Sexology in the U.S.:

No abstract available for this article.     

Assaultive behavior: know the risks.

1. Violence in our society is an increasing national concern, and violence in health-care settings reflects this trend. Assaultive episodes continue to increase in health-care settings due to various cultural, sociological, and political factors. 2. Present administrative and educational solutions to the problems of assault have failed to decrease the incidence and, in fact, may contribute to the increasing number of assaultive episodes. 3. Psychiatric staff can reduce incidence of assault by recognizing the risk factors and designing styles and interventions with these factors in mind. 4. Risks most often associated with assault are history of assault, diagnosis of dementia or organic brain disorder, intoxication from drugs or alcohol, and from the characteristics of the milieu and treatment itself.     

Therapeutic listening: developing the concept.

1. Therapeutic listening is an art that all nurses, especially psychiatric nurses, must possess to be effective. Listening has been listed as the most effective therapeutic technique available. 2. Therapeutic listening is an interpersonal confirmation process, involving all the senses, in which the therapist attends with empathy to the client's verbal and nonverbal messages to facilitate the understanding, synthesis, and interpretation of the client's situation. 3. The therapeutic listening process includes maintaining eye contact; an attending posture; staying within conversational distance; responding with facial expressions, touch, gestures, and encouraging words; asking relevant questions; and interpreting and summarizing key points using specific words spoken by the client.     

U.S. immigration policy: the guestworker option revisited

In guestworker programs foreign nationals are admitted into another country on a nonmigrant status with severely curtailed social and limited labor market rights. The duration of stay is always finite and compliance with the terms of the contract are entered through a network of legal arrangements which allow officials in the receiving country a substantial amount of administrative discretion. Pro-guestworker arguments say that the borders cannot be closed, that guestworkers can be substituted for illegal aliens, that guestworkers are better than illegal aliens, and that additional labor benefits the US economy. Those against guestworker programs stress longterm socioeconomic issues rather than short-term economic advantages, saying that guestworker programs are no quick answer for illegal immigration, for domestic labor shortages, or for the US poor population. Guestworker programs, its opponents say, provide short-run economic benefits to a few employers and individuals at the expense of more widespread and longterm socioeconomic costs. They oppose: 1) the concept of admitting foreign workers with restricted rights, 2) the concentration of any negative labor market impacts on already disadvantaged domestic groups, 3) the proliferation of "jobs which Americans won't take," 4) many temporary guests ending up permanent residents, and 5) that exporting workers is as likely to impede as accelerate job-creating economic development in immigration countries. Most economists believe that diminishing marginal productivity produces downward-sloping short-run demand for labor schedules. The European experience with these programs has been different than those in the US since foreign workers in Europe were initially recruited in response to actual labor shortages and have always had legal status, but both Europe and the US have experienced large contingents of workers who remain in the countries and are at a pronounced power disadvantage regarding the society's institutions. Studies of guestworker programs have shown that worker flows eventually become impervious to the receiver's actual labor needs as employers disaggregate jobs into components which match the low skills of migrants and create additional foreign worker jobs which are then shunned by native labor, thus perpetuating a need for such labor. If the US opts for a large-scale guestworker program this will only replace 1 set of problems with another and it is not at all certain that large-scale guestworker admissions will proportionately reduce illegal migration inflows.     

Cost-benefit analysis: the mystique versus the reality.

Cost-benefit analysis is promoted as a method for making social policy decisions more rational. A review of its goals, procedures, assumptions, and recent applications exposes technological shortcomings and implicit value preferences. If the method is to be useful, it must be balanced by the judgment of decision makers. Consequently, the power of cost-benefit analysis to improve policy decisions depends on the political context. In a conservative environment this analysis provides a rationalization for disinvesting in social welfare. At such times social reformers would be wise to engage in political action and to challenge cost-benefit analysis.     

Generation Gap: Student Social Worker and the A.A.S.W.

INTRODUCTION

WOMEN'S MOVEMENTS AND SOCIAL WORK IN ENGLAND AND THE U.S.A. With the new wave of feminism of the mid-sixties in England and North America and a little later in Australia, where it is generally expressed through the Women's Liberation Movement or the Women's Electoral Lobby, many professional women's groups have begun to criticize what they believe is unfair discrimination against women within their professions.     

儿童的家庭保护：美国的经验与启示

儿童的家庭保护是儿童保护系统工程的关键环节。美国儿童的家庭保护工作在经历了从“不干涉家庭生活”到“居主导地位和负起责任”。从“解救”到“预防与永久计划”的历程之后,逐渐确立了细化和可操作化的法律体系．开展了广覆盖、多层次的预防与监测工作,提供了全面多样的服务项目。在儿童的家庭保护工作方面为各国提供了可借鉴的经验。这些对于我国的儿童家庭保护工作也具有重要的启示,尤其是在立法、机构建设和专业化发展等方面。     

Polarization and the decline of the middle class: Canada and the U.S.

Several recent studies have suggested that the distribution of income (earnings, jobs) is becoming more polarized. Much of the evidence presented in support of this view consists of demonstrating that the population share in an arbitrarily chosen middle income class has fallen. However, such evidence can be criticized as being range-specific—depending on the particular cutoffs selected. In this paper we propose a range-free approach to measuring the middle class and polarization, based on partial orderings. The approach yields two polarization curves which, like the Lorenz curve in inequality analysis, signal unambiguous increases in polarization. It also leads to an intuitive new index of polarization that is shown to be closely related to the Gini coefficient. We apply the new methodology to income and earnings data from the U.S. and Canada, and find that polarization is on the rise in the U.S. but is stable or declining in Canada. A cross-country comparison reveals the U.S. to be unambiguously more polarized than Canada.     

High stakes: U.S. nonprofit organizations and the U.S. standing abroad

This research sought to explain the agency of U.S.-based nonprofit nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the U.S. standing abroad, and explore the NGO role in the U.S. public diplomacy. A multiple-case study method was used to look at five 501(c)(3) organizations that receive predominantly private funding and operate globally. The data gathered from in-person interviews and corporate documentation were compared between cases, and synthesized across cases using the theory-building technique. While U.S. standing affects American NGOs’ practices and discourses, American NGOs’ behavior might have a bearing on the attitudes, perceptions, and opinions of international publics about the United States. Both the NGO-owned state identities and American NGOs’ reputation for autonomy and freedom of expression enhance the U.S. public diplomacy efforts.     

Public service budget constraints: the perspective of rural officials in the U.S.A.

Eight counties in the State of Washington served as the focus for a study of issues associated with budget cutbacks. Secondary data were collected from published sources. A mail survey in 1984 of elected and appointed officials provided primary data. The secondary data enabled us to trace changes in expenditure patterns for specific services from 1979 to 1983.Judicial, law enforcement, correctional units and general government received consistent increases, in part because of state mandates. Environmental protection, planning, community development, parks and recreation tended to be cut rather consistently. Social and health services, physical services (roads, bridges, etc.), and education remained relatively stable in most counties.Public officials consider state requirements for improvement in correctional and law enforcement services as the major factor in setting budget priorities. Cutbacks in federal and state funds for environmental protection are part of the basis for county cutbacks, but local priorities appear to support such actions. Despite budget decreases in some service categories, public officials felt that little had been lost in service quality or quantity, although maintenance of plant, equipment, and capital outlays were thought to have suffered rather seriously.     

Psychiatric emergencies: the check effect revisited.

Federal income support to persons with alcohol and drug related disabilities was ended in 1997. The argument for ending the programs was that recipients were using their benefits to purchase drugs and alcohol. This supposedly led to the "check effect," an increase in psychiatric emergencies in American communities in the days following the receipt of disability benefits. We test two hypotheses implied by this argument. The first is that psychiatric emergencies are elevated in the fourth through eighth day of the month. The second is that the excess of emergencies in these days was significantly reduced when benefits were ended. The tests are based on 35,500 psychiatric emergencies in San Francisco, California occurring over 1,551 days. Results support the first hypothesis but not the second. The implications are that there is a general check effect and that it was not reduced by ending benefits to persons with drug and alcohol related disabilities.     

U.S. Labor 2006: Strategic Developments across the Divide

The AFL-CIO and Change to Win have learned to co-exist without debilitating acrimony. The AFL-CIO has established Industry Coordinating Committees to facilitate cooperative bargaining and organizing ventures. On the political front, the AFL-CIO took the lead in labor's 2006 electoral operations and conducted an extensive, efficient, and unified campaign. Change to Win unions worked together to build strategies for a growth agenda. The success of UNITE-HERE's Hotel Workers Rising Campaign indicates the potential of this approach. Difficult challenges remain, but the strategic developments show signs of life and offer hope that labor may find a path to the future.