essentially dialectical view of personal identity, suggesting that a bi-polar model of subjectivity may yield a broader therapeutic gain than either/or positions. I demonstrate this premise by illustrating the central tenets of each approach using clinical vignettes, then further elucidate each position by drawing upon its philosophical underpinnings. Finally, I present a longer clinical illustration that contains both an existential and a constructivist phase.     

Subjective well-being and exercise in the second half of life: a critical review of theoretical approaches

Research has shown repeatedly that the ??feeling better?? effect of exercise is far more moderate than generally claimed. Examinations of subgroups in secondary analyses also indicate that numerous further variables influence this relationship. One reason for inconsistencies in this research field is the lack of adequate theoretical analyses. Well-being output variables frequently possess no construct definition, and little attention is paid to moderating and mediating variables. This article integrates the main models in an overview and analyzes how secondary analyses define well-being and which areas of the construct they focus on. It then applies a moderator and/or mediator framework to examine which person and environmental variables can be found in the existing explanatory approaches in sport science and how they specify the influence of these moderating and mediating variables. Results show that the broad understanding of well-being in many secondary analyses makes findings difficult to interpret. Moreover, physiological explanatory approaches focus more on affective changes in well-being, whereas psychological approaches also include cognitive changes. The approaches focus mostly on either physical or psychological person variables and rarely combine the two, as in, for example, the dual-mode model. Whereas environmental variables specifying the treatment more closely (e.g., its intensity) are comparatively frequent, only the social support model formulates variables such as the framework in which exercise is presented. The majority of explanatory approaches use simple moderator and/or mediator models such as the basic mediated (e.g., distraction hypothesis) or multiple mediated (e.g., monoamine hypotheses) model. The discussion draws conclusions for future research.     

Strategizing for social change in nonprofit contexts: A typology of communication approaches in public communication campaigns

Public communication campaigns aim to create social change by influencing audiences’ behaviors and thus help nonprofit organizations fulfill their mission. These campaigns, however, often fail to deliver their anticipated impact. Using public relations research as a theoretical lens, this paper's contribution is twofold: first, we develop a typology that classifies the different communication approaches used in public communication campaigns. Based on one of the most prominent public relations theories, the Four Models of Public Relations, we differentiate communication approaches along the dimensions of communication purpose and communication style. Combining these two dimensions in a typology, we identify the following communication approaches: directing, platforming, mobilizing, and involving. We provide numerous real‐life examples of public campaigns for each one. Second, we formulate propositions about these communication approaches’ effectiveness relying on a key concept of public relations research: namely, audience segmentation. Using the transtheoretical model, we show that audiences can be segmented along five “stages of readiness to adopt a promoted behavior.” Conceptualizing behavior change as an iterative, dynamic process that entails stage progresses as well as backdrops, we derive how audiences’ “stage of readiness” relates to the effectiveness of the identified communication approaches.     

A Systems Model of Family for Family Therapists*

A family model that provides a classification system for family therapists is presented, based on an integration of family systems research in healthy and disturbed families and clinical data. The model provides tools for cross-sectional, process-oriented family assessment derived from consideration of family competence in task performance and family operating style. Seven family types result-optimal, adequate, midrange centripetal, midrange centrifugal, midrange mixed, severely dysfunctional centripetal and severely dysfunctional centrifugal. Identifying characteristics of each type are provided, and intervention strategies and approaches are discussed that follow logically from the assessment.     

What do we know about employee absence behavior? An interdisciplinary interpretation

The absenteeism literature exhibits three fundamental approaches to research; absence is assumed to be either (1) individual, (2) social, or (3) economic behavior. Although research has been informed by several disciplines, it cannot be said that absence research, in toto, has proceeded on the basis of an interdisciplinary perspective. This paper first identifies the contributions and limitations of each approach. An interdisciplinary interpretation of the literature implies that the explanations provided by these approaches are complementary such that individual, social, and economic forces determine absence behavior in an interdependent fashion. Subsequent gains in our understanding of absence behavior are therefore likely to be contingent upon an interdisciplinary approach to research.     

Quality of Life for Children and Adolescents with Developmental Disabilities: review of conceptual and methodological issues relevant to public policy

The construct of quality of life has great potential for guiding development and evaluation of policies for children with developmental disabilities. However, there are many different definitions and models of quality of life, and not all of them are equally appropriate for developing policies that would meaningfully address the needs of children with develop mental disabilities. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to review major approaches to quality of life and discuss three models specific to children with respect to their relevance to public policy for children with developmental disabilities. Review of these models includes a discussion of quality of life definitions and conceptual issues, as well as analysis of major measurement characteristics of the instrument(s) associated with each model. Potential of each model for guiding development and evaluation of policy is also considered.     

Authenticity as a form of worth

Scholarly engagement with authenticity has been revitalized by recent efforts to theorize the value-ladenness of authenticity claims. Yet, these approaches are restricted by the lack of available conceptual tools necessary to explain variations in the meaning of authenticity between different cultural forms and social groups. In this paper, I draw from Boltanski and Thevenot’s pragmatic hermeneutics to develop an approach to authenticity in popular culture that conceptualizes it as a form of worth. I apply this new model to an analysis of the meanings of authenticity found in the discourse of fans of indie music and country music. I find that in the indie genre, authenticity involves an inspirational form of worth; in the country genre, it involves a domestic form of worth. I trace these differences back to the matched relationship between the primary groups of fans of each genre and the genres themselves that led both sides to find an interest in these types of authenticity. I conclude by sketching the relevance of this approach for explaining overarching concerns for authenticity in late modern societies.     

Explaining the Origins of Public Relations: Logics of Historical Explanation

This study reviews a major body of research—historical explanations for the emergence of public relations as a social institution. This review of public relations histories identifies three distinct logics of historical explanation—a functionalist logic, an institutional logic, and a cultural logic. It then describes how these three logics are used in public relations histories and explores the theoretical and methodological challenges that each of these approaches presents.     

Child welfare and the challenge of causal inference

Causal inference refers to the assessment of cause and effect relationships in observational data—i.e., in situations where random assignment is impossible or impractical. Choices involving children in the child welfare system evoke core elements of causal inference—manipulation and the counterfactual. How would a child's circumstances differ if we changed her environment? This article begins with one mathematical approach to framing causal inference, the potential outcomes framework. This methodology is a cornerstone of newer approaches to causal inference. This framework makes clear the identification problem inherent in causal inference and highlights a key assumption often used to identify the model (ignorability or no unobserved confounding). The article then outlines the various approaches to causal inference and organizes them around whether they assume ignorability as well as other key features of each approach. The article then provides guidelines for producing good causal inference. These guidelines emerge from a review of methodological literature as broad ranging as epidemiology, statistics, economics, and policy analysis. These steps will be illustrated using an example from child welfare. The article concludes with suggestions for how the field could apply these newer methods.     

Cycles of Social Problem Development: The Case of Drug Abuse*

The genesis and course of a social problem results from the interplay of political and historical forces. This paper formulates a cyclical model of social problem development in which the history of drug abuse as a social problem is a function of the political processes which shape its course. The developmental cycle comprises five stages, with the fifth stage initiating a new cycle through the stages. Political struggles at each stage over the choice of definition and remedy are analyzed to explicate how the outcomes of earlier struggles become historical contingencies for subsequent stages. Institutionalized remedial approaches become entrenched and may not be superseded by subsequent approaches, leading to an accretion of institutional forms. Current drug abuse policy and programs, a patchwork accumulation of conflicting approaches instituted during different historical eras, exemplify this phenomenon.     

Expanding Statistical Frontiers in Sexual Science: Taxometric,Invariance, and Equivalence Testing

Sexual scientists must choose from among myriad methodological and analytical approaches when investigating their research questions. How can scholars learn whether sexualities are discrete or continuous? How is sexuality constructed? And to what extent are sexuality-related groups similar to or different from one another? Though commonplace, quantitative attempts at addressing these research questions require users to possess an increasingly deep repertoire of statistical knowledge and programming skills. Recently developed open-source software offers powerful yet accessible capacity to researchers wishing to perform strong quantitative tests. Taking advantage of these new statistical opportunities will require sexual scientists to become familiar with new analyses, including taxometric analysis, tests of measurement variability and differential item functioning, and equivalence testing. In the current article, I discuss each of these analyses, providing conceptual and historical overviews. I also address common misunderstandings for each analysis that may discourage researchers from implementing them. Finally, I describe current best practices when using each analysis, providing reproducible coding examples and interpretations along the way, in an attempt to reduce barriers to the uptake of these analyses. By aspiring to explore these new statistical frontiers in sexual science, sexuality researchers will be better positioned to test their substantive theories of interest.     

Dynamic heterogeneity: a framework to promote ecological integration and hypothesis generation in urban systems

Urban areas are understood to be extraordinarily spatially heterogeneous. Spatial heterogeneity, and its causes, consequences, and changes, are central to ecological science. The social sciences and urban design and planning professions also include spatial heterogeneity as a key concern. However, urban ecology, as a pursuit that integrates across these disciplines, lacks a theoretical framework that synthesizes the diverse and important aspects of heterogeneity. This paper presents the concept of dynamic heterogeneity as a tool to explore how social and ecological heterogeneities interact and how they together act as both an outcome of past interactions and a driver future heterogeneity and system functions. To accomplish this goal, we relate heterogeneity to the fundamental concept of the human ecosystem. The human ecosystem concept identifies key processes that require operationalized models of dynamic heterogeneity in three process realms: the flow of materials, the assembly of urban ecosystem biota, and the locational choices humans make concerning land. We exemplify a specific dynamic model of heterogeneity in each of these realms, and indicate a range of complementary statistical approaches to integrate the drivers and outcomes of dynamic heterogeneity across the three realms. We synthesize a hierarchical framework for a theory of dynamic urban heterogeneity, noting its complementarity to other major urban theories and general model approaches. We hypothesize that human actions and structures amplify the dynamics of heterogeneity in urban systems.     

Overtime and Undertime: An Analysis of Hours Worked*

Drawing on 1980 Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS), this study compares the determinants of annual hours of work for whites, blacks, and mainland-born Puerto Ricans residing in the New York SMSA in 1979. Two theoretical approaches are tested; a neoclassical specification and an extended structural model. The analysis supports both approaches. Few differences in coefficients exist between white and minority men, but the hours of minority women are less sensitive to family demands than are those of white women. The implications of these and other findings are discussed.