Stranger-Danger: What do Children Know?

The current practice in many schools of educating children on how to keep themselves safe from abuse and abduction tends to concentrate on teaching them about stranger-danger and how to avoid it. However, recent research suggests that children may have difficulty in understanding the stranger-danger message (Mayes, Gillies and Warden, 1990). The present study examines 6-, 8- and 10-year-old children's understanding of the concepts of ‘stranger’ and ‘danger’ by analysing their verbal responses to videotaped sequences depicting child encounters with a variety of known and unknown male adults. Results indicate that, although there is some evidence of developing wariness, children at ages 8 and even 10 years appear still to be vulnerable to approaches made by strangers. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What do we call post-apartheid?

In this paper, the author examines the different uses and meanings of the usual expression “post-apartheid.” It has been used extensively in the social sciences, political discourse and the media since the mid-1980s. But what does it refer to, and has it always meant the same thing over the last 20 years? To answer that question, the author reviews the different ways she has used the notion in her research into workers’ forms of thinking and political subjectivities in South Africa since 1996. She distinguishes between its use as a chronological marker, an academic concept open to various problematics and epistemological decisions and a notion used by interviewees under various acceptations. She concentrates more specifically on the sequential implications of the adverb “post” in her work and argues that there have been political sequences in what she (with others) has named “post-apartheid.” She concludes that she intends to stop using this term in order to concentrate on identifying the current political sequence in South Africa.     

What do lesbians do in the daytime? Recover

This paper examines a narrative taken from an ethnographic interview, for the speaker's conversational construction of lesbian and other identities along with ideologized personal history. To tell her story, Marge shifts to the discourse style used in the meetings of addiction recovery groups. She prioritizes the recovery (twelve-step) program's coherence system, structuring her life story in conformity with its terms while narrating a complexly queered identity. Four analyses are given, beginning with a Labovian formal examination and proceeding with a consideration of three types of discourse echoing: interdiscursivity, intratextuality, and manifest intertextuality. This study demonstrates the analytical linking of nonpublic linguistic discourse to social discourses; individual identity construction to social construction (and its coherence systems); and personal history to historical eras. The paper adds the concept of a metalevel complicating action to narrative theory and develops a means of examining intratextuality for critical discourse analysis. It presents a revised view of essentialism for the sociolinguistic study of gender and sexuality.     

What do we mean by evaluation?

The popularity of evaluation research has increased markedly in recent years. Although initially associated with experimental and quasi‐experimental methods, current practices and methods have become much more diverse. This paper provides a brief overview of the recent history of evaluation research – its meanings and purposes – and asks whether the current emphasis on ‘evidence‐based policy’ heralds a brighter future. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Demographic Data on Syrians in Turkey: What do we know?

With the outbreak of civil war in Syria, Turkey has become the host of the largest refugee population in the world. In a country where reliable population registration systems are only recently established and where no extensive legal arrangements on migration existed prior to the Syrian crisis, the whole refugee situation was handled rather unsystematically, with ever-changing institutions and regulations, and various iterations of both. In this paper we present the demographic statistics that have been made public by different sources from the beginning of the crisis up to today because they are hard to reach in one place accompanied by relevant institutional changes; with the aim of assessing the current demographic data and revealing what is missing.     

Family involvement in adolescent substance abuse treatment and recovery: What do we know? What lies ahead?

Families represent the most important resources that young people have in their journey through treatment toward recovery. Unfortunately, family members are often seen as part of the problem and not as part of the solution to adolescent alcohol and other drug (AOD) treatment and recovery. This attitude and misperception can be changed through education, outreach, and engagement of family members. Family involvement and creating a parent-professional collaborative partnership is a step toward improving the outcomes for adolescents in need of treatment and recovery. It is crucial that families understand the treatment process, as well as the hope, process, and reality of recovery. Without information families may not understand the importance of a treatment and recovery plan for their adolescent, the potential adverse consequences, and the impact of these AOD problems on other family members. Families need to learn the continuum of services and supports available, and how family participation improves treatment outcomes and strengthens the recovery process. Family involvement should be an essential part of intake, treatment, and recovery planning, as well as the foundation for effective parent–professional partnerships.     

What shall we do with the cyclic profile?

A Condorcet method for a single-seat preferential election is defined by the way it handles cases without a Condorcet winner. Such cases are described in terms of cyclic candidate triples. Sometimes election theory considers intricate patterns of intersecting cyclic triples. In practice, cyclic triples are rare, but they may be created as part of strategic voting against a Condorcet winner. This strategy, often called burying, is difficult to apply, but critics will detect a missed opportunity and regard it as a punishment for honest voting. A new Condorcet method, SV, lets a cyclic triple be won by the candidate with the smallest opportunity to defeat a Condorcet winner this way. A new geometric model allows visual comparison of the opportunities under various methods.     

Culturally Responsive Teaching: What do selected United States elementary school teachers think?

In this paper culturally responsive teaching is viewed as one way of implementing the concept of multicultural education in schools. In recent years, scholars have devoted considerable attention to the importance of aligning classroom experiences with students' home culture as a way of enhancing social, academic and cultural enrichment of all children. This study was, therefore, designed to identify perceptions of teachers toward the importance of culturally responsive teaching in elementary schools in the United States. The responses of 33 teachers were analyzed by using both qualitative and quantitative techniques. The findings of this study, along with a summary and implications for future studies, are presented in this paper. The data analysis clearly indicated that over 96% of the respondents considered culturally responsive teaching to be an important part of working with culturally diverse students. It was significant to note that the way teachers reported their perception toward the importance of culturally responsive teaching matched the manner with which they responded to the characteristics of culturally relevant teaching.     

Fathers in child welfare: What do social work textbooks teach our students?

Research indicates that fathers in the child welfare system provide benefits to children's well-being and positive development, yet child welfare workers often do not engage fathers in services. Previous studies in Canada and the United Kingdom have found that child welfare training perpetuates negative perceptions of fathers. The current study conducted a content analysis of 217 vignettes in the texts used in required classes for students completing a concentration in child welfare classes in nine schools of social work at the public universities in a Southern U.S. state. Coding was completed independently by three researchers with an inter-rater reliability of 79%. Findings indicated that despite men being the perpetrator in 51% of vignettes, women were portrayed in just over half of vignettes (51%) as the sole caregiver responsible for ensuring the child's safety when the abuse occurred. The data were organized into five themes of how men and women were portrayed in the vignettes: Men as Threat, Men as No Different than Women, Men as Irrelevant, Men as Absent, and Women as Default Clients (the first four suggested by Scourfield (2001), and the last by the researchers). Results indicate that the bias against including fathers in child welfare services reported in other studies seems to start at the beginning of students' learning about child welfare work, in their required textbooks. Recommendations include updating child welfare textbooks to better address the role of men and fathers in children's lives, and increasing professors' and field instructors' awareness of the bias against men and fathers in child welfare.     

Spousal Income and Sick Leave: What do Twins Tell us About Causality?

Theoretical arguments suggest that a higher socioeconomic status can improve health and as a consequence reduce the need for sick leave. The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate causal effects between spousal income and absence from the workplace due to sickness. To control for unobserved heterogeneity a Swedish sample of female twins and a semiparametric censored fixed-effects model was used. Results for dizygotic (fraternal) twins indicated that male spousal income, i.e., a non-shared environmental influence, reduced the share of income that was government-paid sickness benefits. Data on monozygotic twins, who have identical genes, provide a more complete control for unobserved heterogeneity. No causal effect was found in this case.

What do battered women want? Victims' opinions on prosecution

Prosecutors have increasingly adopted mandatory prosecution in domestic violence criminal cases. There is little empirical evidence, however, that the policy is a good match for victims' needs. Interviews with 94 battered women, whose cases were randomly selected from prosecutors' files, focused on their opinions of prosecuting. A logistic regression explores the factors that predict whether victims favor or oppose prosecution. Open-ended responses are coded into themes using the goals of sentencing literature as a framework. Previous published works are also tentatively grouped into the same themes to look for trends in the field. The most frequent reason why victims oppose prosecution is that the crime is too minor to justify a penalty.     

Theory-based evaluation in practice. What do we learn?

Theory-based evaluation (TBE) explores the how and why of program success or failure. Advocates of TBE claim that it produces information unavailable in traditional process and outcome studies. This article examines six published papers of TBEs. It finds that the authors of the papers do not always make explicit the relation of their data to the theory of the program. Nevertheless, it was evident in one or more cases that TBE identified unnecessary program components, located intermediary changes, raised new questions, contributed to a paradigm shift, highlighted the difficulties of taking successful pilot programs to scale, and provided clarity and focus for the evaluation. Interestingly, in none of the studies was the original theory completely right. Lessons for the future of TBE are drawn.     

Participation in decision-making in out-of-home care in Australia: What do young people say?

Drawing on qualitative research with 28 young people in Australia, this article explores children and young people's views and experiences of participation in decision-making while in out-of-home care. It initially examines the value of participation, before focusing on two key questions. First, do young people feel they had the opportunity to participate in decisions made about their lives during their time in out-of-home care? Second, on which issues do children and young people in care want to have a say?