Developing quality standards for cross-national survey research: five approaches

This paper addresses methods for the development of quality standards for cross-national quantitative surveys. Five conceptual approaches to the development of standards are presented and the properties and consequences of each are discussed. The aim is to provide researchers with a rational set of arguments for choosing a particular approach in a given situation. The development of quality standards is particularly complicated in the case of cross-national research, owing to variability between nations in a number of factors that might typically be considered as ‘fixed’ design constraints in the context of single-country studies. This variability is illustrated by a number of examples that arose in the course of development of the European Social Survey. The paper also touches upon some related issues in the implementation and maintenance of quality standards.     

Face to face with the 'sovereign consumer': service quality and the changing role of professional academic librarians

This article considers the impact of service quality initiatives on the role of professional academic librarians.¹ It is argued that these initiatives—by asserting the dominant role of ‘sovereign’ consumers—offer a powerful legitimating device which is currently being used to support radical changes in professional work. One possible outcome of this is a weakening of professional autonomy and power to unilaterally determine levels and standards of service. The case of academic librarians is adopted to illustrate these points. Firstly, two ideal types of library and professional organisation, developed from a review of the librarian literature, are compared. These are the ‘traditional’ and the ‘service quality-led’ models. Following this, a case study of an academic library which has recently adopted various quality improvement strategies is discussed. The results of this investigation suggest that not only have service quality initiatives provided a legitimation for radical change, but they have also generated a number of unintended consequences and hidden costs for the users of library services. Finally, some of the wider problems associated with service quality initiatives in the public sector are discussed.     

Research ethics committees: values and power in higher education

The rise of research governance structures in universities has created huge disquiet amongst academic researchers. The unquestioning adoption of a medical model of ethical review based upon positivist methodological assumptions has created for many a mismatch between their own ongoing ethical research practice and the process of obtaining clearance from Research Ethics Committees (REC). This paper examines the issues that have contributed to dissatisfaction with the ethical review model that is prevalent within the modern university. Using examples from the authors’ own experiences, the dynamics of values, interests and power in research governance is examined from multiple perspectives including that of REC member and applicant; lecturer/student supervisor; researcher; and university administrator. The paper reveals a rift between the values and objectives of the key players in research governance within the modern university and concludes by asking whether differences can be resolved so that a collaborative approach to ethical review may be incorporated into a renewed academic research culture. It is suggested that the alternative is increasing alienation from anything to do with ‘ethics’, with potentially serious consequences for the ethical standards of social research.     

Korean-American Mothers' Experiences in Facilitating Academic Success for Their Adolescents

Abstract

The study reported a phenomenological analysis of interviews with 17 Korean-born mothers raising adolescents in the United States. The two research questions were: What does academic success mean to Korean-American mothers? What do they experience in facilitating the academic success of their adolescents? Results indicated that academic success meant admission to an Ivy League University by studying well and getting straight A grades. Mothers' experiences were portrayed from three perspectives: mothers as family members trying to realize academic success and experiencing tensions; mothers as individuals adjusting by trying to find new goals and standards; and mothers as members of a Korean-American social system. The mothers unknowingly provided a cross-national perspective of family resource management in everyday feelings, thoughts, and actions.     

How Academic Research Shapes Labor and Social Policy

How academic research affects labor and social policy is viewed through a program evaluation framework that highlights the difficulties of determining the causal impact of such research on public policy. The effect is illustrated by examples. My conclusion is that academic research can have a modest to substantial impact on policy. Its impact is enhanced if it has a number of key characteristics: high quality; reputable researchers involved; synthesized and translated into a language understood by policy makers, the general public, and the media; credible champions who will broker and defend it, in the political process or in the public realm; timeliness; and, political acceptability.     

The Importance of Practice Learning in Social Work: Do We Practice What We Preach?

This paper reports on themes identified from focus group discussions with practice educators, in which they articulated concerns about factors that limited their work with students on placement. Four key themes are identified from analysis of the data: (1) The absence of workload relief for agency based practice educators; (2) A lack of knowledge about the academic curriculum in qualifying social work programmes; (3) A sense of isolation from universities placing students with them; (4) Concerns about the quality of practice learning experiences they could provide to students. Expressions of guilt and anxiety were a prominent feature of the focus group discussions. Almost all the practice educators felt that their work in this role was not good enough. They were concerned about standards and missed opportunities to work developmentally with students who may be at risk of failing, or conversely to stimulate those who were more able. The findings suggest that universities should consider whether practice educators are sufficiently connected with other parts of the social work education system to fulfil their role.     

Crumbling Ivory Towers: Academic Organizing and its Gender Effects

The under‐representation of women at the top of the academy is a persistent and fascinating issue, mostly analysed as a result of women's choices or as an issue of personnel management. In this article, the focus is on the functioning of universities as social institutions, where gender is ‘done’ in a specific way. We analyse how the structural, cultural and procedural arrangements of academic organizing constitute gender relations and are specifically interested in the social construction of scientific quality. The ‘normal’ standards for scientific quality reflect the traditions of the natural sciences, with the Olympus as dominant image: the excellent scientist as lonely hero at the top, far distanced from everyday practices. This conception reflects a hegemonic position privileging masculinity. Alternatively, in an Agora model, science is not an autonomous institution, but becomes a societal practice tightly bound with other societal practices concerning the production, transmission, translation and exchange of knowledge. The scientific ideal of the Agora entails greater public accountability, social responsibility and transparency. This model reflects to a certain extent the scientific activities and achievements of female scientists, and we expect that gender will be done differently in it. In our view, the integration and mainstreaming of gender issues within the academy will serve as a strong impetus to the necessary modernization of academia and academic organizing. But this implies a critical reflection on the social constructed nature of any conception of ‘quality’.     

Scientific Norms and Research Publication Issues and Professional Ethics*

This paper addresses the standards of scientific behavior and research within the context of academic scholarship. Factors which lead some researchers to transgress the ethical boundaries associated with the publication process are presented and discussed. Included is an examination of the central issues related to the “publish or perish” syndrome. It is argued that the intense pressure to get one's work into print often distorts the serious pursuit of knowledge. Linking tenure and promotion primarily to publications has led to emphasizing the length of the scholarly record rather than its quality. To avoid such outcomes, the academic/scientific communities are urged to develop policies which on the one hand protect the integrity of the scientific enterprise, and on the other strike a reasonable balance of expectations and performance regarding teaching, research, and service.     

Workforce development for older youth

The challenges facing youth who are disconnected from our nation's employment and education systems are expansive. Research has suggested that youth services and supports that are grounded in a developmental approach not only help young people avoid self-destructive behavior, but also enable them to acquire the academic and work-readiness skills and personal attributes that employers seek. In 1995, the National Youth Employment Coalition and its members established the Promising and Effective Practices Network (PEPNet) to identify the key elements of quality youth programs and develop tools that would help organizations establish, connect to, and promote quality programs. PEPNet represents a standards framework that captures the key elements common to successful programs that connect youth to jobs, careers, and education. This chapter provides some insights into the current practices that have been implemented to facilitate older youth's transition to the workforce and highlights the supports youth need for successful adulthood, citizenship, and career pursuits.     

Challenging Social Work Education’s Urban Legends

Urban legends circulate throughout society, including higher education and social work education. Some academic mythologies take on the status of a tradition—no matter the evidence or lack thereof—and continue to thrive, to influence thinking, and to shape norms, which, in turn, direct behaviors. As with urban legends, academic myths are able to overpower and dismiss the conclusions drawn from critical thinking processes. Accreditation standards, common program structures, and faculty behaviors and expectations have evolved over time grounded in and shaped by various legends. Social work educators applying critical thinking processes to their educational enterprise will be able to challenge with intellectual rigor the profession’s urban legends, which will then result in national standards and program models that are creative, proactive, and forward-thinking.     

Assessing Psychological Separation and Academic Performance in Nonresident-Father and Resident-Father Adolescent Boys

This article initially reviews the psychoanalytic and empirical literature on the facilitative role that fathers play in children's development and functioning. Empirical evidence is presented comparing the academic performance of 25 nonresident-father boys and 25 resident-father boys between the ages of 14 and 17. The study also assesses whether the degree of psychological separation from mother and father, quality of mother–son/father–son relationship, and frequency of contact with father had a mediating effect on academic performance. The study found that boys living in nonresident-father homes were under-functioning when compared to boys living in father-resident homes. Results also showed that boys living in nonresident father homes who were more similar in regard to their father's attitudes and beliefs, performed better academically. In assessing the group as a whole, results revealed that academic performance improved when boys were more dependent on father in regard to having concrete needs met and when their attitudes and beliefs were similar to father's. In regard to the perceived quality of mother–son/father–son relationship, results for nonresident-father boys showed a positive correlation between the quality of relationship with father and academic performance. Similarly, when assessing the group as a whole, a positive correlation was found between the quality of father–son relationship and academic performance. Finally, for nonresident-father boys, a positive correlation was found between frequency of father–son contact and academic performance.     

社会质量研究及其新进展

本文考察了社会质量研究的两个独立起源,对各自的概念、理论和方法等进行了详尽的介绍。文章还着重分析了欧洲社会质量研究在亚洲的推进情况,指出目前国内社会质量研究无论在概念还是理论体系和方法上,都是欧洲社会质量研究的移入而不是本土社会质量的学术继承与发展。无论是从欧洲的社会质量研究,还是从该研究移入过程中本土化的努力与尝试来看,目前社会质量研究还存在很多局限。     

Research Note—Program Evaluation: Enhancing Academic Quality and Program Integrity During Rapid Off-Campus Growth

By creating a program evaluation model that assesses multiple components from several perspectives, a social work division is able to determine the quality, effectiveness, and integrity of its offerings and support its mission to develop social work students for practice. This task is critical in supporting an off-campus program’s ability to navigate change and uncertainty in higher education. This research note discusses how a small, bachelor of social work program with a dual-delivery system (traditional and community-site) used the Council on Social Work Education reaccreditation process to adapt its program evaluation to ensure academic quality and program integrity during a period of rapid growth.     

Structural racism as the fundamental cause of the academic achievement gap

Over six decades since the Supreme Court ruled that all American children have the right to a high quality education, the academic achievement gap remains an important social problem in the United States. Researchers interested in understanding the achievement gap generally seek to find the mechanisms that can explain why Black students continue to achieve at lower levels than their White counterparts. This research has shown that differences in socioeconomic status, family cultural resources, school quality and racial composition, and bias and prejudice in schools all act as mechanisms that link race to academic achievement. In this paper, we review studies from the past 10 years on the academic achievement gap. We argue that while all of the factors identified in the literature can add insight to how race structures educational achievement, the fundamental cause of the achievement gap is structural racism, a system of social organization that privileges White Americans and disadvantages Americans of color. We argue that acknowledging structural racism as the fundamental cause of the achievement gap can provide a unifying framework for interpreting findings from studies of specific mechanisms link race to academic outcomes.     

Mein(schöner)Prof.de

Evaluations of academic teaching have become an instrument for the quality management in universities of constantly growing importance. This process is unproblematic as long as the quality of teaching is rated validly by the evaluations of students. The validity of the rating, however, becomes questionable as an influence of the teaching staffs’ physical attractiveness on the evaluation of teaching has been proved. This effect would only be compatible with an assumed valid rating of the teaching performance if attractive teachers would in fact show a better performance in academic teaching and are not just better rated for their attractiveness. We analyzed data from the German online platform MeinProf.de for the evaluation of academic teachers. The results show that attractive teachers very probably do not perform better. The attractiveness of female teachers does not have the expected influence on the evaluation of their teaching.     

Measuring the Quality of Peer-Reviewed Publications in Social Work: Impact Factors—Liberation or Liability?

Systems for measuring the quality of publications in peer-reviewed academic journals have achieved importance in the ‘audit culture’ to which academia worldwide has become increasingly subjected. In the United Kingdom this debate has focused on government proposals to give greater emphasis to bibliometrics (counts of journal articles and their citations) as a measurement of research quality, in respect of publications in the emergent Research Excellence Framework (REF) which is set to replace the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). This approach impacts on social work educators who are the main producers of papers published in peer-reviewed academic journals. It affects their publishing behaviour by pressurising them to publish their work in journals that are regarded as being prestigious, for which ‘high impact factor’ journals as determined by Thomson Reuters—a private commercial information management enterprise with headquarters in the United States—has become a proxy for quality. In this paper the authors describe and critique the Thomson Reuters system as it applies to social work and propose an alternate fair, inclusive and transparent system for assessing the quality of publications based on peer evaluation and incorporating an ethical approach consistent with the discipline's professional values.     

New perspectives in sexology: From rigor (mortis) to richness 1

“Rigor” is a term which has been used in sexology to imply that there is a hierarchy of methodologies and approaches to sex research. This paper argues that “rigor” is actually a term used rhetorically in an attempt to achieve professional legitimacy in a field perennially threatened because of its politically relevant subject matter. Rather than worry about a seat at the table, we need to look more towards the postmodern richness of diverse and even contradictory standards and approaches to sex research to reveal the range and depth of our subject matter. Recent issues of JSR introducing feminist perspectives offer examples of the range of work which should be acceptable to those interested more in intellectual challenge and quality than traditional respectability.     

Emotional Safeguarding: Exploring the Nature of Middle‐Class Parents’ School Involvement1

Although discussion of parents’ school involvement generally surrounds academic success, there are also emotional motivations for parents’ school interventions. In this exploratory analysis, based on interviews with 21 parents and teachers, I show how these middle‐class parents’ concerns for children extend beyond grades and academic success to the children’s own emotional comfort with schooling. I discuss examples of emotional safeguarding, a parental practice to protect children’s happiness at school. Results also suggest that emotional and academic concerns for children at school are interrelated, and parents often approach the emotional with the academic in mind. Parents focus on reducing children’s anxiety or discomfort at school with the ultimate goal of instilling a love of learning. The parents in this study perceive an emotional route to achieving academic success for their middle‐class children. Unlike parents, teachers in the study identify parents’ concerns as academic or a product of parents’ anxiety. This research introduces the possibility that while parents’ academic concerns are very real, they are also accompanied by equal and occasionally greater concerns for children’s happiness and well‐being at school.     

Improving School Achievement and Inter‐group Relations for Children Placed at Risk: the Roots and Wings program

Roots and Wings is a comprehensive elementary‐school program designed to ensure that all children achieve world class standards in reading, writing and language arts, mathematics, science, history and geography; and can apply their knowledge to solve real‐world problems. Critical to these goals is increasing the achievement of students placed at‐risk as a consequence of poverty, disabilities, language problems, or other factors. Roots and Wings extensively employs cooperative learning to promote student motivation, socialization, appreciation of diversity, and academic achievement. Although cooperative learning offers a variety of potential benefits, it can be challenging to use for teachers and students more accustomed to traditional methods. This paper presents research in inner‐city elementary schools using the Roots and Wings design and identifies several factors that facilitate the change process and quality of cooperative classroom activities.     

Benchmarking to the world's best in mathematics. Quality control in curriculum and instruction among the top performers in the TIMSS

This article describes the education quality control systems (for mathematics) used by those countries that performed best on the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Enforced quality control measures are defined as "decision points"--where adherence to the curriculum and instruction system can be reinforced. Most decision points involve stakes for the student, teacher, or school. They involve potential consequences for failure to adhere to the system and to follow the program at a reasonable pace. Generally, countries with more decision points perform better on the TIMSS. When the number of decision points and TIMSS test scores are adjusted for country wealth, the relationship between the degree of (enforced) quality control and student achievement appears to be positive and exponential. CONCLUSION: The more (enforced) quality control measures employed in an education system, the greater is students' academic achievement.