The effect of nonverbal sensitivity on social interaction

This study examined the relation between decoding ability and quality of dyadic interaction of college roommate pairs. It was found that pairs with members who were both high in decoding (HH pairs) rated their interactions somewhat more positively than pairs in which one or both roommates were low (HL and LL pairs). This effect was more pronounced for ratings reflecting emotional sharing (e.g., gave and received support) than for ratings reflecting influence (e.g., initiated the interaction). For emotional sharing only, the difference between the HH pairs and the HL plus LL pairs was significant. The relative advantage of the HH pairs in emotional sharing and relative disadvantage in influence was more pronounced for males and less for females, suggesting a reversal of traditional sex-role behavior. When differences in decoding ability within roommate pairs were considered, the results showed that, in dyads with at least one good decoder (HH and HL pairs), the interaction was rated more positively by the roommate who was lower in decoding ability. The concept and measure of decoding ability and their implications for interaction and sex-role behavior were discussed.This research was supported in part by NIMH Grant # R01 MH 40498 to Miron Zuckerman.     

The psychological goods on clinical social work: a content analysis of the clinical social work and social justice literature

The purpose of this content analysis was to evaluate the extant literature on clinical social work and social justice. In July 2009, an online search of the university databases EBSCO Host (1988–2009) was conducted to identify articles on clinical social work and social justice. Thirty-six peer reviewed journal articles were identified and extracted. The majority were non-empirical articles (75%) published in the United States (94%) over a 21-year period from 1988 to 2009. Overall, clinical social work practice was described as psychological and/or sociopolitical interventions that had a direct and/or indirect effect on psychological and sociopolitical level social justice outcomes. Theories and practices consistent with social justice were advanced. These findings suggest that clinical social work's promotion of psychological well-being remains an underdeveloped area in the scholarly and research literature. In this era of professional educational reform, additional research and professional training on social justice based clinical social work practice is warranted.     

The contribution of social anthropology to social work practice

This article is a brief reply to the article “Charity Begins at Home—Participation and the A.A.P.”, Australian Social Work, Vol. 28, No. 1. That article examined the development of the Australian Assistance Plan in the Blacktown-Penrith areas. Three aspects are investigated in this reply:     

The moral bases of social work

Social work's conventional “value-talk” presents a professionally neutral value-system for making moral judgements, but paradoxically neglects the professional social role of making moral judgements on behalf of society. Conventional statements of social work's moral values neglect economic, political, and aesthetic value judgements and issues of logic, rhetoric, and epistemology, which should also be included in value debate. Social work's value codes are not 'basic', because they are not usable in practice, are not distinctive, comprehensive, or universal. Historical and sociological evidence suggests that social workers make moral judgements of their clients on behalf of society. These judgements should be earned out within a more comprehensive and better articulated value system, which is applied in the detail of everyday practice.     

The devolution of social work knowledge

I am interested in the conditions under which practice knowledge can be used and developed in social work. I argue that the images we tend to have of how social workers apply theoretical knowledge, or appeal to practice wisdom, are misleading because they exaggerate the epistemological significance of individual experience. The concept of ‘practice theory’ is not of much help here because its attempts to codify implicit knowledge, quite apart from begging several questions, illegitimately confer paradigmatic status on the individual's relationship with a text. Instead, we need to begin with a collective analysis of experience, an example of which is offered in the second half of the paper. In effect, this illustrates a systematic process of induction which subjects both personal impression and encounters with theory to some stringent intellectual tests.     

The demand for social interaction

In this paper social interaction is modeled as a consumer good. A model of household production is employed to derive the demand for social interaction. The model shows that the demand for social interaction is a function of its price, the price of other goods and income. The theory is tested with data from the General Social Survey and the results show that social interaction can be explained as the consequence of utility maximizing behavior by individuals. These results are in contrast to social capital theorists who have attributed these changes to factors such as increased community heterogeneity.     

The problem of justification in social work

Abstract

In this paper we argue that the real test of professional social work practice is whether it can be plausibly, effectively and defensibly justified. Since the early 1950s social work in Australia has engaged in a strategy of professionalisation. This strategy and its implications were described by McDonald and Jones in 2000. This paper supports the concerns expressed. We argue that the way out of our profession's dilemma is by focusing on the problem of justification. The main questions addressed by McDonald and Jones appear to be: What is professional social work practice? Does the concept of professionalism serve us and our clients well now? What form should social work take in the future? Their answer is ‘that the “strategy of professionalisation”, as conventionally conceived by Australian social work, is no longer viable in the emerging milieu.’ We build on that answer by exploring the notion of justification in terms of the concepts Foundationalism, Coherentism and Reliabilism. We conclude by suggesting that the immediate task for social work in this new century is to solve the problem of justification.     

The impact of globalization on social work in the UK

Since the late 1980s social work in the UK has undergone a period of unremitting change affecting its organizational structure, value-base, and service users. There has been a regrettable narrowness of scope in the social work literature on such changes, as analysis has been limited to policy and service delivery issues, which treat such changes as if they were simply new technical responses to the problems of reorganizing social services. We argue that such analyses do not engage sufficiently with the complex dynamics driving these changes and that there is a need to contextualize change in social work against the wider political and economic context. The transformative nature of the contemporary period is posited with reference to the impact of global macro-level forces and the ways that these interact with national and political variables on micro-level forms of social work practice. This paper reviews selective literature on globalization and draws linkages with changes in social services at the agency and practitioner level in the UK.     

Migration plans and hours of work in Malaysia

"This article describes characteristics of prospective migrants in the Malaysian Family Life Survey and investigates how planning to move affects hours of work. [The authors] use ideas about intertemporal substitution...to discuss the response to temporary and permanent wage expectations on the part of potential migrants. [An] econometric section presents reduced-form estimates for wage rates and planned migration equations and two-stage least squares estimates for hours of work. Men currently planning a move were found to work fewer hours. Those originally planning only a temporary stay at their current location work more hours."     

Occupational segregation by hours of work in Europe

This article quantifies the levels of occupational segregation between part‐time and full‐time work using data from the European Labour Force Survey for 15 European countries. It also attempts to identify some of the determinants of segregation through regression analysis using three groups of indicators (quantity of employment, quality of employment and institutional factors). Occupational segregation by hours of work is generally higher for males than for females and is also higher for young workers versus adult workers. It is also found that segregation for men is correlated with the quantity of employment, while variables from all three groups of indicators are important for adult women and young workers.     

The demand for leisure time in the presence of constrained work hours

This article presents a labor supply model designed to address situations of overemployment or underemployment in the labor market. Previous labor supply models have taken the possibility of work hour constraints into consideration but typically assumed that the existence of fixed work hours only influenced the decision of labor force participation. This ignores situations in which individuals choose to be employed at fixed-hour jobs even though these jobs do not offer the desired work hours.     

Policy-practice in social work and social work education in Israel

Policy-practice is a form of social work intervention that is intended to influence social policy. It is linked to an understanding of the role of social workers which places the struggle for social justice at the forefront of social work activity. However, this form of social work intervention has remained on the sidelines of social work practice and education in most welfare states. This paper seeks to understand the role that policy-practice and social policy play, and have played, in social work and social work education in Israel. The findings indicate that, despite a growth in interest in the political role of social workers in Israel during the 1970s, policy-practice has remained a mode of practice adopted by a minority of members of the profession in Israel. An empirical study of the curriculums of the schools of social work in Israel indicates that this is the case for the study program in most of the schools. The reasons for this can be linked primarily to the overwhelming influence of American social work upon the development of the Israeli profession and to the process of liberalization and privatization of the Israeli welfare state in the last two decades.     

The systems' approach and social work methods

Many social work courses are now using ‘system theory’, or as I prefer to call it, ‘a systems' approach’, in teaching social work method on a unitary basis. Most social work techers recognise that the systems' approach is not enough on its own and that traditional methods have a place in practice. What is not clear is how these methods relate to the systems' approach.

In this article the relationship between the systems' approach and various methods and theories of intervention is explored in a number of different ways. Firstly, there is an examination of the relationship of various client, target and action systems. Secondly. Lippitt's analysis of the ‘diagnostic orientations’ of change agents is discussed and related to strategies aimed at changing the goals and the power structures of target systems. Then certain counselling and casework methods are considered in relation to Lippitt's analysis, leading on to a brief comment on methods of intervention based on systems' theory. Finally, an educational strategy for presenting this approach is discussed.     

Reading social work

Abstract

This paper offers a brief preliminary report on our attempts to apply “close reading” a technique drawn from contemporary literary criticism to social work writing. Reading turns out to be very difficult -something we have had to re-learn but reveals ideological formations deeply embedded in social work texts. Hugh England's “Social Work as Art” is taken as a working example and a case is made saying that it is deeply androcentric. However, it is important to distinguish between text and author and to note that the book shares its androcentricism with many other social work texts and arguably with social work culture in general. (England 1986).