Nothing to Fear? Thoughts on the History of Family Therapy and the Potential Contribution of Research

The aim of this plenary address is to advocate for the role that research can play in family therapy, with particular reference to our future as a field in Australia. I will argue: 1) that we have been in transition as a field in the past 15 years or so, from a fairly closed system, to one that is more amenable to holding itself to account through research; 2) that we hold a number of misconceptions about research that need to be explored if we are to continue; 3) that we need to develop a research agenda that is consistent with our values and 4) that there are a host of research methodologies that are consistent with our epistemologies and modes of practice.     

Variations in provider capacity to offer accessible health care for people with disabilities

Since social workers are likely to practice in a range of health care settings, their training focusing on human behavior in the social environment could help providers develop strategies to improve access to care for people with disabilities. In this article, results from a comprehensive survey of providers about access to health care for people with a broad range of disabilities are reported. Results suggest that a minority of providers report difficulty serving people with disabilities. However, dentists and mental health/substance abuse providers are significantly less likely than other providers to report that they provide accessible services to individuals with disabilities. These providers are less likely to report having had training related to mobility impairments, providing mirrors at their facility, having an accessible door, or providing assistance with personal care needs, and are more likely to report that their building poses a barrier for people with disabilities. Social workers are well positioned to take a leadership role in working with providers and patients to improve access to health care for people with disabilities. A social work framework of understanding the individual in a social environment may be the most appropriate perspective for creating innovative strategies for addressing the complex, multidimensional needs of people with disabilities who experience limited access to care.     

SECRET SANTA REVEALS THE SECRET SIDE OF GIVING

This article shows how a secret Santa gift exchange offers unique insights into the nature of generosity and charitable giving. In a dictator experiment modified with features similar to a secret Santa gift exchange, I find that individuals contribute less when their gifts are allocated such that each person gives to fewer recipients. The results are inconsistent with both altruism and warm glow, suggesting that players are motivated by something in addition to these conventional models of generosity. Several alternative models of generosity are shown to be consistent with the experimental findings, all of which imply that, in addition to any positive externalities, giving can also carry a negative externality. ( JEL H41, C92, D62)     

Are energy-intensive life-images fading? The cultural meaning of the automobile in transition

The paper focuses on the symbolic significance of energy consuming technology. It analyzes the case of the automobile and demonstrates that it cannot be considered just a technical device for transporting people but that it is also a cultural symbol infused with desires, meanings and life-images. The origins, the content and the dynamics of the meaning of the automobile are explored in order to identify the cultural transformations that are implied in a transition to a low-energy society and, possibly, to a low-speed society.The first section of the paper sets out the patterns of life-conceptions centered around the automobile and the second section examines actual counterforces that undermine this car-oriented life-style and which lead to a disenchantment with the automobile. It is concluded that the images of a desirable society are less and less associated with cars, but that the car, however, appears to be an inevitable necessity.     

Borda’s Paradox with weighted scoring rules

Representations are obtained for the probabilities that a Strict Borda Paradox and a Strong Borda Paradox are observed for large electorates with three candidates under the standard assumptions of Impartial Culture and Impartial Anonymous Culture. These representations are obtained for general weighted scoring rules (WSRs), and the probabilities are found to be maximized for voting rules like plurality rule and negative plurality rule. It is found that these paradox probabilities are not reduced for every scoring rule with the introduction of some degree of dependence among voters’ preferences with IAC. It is concluded that actual observances of a Strict Borda Paradox should be extremely rare, and that while observances of a Strong Borda Paradox should also be rare, they might occasionally be witnessed.     

Social Class and a Division of Labor within the Corporate Elite: a Note on Class,Interlocking, and Executive Committee Membership of Directors of U. S. Industrial Firms*

Upper-class directors of major industrial companies are directors of more corporations than are the non-upper-class directors, but they are less likely to serve on executive committees of corporate boards. This may indicate that there is a class-based division of labor in which the upper-class directors are more concerned with inter-organizational relationships and with the functioning of the economy as a whole, and that non-upper-class directors are concerned with day-to-day operations of individual companies.     

Social context and network formation: An experimental study

Recently, there has been increasing interest in determining which social network structures emerge as a consequence of the conscious actions of actors. Motivated by the belief that “networks matter” in reaching personal objectives, it is a natural assumption that actors try to optimize their network position. Starting from the notion that an optimal network position depends on the social context, we examine how actors change their networks to reach better positions in various contexts. Distinguishing between three social contexts (a neutral context, a context in which closed triads are costly, and a context in which closed triads are beneficial), theoretical results predict that emerging networks are contingent on the incentives that are present in these contexts. Experiments are used to test whether networks that are theoretically predicted to be stable are also stable experimentally. We find that emerging networks correspond to a large extent with the predicted networks. Consequently, they are contingent on the incentives present in various social contexts. In addition, we find that subjects tend to form specific stable networks with a higher probability than predicted, namely, efficient networks and networks in which everyone is equally well off.     

Variations in Provider Capacity to Offer Accessible Health Care for People with Disabilities

Abstract

Since social workers are likely to practice in a range of health care settings, their training focusing on human behavior in the social environment could help providers develop strategies to improve access to care for people with disabilities. In this article, results from a comprehensive survey of providers about access to health care for people with a broad range of disabilities are reported. Results suggest that a minority of providers report difficulty serving people with disabilities. However, dentists and mental health/substance abuse providers are significantly less likely than other providers to report that they provide accessible services to individuals with disabilities. These providers are less likely to report having had training related to mobility impairments, providing mirrors at their facility, having an accessible door, or providing assistance with personal care needs, and are more likely to report that their building poses a barrier for people with disabilities. Social workers are well positioned to take a leadership role in working with providers and patients to improve access to health care for people with disabilities. A social work framework of understanding the individual in a social environment may be the most appropriate perspective for creating innovative strategies for addressing the complex, multidimensional needs of people with disabilities who experience limited access to care.     

Good Intentions - Unpredictable Consequences

A commendable degree of success has been achieved in relocating people with learning disabilities from residential institutions into ordinary community settings. Nevertheless, a challenging task remains if people with all levels of learning disabilities are to be enabled to become meaningfully involved in ordinary community activities. The author argues that a structured day service has a vital role to play in this process, but that, unless the underlying problems that have continued to frustrate the development of a coherent national day care strategy are objectively reappraised and addressed, the true potential of the 'care in the community' policy will not only never be realised, but could actually become imperilled. This paper offers evidence to support the view that current policy trends are based on normalisation theories that, although sound and commendable in principle, have been misunderstood and misused. Consequently, the premises upon which these policy trends are based are fundamentally flawed.     

Ontological Politics. A Word and Some Questions

This is a chapter that asks questions about where we are with politics now that actor network theory and its semiotic relatives have reshaped ontology . They have reshaped it by underlining that the reality we live with is one performed in a variety of practices. The radical consequence of this is that reality itself is multiple. An implication of this might be that there are options between the various versions of an object: which one to perform? But if this were the case then we would need to ask where such options might be situated and what was at stake when a decision between alternative performances was made. We would also need to ask to what extent are there options between different versions of reality if these are not exclusive, but, if they clash in some places, depend on each other elsewhere. The notion of choice also presupposes an actor who actively chooses, while potential actors may be inextricably linked up with how they are enacted . These various questions are not answered, but illustrated with the example of anaemia, a common deviance that comes in (at least) clinical, statistical and pathophysiological forms.     

Glossing inadequacies: problems with definitions of key concepts in some methodology texts

It is argued in this paper that a significant number of definitions of terms provided in currently available methodological texts are inadequate or positively misleading. Some do not cover the main meaning of the term but focus instead on a non-standard one. Others fail to pick out the distinctive features of what is being defined. There are also those that fail to indicate relationships to related terms or those with similar meanings. Finally, there are some definitions that are simply incorrect in significant respects. It is argued that defective definitions are worse than useless and are a disservice to students.     

A LABORATORY STUDY OF AUCTIONS WITH A BUY PRICE

We present a series of laboratory experiments that examine auctions with buy prices, which are prices that allow a bidder to stop the auction and buy the item immediately. Two types of buy prices are considered, one that is available throughout the auction and one that disappears with an initial bid. Both are evaluated with and without proxy bidding. We find that the use of a buy price increases revenue, early bidding, and auction efficiency. Differences between outcomes in auctions with permanent and temporary buy prices are consistent with the observed choices in auction design made by online auction sites. (JEL C90, D44, C70, L81)     

Marriage and the economic status of women with children

Marriage is positively correlated with income, and women with children are much less likely to be in poverty if they are married. Selection into marriage makes it difficult to assess whether these correlations represent a causal effect of marriage. One instrument for marriage proposed in past research is the gender of a woman’s first child. We find that women who have a boy first are about 0.33 percentage points more likely to be married at any point in time. This effect operates through both increasing the probability that unmarried mothers marry the child’s father and reducing the probability of divorce. We also find that women whose first child is a boy experience higher levels of family income and are less likely to receive welfare income, be below the poverty line, and receive food stamps. Estimates using child gender as an instrumental variable for marriage suggest that marriage plays a large causal role in improving the economic well-being of women with children and that these effects are largest among women at the lower end of the income distribution.     

Anarchy in State Government Is Not Democracy

In 2009 the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) released a position statement calling for the implementation of media literacy in social studies education. NCSS argues that if today's students are to become engaged citizens as adults, they must acquire the skills and knowledge associated with media literacy. Using this position statement as foundation, I developed a media literacy framework for use in the social studies classroom that applies prevailing theories on media and cultural studies. For consumers of media to engage in the practice of citizenship they need to acquire the tools needed to negotiate the waters of the many media texts that are produced. For a consumer of media texts to negotiate the meaning and influence of those texts, that consumer must use a framework that applies approaches that are historical, empirical, interpretive, and critical. As we shall see, these approaches are necessary if citizens are to engage effectively in a democracy that is flooded with such texts.     

The effect of sex role differences on the societal reaction to mental retardation

This paper investigates the thesis that sex role definitions in the U.S. support a double standard in societal reactions to mental incompetence. Role expectations for women are such that females are generally expected to be less competent than males in a variety of instrumental tasks, although perhaps more expressive. Males in turn are expected to be more active and aggressive than females in their exercise of the greater power and responsibility ascribed to them. In light of these generalized expectations we suggest that incompetence in instrumental fields is more disturbing when demonstrated by males, and we hypothesize that societal reactions to the mental deficiencies of males are more prompt and severe. The paper supports this hypothesis with data suggesting that mentally retarded males are more likely to be institutionalized than retarded females, and that males tend to be institutionalized at earlier ages and for milder disorders. It is noted that these data are consistent with previously reported data on mental illness.     

A conceptual model for barrier free facilities planning

This paper presents the proposal of a model for planning a barrier free industrial facilities, considering the demands that inclusion requires, ranging from outside the factory (social environment), to the needs of the production system and the workstation. Along with literature review, the demands were identified in a shoe manufacturer that employs people with disabilities, and organized taxonomically in agreement with the structure for planning facilities. The results show that the problems are not primarily related to eliminating architectural barriers and factors aimed at preventing risks to people's health and safety but, rather, are related to the company's cultural environment, because the main hazards are managerial. In special cases, it is suggested there is a need to adjust those parts of tasks that the worker cannot do, or even to re-schedule work so as to make it possible for employees with disabilities to perform their tasks.     

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.     

Mechanisms Underlying Language Acquisition: Benefits From a Comparative Approach

One of the longstanding issues in language research has been the extent to which the mechanisms underlying language acquisition are uniquely human. The primary goal of this article is to introduce the reader to some of the recent developments in comparative language research that have shed new light on this issue. To appreciate the significance of the new developments, we begin with a brief historical overview of language studies that have adopted a comparative approach, and then discuss a subset of the relevant theoretical accounts that seek to explain why humans are the only species capable of acquiring language. We next focus on findings from behavioral studies comparing the performance of human infants and adults with nonhuman primates on tests that tap the perceptual and learning mechanisms that are fundamental to language acquisition. We argue that in cases where the behavioral data appear similar across populations, there is a need to investigate the underlying computational abilities and units of analysis to correctly specify the degree to which the mechanisms are truly shared or are uniquely specified.