An Exploratory Study of a Computer-Assisted Alcohol Education Program

In many alcohol prevention and treatment programs, education is one of the components employed to change attitudes towards alcohol and drinking behavior. This exploratory research sought to determine whether brief exposure to a computer-based alcohol education program can improve attitudes toward alcohol and self-awareness of alcohol's effects. Seventy-one students were randomly assigned to (a) alcohol education via computer-assisted instruction (CAI), (b) alcohol education via traditional written materials, or (c) placebo/control. Results indicated that the CAI and written materials were about equally effective in improving subjects' attitudes toward alcohol although the computer program was rated most interesting.     

A Computer-Assisted Analysis of Input,Process, and Output of a Social Work Educational Program

This paper describes how a computer may be used to provide repetitive data on a year-by-year basis on three sets of variables. First is input into the educational process (student characteristics); second is the throughput or students’ reactions to the educational process (grades, motivation, class participation, quality and quantity of work, etc.); third is output (the reactions of graduates to content taught, the kinds of jobs they have and success at these). In addition the computer can indicate what relations exist between various pairs of variables with implications for student selection and curriculum development.     

从多种科技进步指标体系看上海的创新和发展

利用指标体系对科技进步水平及其推动经济社会发展能力进行客观定量评估、比较和分析,是制定有关政策、进行相应决策的重要依据。根据科学性、公开性和代表性原则,选择5个在国内有较大影响的科技进步及其推动发展的评估指标体系,比较分析上海的创新和发展。5个指标体系都对上海的科技进步及其推动发展的水平和能力给予了高度评价,上海的水平处于全国的前列。但也应看到,在运用任何指标体系时,都要清醒地认识其局限,避免过度评估。     

Motherhood Motivations: African Refugee Women Resettled in Australia and Return Visits to a Country of First Asylum

This article expands on conceptualizations of refugee “return” by examining why African women resettled as refugees in Australia return to visit the country of first asylum from which they were previously resettled. I show that their return visits do not relate to attachment to place, but are motivated by social obligations to practise “motherhood” to family members who, due to conflict‐induced displacement, remain in a country of first asylum. I argue that the phenomenon of refugee “return” cannot be conflated exclusively with return to country of origin but is, for African women in particular, centred on the reinvigoration of care relationships across diasporic settings of asylum in which family remain. Building on an emergent focus on feminization in migration studies, I show how these gendered dynamics of refugee “return” are an entry point from which to re‐consider how scholarship and policy take into account “family” in contexts of forced migration.     

Viewing psychopathology through a trauma lens

Many symptoms and behaviors associated with a range of psychiatric disorders, including those not designated as trauma- or stressor-related, result from unprocessed and unintegrated traumatic experiences, requiring therapeutic assessments and interventions that consider the complex dynamics brought on by trauma. While the focus on symptoms in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) may lead practitioners away from a consideration of etiology when choosing interventions, the exclusions of “disorders of extreme stress not otherwise specified” in DSM-IV and “developmental trauma disorder” from DSM-5 may further predispose practitioners to disregard traumatic etiology and symptoms when assessing, diagnosing, and treating clients. Because a majority of recipients of public mental health services suffer deleterious effects from trauma exposure, social work and other mental health professionals have an ethical responsibility to incorporate trauma-based screenings, assessments, and interventions with clients. Thus, trauma-informed evaluation and treatment approaches must be included in graduate curricula, practitioners must seek continuing education to supplement their knowledge and practice skills, and agency administrators must provide inservice training to professional staff.     

Teaching graduate-level evaluation sociology through a departmental evaluation

The Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin conducted an internal evaluation of its graduate program through an applied methodology graduate course. This article reports on the effectiveness of the format for teaching research methods, the utilization of the evaluation's findings, and the conditions that need to occur for a similar study to take place. Through the course, graduate students gained experience using multiple methods in evaluation research as well as acquiring an inside perspective on the department and the profession. Although some problems of conducting an internal evaluation are discussed, we found that with departmental support the evaluation was an effective method of promoting internal discourse and change.     

Decision-Making Criteria in Child Custody Disputes That Involve Requests for Overnight Visits with Infants and Toddlers: Derived from a Review of the Literature

ABSTRACT

The court, child custody evaluators, and mediators are often faced with difficult decisions regarding how to best meet the needs of children from families who are involved in child custody disputes. In some cases, the court, child custody evaluators and mediators are asked to make decisions about parenting plans for infants and toddlers. When decision makers are faced with actual cases, they are likely to be assisted by lines of inquiry that help them gather the most relevant data to answer the question at hand. A review of the literature has led to the development of 13 criteria that decision makers can use to reach conclusions about whether overnight visits would be advisable with a given infant or toddler. The criteria are considered neutral and are not based on any bias or preconceived opinion about whether overnights with infants and toddlers are or are not advisable. Instead, the criteria proposed provide the decision-maker with an objective way of structuring their thinking about a particular case to insure that all pertinent information has been considered before reaching a conclusion about whether overnight visitation is in the best interest of a given child.     

Understanding Chinese-Canadian pathways to a diagnosis of dementia through a critical-constructionist lens

Efforts to understand pathways to a diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) are important in light of the benefits of early diagnosis to both patients and families, but very little is known about the ways in which persons with dementia and their family caregivers experience this pathway from the point of initial symptom recognition by family or friends to formal diagnosis seeking, particularly for immigrant older adults. Our team employed qualitative methods and a critical constructionist and intersectional framework to understand this experience from the perspectives of ten Chinese-Canadian dyads of persons with dementia and their caregivers. Situating the decisions made by these dyads relative to their intersecting identities and the power structures that inhibit them steered us away from essentializing attributions of their experiences to their ‘culture’ or ethnicity. Early signs of dementia were recognized as such in hindsight. There was no evidence of a strong link between culture and symptom appraisal. Knowledge about dementia, which may be influenced by culture, age, income, knowledge of English, and other determinants of health, played a role in symptom appraisal and help seeking. The role of family caregivers in care-seeking was more highly influenced by structural factors than by traditional Chinese cultural norms about family responsibilities and filial piety. Once caregivers realized that the symptoms and behaviors were ‘problematic,’ they quickly sought out additional information, usually from a family physician. At 1.5 years, the time between symptom onset and diagnosis is comparable to or shorter than that reported in research with other cultural groups. Gender-based power imbalance between female family caregivers and male Chinese-Canadian physicians appear to have contributed to delayed investigations and diagnosis. Sensitivity to such imbalances is important when working with older adults and those from more hierarchical cultures. Essentialized portraits of traditional family structures and cultural beliefs may not accurately reflect the variety of lived experiences of the dementia care-seeking by older Chinese immigrants in Canada.     

Looking beneath the surface of a preceptor-training programme through a realist evaluation

South Africa’s department of health devoted themselves to the clinical nursing education and training model, which indorses preceptors as essential stakeholders to promote competence in students. A preceptor-training programme was developed that build on this model and implemented through an intervention. The initial programme theory hypothesised that trained preceptors would promote support and develop competence in students in comparison to untrained preceptors. Results showed a poor outcome because few preceptors participated and a high student attrition rates. The authors then posed the question “Why did the preceptorship training programme not work?” This article offers insight into the context, mechanism, and outcome of the preceptor-training programme through a realist evaluation. Reflective field notes, gathered during the intervention, were used and gave insight regarding how, for whom, and under which circumstances the programme could work and offered a refined programme theory for preceptorship. The main conclusion drawn showed that a preceptor-training programme alone is not the sole determining factor to ensure preceptors’ motivation to transfer their learning; a systems approach, ensuring the effectiveness of the programme, should be followed. Reflection on findings indicated the implementation context as a major determining factor of the training programme.     

Reviving the stalemated treatment through a self psychology re-analysis

Stalemated psychoanalytic treatment can be sustained for hears when patient and analyst work in an experience-distant analytic mode. When this occurs patients feel misunderstood, despairing and hopeless, yet, are unable to change their situation. The case of a patient who undertook a reanalysis with a self psychologist is presented to demonstrate how the empathic, experience-near treatment mode enabled the patient to overcome the stalemated problems of the first analysis. The experience of feeling understood was crucial for the deepening of the analytic work, for the furthering of the selfobject transference and for the working through of the fixations and arrests in development.Presented on November 2, 1990, at the Third National Clinical Conference of the Committee on Psychoanalysis of the National Federation of Societies for Clinical Social Work.     

Probability of living through a period of economic instability

Welfare Based on Assets, a Way to Smooth Out Economic Instability and Develop Children's Human Capital is a four-part series of reports that focuses on the relationship between economic instability (i.e., income shocks, asset shocks, home loss, and asset poverty) and children's human capital development. Collectively, these reports build on the compelling observation that the pattern low-income families walk into is a present time oriented or consumption based pattern of behavior; in contrast, the pattern higher income families walk into is future oriented or asset based. In this first paper we find that between 2005 and 2009 the probability of a low-income child living through an income shock is between 43% (major shock) and 55% (minor shock). In contrast, the chance of a high-income child experiencing an income shock is between 6% (major shock) and 15% (minor shock) during the same period. We also find that the probability that a child will experience a net worth asset shock close to doubles for a child living in a black or low-income family between 2005 and 2009 when compared to 2000 and 2004. Policy implications are discussed.     

Communication with diverse audiences through a case study approach

An active-learning assignment is described that involves developing strategies and identifying appropriate tactics for diverse audiences. The assignment can be used in a class of any size. Students are required to develop a goal, objectives, strategies, an identification of tactics, and evaluation plans for a request for proposals by the city of Chicago regarding an urban food desert. Students are asked to develop a plan to promote fresh, high-nutrient food to either low-income African-American women or low-income Hispanic women living in the food desert.