The Role of Assertiveness in Clarifying Roles and Strengthening Job Satisfaction of Social Workers in Multidisciplinary Mental Health Settings

Correspondence to Dr Claire Rabin, Tel Aviv University, Bob Shapell School of Social Work, Ramat Aviv, 69 978, Tel Aviv, POB 390470, Israel. Summary Eighty-seven social workers, working in nine different mentalhealth settings, were administered four questionnaires tappingthe following variables: assertiveness in daily life; assertivenessin the job setting; role clarity; and job satisfaction. Stepwiseregression analysis showed assertiveness in the job settingto be strongly correlated with role clarity. Assertiveness indaily life was also significantly correlated with role clarity.Assertiveness in the work setting was significantly correlatedwith job satisfaction, although it was riot as powerful a predictorof satisfaction as of role clarity. Number of years of job experiencewas the most powerful predictor of job satisfaction. The implications for social work training and supervision aredescribed in light of the importance of assertive communicationin maintaining job clarity and job satisfaction within multidisciplinarysettings.     

The Effects of Perceived Frequency of Organizational Change on Role Clarity and Job Satisfaction of Public Sector Employees

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of organizational change upon role clarity and job satisfaction for a sample of 580 public sector employees. This study introduces a previously untested variable, perceived frequency of organizational change into the relationship between role clarity and job satisfaction. Findings provided support for the negative impact of lack of role clarity and job satisfaction. Public sector employees appeared to prefer low frequency of change and high role clarity in their work situations.     

图形的逻辑力量：因果图的概念及其应用

本文旨在系统性地引介因果图方法,一种社会科学领域新近发展起来的探究因果推断的非参数估计工具。首先对因果图的基本概念和构型进行介绍,讨论变量之间不同“通路”对应的开启和阻断规则及因果推断中的三种偏差来源,即混淆偏差、过度控制偏差、内生性选择偏差。在此基础上,本文将因果图框架与现有定量社会科学研究中基于回归模型的因果推断方法思路进行融合,结合实际案例使用因果图阐释包括遗漏变量、样本选择、自选择及联立性在内的四种内生性问题,并对多元回归与匹配、代理变量、实验、工具变量、面板模型等因果推断方法的运行机制进行了图形化。最后,本文使用因果图厘清一些关于因果推断的不准确理解。     

The Assets Agenda and Social Policy

The assets agenda or asset-based welfare has provoked much interest in recent times. This approach insists that the stock of assets that a person owns is an important element of well-being. The assets agenda is not a unified body of thought. However, there is a common failure to distinguish between these different parts, and this clouds rather than clarifies debates. This article seeks to add analytical clarity to current debates about asset-based welfare. I distinguish between social policy and citizenship, and consider their implications for social policy. This discussion is important because analytical clarity is a precondition for a balanced assessment of asset-based welfare.     

Pitfalls in Drawing Policy Conclusions from Retrospective Survey Data: The Case of Advertising and Underage Smoking

Measuring the impact of potentially controllable factors on the willingness of youth to undertake health risks is important to informed public health policy decisions. Typically the only data linking these factors with risk-taking behavior are retrospective. This study demonstrates, by means of a recent example, that there can be serious pitfalls in using even longitudinal retrospective data to draw conclusions about causal relations between potentially controllable factors and risk-taking behavior.     

Partnership Working and Eligibility Criteria: What Can We Learn from the Implementation of Guidance on Continuing Health Care?

Current government policy places great importance both on clinical governance and on partnership working between health and social services. Separately and together, these policy emphases require greater clarity in and between organizations about who should provide what care where than has often been achieved in the past. A study of the implementation of continuing health care policies suggests that clarity about appropriate long–term health and social care provision was difficult to achieve in the 1990s quasi–markets, because there were too few financial and structural incentives for agencies to cooperate in developing and implementing precise and comprehensive eligibility criteria. This problematic interplay between financial and structural factors is being addressed by a number of government initiatives designed to stimulate joint working, although the difficulty of drawing a clear boundary between health care (free at the point of delivery) and social care (which can be means–tested) remains.     

虚拟实在与实在论

文章是对翟振明《实在论的最后崩溃———从虚拟实在谈起》一文的回应。作者通过对翟先生文章的分析得出结论 :翟先生徒劳无功地企图驳倒原则上不可以驳倒的本体论的实在论 ;而在攻击可以驳倒的认识论的实在论时 ,翟先生则搞错了方向 ;翟先生所作出的唯一贡献 ,乃是证明了我所谓的因果实在论 ,虽然这也许有违翟先生想把实在论一锅端的良好本意     

Modeling the rally event in presidential politics: Toward conceptual and methodological clarity

This research provides conceptual clarity both to the modeling of rally events in presidential politics by introducing the stimulus-cognitive response model and to the measurement of rally events by presenting the steps necessary for proper specification and empirical analysis using the time-series method. The utility of stimulus-cognitive response modeling in conjunction with time-series is demonstrated by an examination of the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan. Several of the specific findings are counterintuitive and have implications for the presidency-congress literature.     

社会学定量分析中的内生性问题——测估社会互动的因果效应研究综述

因果关系是社会学分析的核心议题。然而,基于调查数据的定量分析都会受到内生性问题的困扰,从而往     

“Point–Counterpoint: Can You Hear Me? A Therapist Listens”: A Case Study

This article explores the experiential psychotherapeutic process between two people: client and therapist. Ethnic, cultural, racial, socioeconomic, and religious diversity is seen through the clinical social worker’s biopsychosocial lenses with a psychoanalytic foundation and social context. Focus is on the transformational potential within the client–therapist relationship via the art of listening and the concomitant struggle toward deepening meaning, clarity of biographical narrative, and, thus, life-enhancing trajectories. Levels of therapeutic listening are noted and explored.     

Materialism,emergentism, and social structure: A response to Wendt's Quantum Mind

This paper is a response to the new book by Alexander Wendt (2015) entitled Quantum Mind. The paper commends Wendt on the book's contribution to our understanding, particularly of quantum mechanics, panpsychism, and externalism in the philosophy of mind. At the same time, it takes issue with Wendt's overall thesis, particularly as it relates to materialism, emergentism, and social structure.     

States of Welfare: A Response to Charles Atherton

This response deals with Atherton's objections in so far as they are relevant and restates the importance of clarity about the content of the term "welfare state". It suggests that the term be restricted to states which offer a minimum real level of living to all their citizens, and shows that it is possible in both principle and practice to compress income inequalities to a point where poverty is effectively abolished. The article discusses some of the logical and semantic problems that have arisen as terms such as "welfare state" and "welfare regime" have been adapted to make international comparisons.     

Towards a Scientific Social Work

This paper critically examines efforts to make social work a more scientifically based profession. Although social workers have long sought to make their profession scientific, consensus on the nature of such a science has been difficult to achieve. An argument is presented for a relatively "open" model of science for social work. Support for this position is based on the lack of clarity regarding a definition of science, shortcomings of traditional approaches, and an examination of alternative perspectives.     

对批评的回应

在这篇短文中 ,作者试图回应倪培民和理查德·斯蒂克勒教授对安乐哲、郝大维新近的《中庸》译释所提出的建设性批评。作者感激倪培民和斯蒂克勒教授本着严肃认真的态度仔细研读他们的著作。他们与倪教授的主要分歧在于如何运用恰当的英文术语译释中国过程性世界观。相形之下 ,安乐哲、郝大维与理查德·斯蒂克勒教授有着“实质性”的分歧。     

The power of boards in service providing agencies: three models

Tensions in the relationship between boards and staff are a common feature of voluntary and nonprofit agencies which deliver services. Many of the difficulties reflect lack of clarity about the power of boards. The author describes three models of governance: traditional, membership, and entrepreneurial. Each model has different implications for the power of a board in relation to staff. Practitioners in nonprofit service delivering agencies in the UK have found the models to be a useful tool for explaining the practical difficulties they experience.     

Organisation,Emergence and Cambridge Social Ontology

John Searle has mistakenly claimed that emergence is the central concept in the account of social ontology defended by Tony Lawson, the central figure in the project now regularly referred to as Cambridge Social Ontology. This is not the case. Rather, if any concept can be considered central for Lawson, it is organisation. In this paper, I explain how Searle could misunderstand Lawson and, in doing so, I bring out the importance of organisation for understanding how phenomena, both social and non-social, are constituted.     

Conflict and Cooperation in Diverse Workgroups

This article reviews research examining the influence of diversity on conflict and cooperation within the context of the workplace. In particular, we describe how heterogeneity in surface characteristics, such as race and gender, as well as deeper characteristics, such as affect, experience, and knowledge, relate to key workgroup processes and outcomes. Of particular interest is the disparate strength and directionality of the effects reported in the literature. In an effort to provide clarity to the confusion, we emphasize the roles of group longevity and the type of diversity being examined. In addition, we recommend greater specificity with respect to the particular group processes and outcomes being examined.     

Social Network Analysis and Critical Realism

Social network analysis (SNA) is an increasingly popular approach that provides researchers with highly developed tools to map and analyze complexes of social relations. Although a number of network scholars have explicated the assumptions that underpin SNA, the approach has yet to be discussed in relation to established philosophies of science. This article argues that there is a tension between applied and methods‐oriented SNA studies, on the one hand, and those addressing the social‐theoretical nature and implications of networks, on the other. The former, in many cases, exhibits positivist tendencies, whereas the latter incorporate a number of assumptions that are directly compatible with core critical realist views on the nature of social reality and knowledge. This article suggests that SNA may be detached from positivist social science and come to constitute a valuable instrument in the critical realist toolbox.     

成人认知结构的两重性及其对教与学的影响

在成人教育中,人们往往强调应充分利用成人"经验-知识型"的认知结构,即只看到它的促进功能,而忽视它还具有阻碍作用.那些浮浅的、片面的和非科学的经验,对教学产生了干扰和破坏作用;那些可辨别性、稳定性和清晰性较低的经验,影响了新知识与新技能的学习和掌握.透视成人认知结构的两重性,有助于把握它对教与学产生的两种不同性质的影响.