Rhetoric vs. reality in social work supervision: the experiences of a group of child care social workers in England

Whilst the contribution of good supervision to high‐quality social work practice is widely recognized, research exploring practitioners' experiences of supervision is surprisingly limited. Set within the context of the supervision framework for employers of social workers in England, this small‐scale survey, using an extended questionnaire, examined the experiences of supervision of a group of child care social workers. The aim was to find out what aspects of supervision worked well and where there was room for improvement. The findings suggest that whilst the majority of employers had appropriate supervision policies in place, day‐to‐day practice varied enormously, frequently falling well short of national standards, with the quality of supervision often depending more on the characteristics of the supervisor and the agency context than the needs of the worker. Supervision sessions typically focused predominantly on case management, with much less attention paid to the worker and opportunities for them to reflect on their practice. Only a quarter of the social workers in this survey could be considered to be satisfied with their current supervision, with a much higher proportion clearly dissatisfied.     

Game-theoretic analyses of coalition behavior

Coalitions are frequently more visible than payoffs. The theory of n-person games seeks primarily to identify stable allocations of valued resources; consequently, it gives inadequate attention to predicting which coalitions form. This paper explores a way of correcting this deficiency of game-theoretic reasoning by extending the theory of two-person cooperative games to predict both coalitions and payoffs in a three-person game of status in which each player seeks to maximize the rank of his total score. To accomplish this, we analyze the negotiations within each potential two-person coalition from the perspective of Nash's procedure for arbitrating two-person bargaining games, then assume that players expect to achieve the arbitrated outcome selected by this procedure and use these expectations to predict achieved ranks and to identify players' preferences between alternative coalition partners in order to predict the probability that each coalition forms. We test these payoff and coalition predictions with data from three laboratory studies, and compare the results with those attained in the same data by von Neumann and Morgenstern's solution of two-person cooperative games, Aumann and Maschler's bargaining set solution for cooperative n-person games, and an alternative model of coalition behavior in three-person sequential games of status.

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Savage vs. Anscombe-Aumann: an experimental investigation of ambiguity frameworks

The Savage and the Anscombe–Aumann frameworks are the two most popular approaches used when modeling ambiguity. The former is more flexible, but the latter is often preferred for its simplicity. We conduct an experiment where subjects place bets on the joint outcome of an ambiguous urn and a fair coin. We document that more than a third of our subjects make choices that are incompatible with Anscombe–Aumann for any preferences, while the Savage framework is flexible enough to account for subjects’ behaviors.

     

Practical beliefs vs. scientific beliefs: two kinds of maximization

There are two kinds of beliefs. If the ultimate objective is wellbeing (utility), the generated beliefs are “practical.” If the ultimate objective is truth, the generated beliefs are “scientific.” This article defends the practical/scientific belief distinction. The proposed distinction has been ignored by standard rational choice theory—as well as by its two major critics, viz., the Tversky/Kahneman program and the Simon/Gigerenzer program. One ramification of the proposed distinction is clear: agents who make errors with regard to scientific beliefs (e.g., the conjunction fallacy) should not be taken as committing irrationality—because they are most probably engaging the other kind of maximization, the pursuit of wellbeing.     

Comparison of theories for payoff disbursement of coalition values

Summary and Conclusion The present paper addresses the problem of comparison of models ofpayoff disbursement in coalition formation studies which make point,line, or area predictions. A satisfactory solution to this problem is criticalfor model comparison, which has been the major focus of research oncoalition forming behavior during the last decade. The goal of this paperis to devise and subsequently apply a test procedure which, in comparingthe models to each other, offsets the advantage that the less specific modelhas over its competitor. In addition, the test procedure should employmeasures of error which yield intuitive results and are consistent with theprinciples underlying present coalition theories.It was contented that both the error measure of Bonacich and the netrate of success of Selten and Krishker suffer from serious deficiencies.Bonacich's approach allows for degrees of confirmation of a model butemploys an index of error which yields counterintuitive results. Theapproach of Seken and Krischker also defies intuition and commonpractice by treating all payoff vectors that do not fall in the model'sprediction set in exactly the same manner. The test procedure proposedin the present paper allows the prediction set of a model to expanduniformly in all the directions (dimensions) of the outcome space untilit encompasses all the observed payoff vectors which lie in this space. Indoing so it generates a function, called a support function, which relatesthe cumulative proportion of observed payoff vectors within the expand-ed set of predictions against the relative size of this set. By comparing toeach other the cumulative proportions for two different models when therelative sizes of their expanded predictions sets are held equal, theprocedure offsets the advantage possessed by the less specific modelwhich initially prescribes a larger or more dispersed prediction set.Like the index of error E devised by Bonacich, the procedure proposedin the present paper incorporates the intuitive idea that differentoutcomes diffentially confirm a theory if they are not contained in itsprediction set. Error is allowed to be continuous even if the theory underconsideration is algebraic. Statistical tests of algebraic theories in otherareas of psychology are almost always based on this assumption. Theprocedure also incorporates the shortest rather than the mean squareddistance between a payoff vector and a set of predicted payoff vectorsas the appropriate measure of error. The shortest distance is appropriatebecause coalition theories are mute with respect to the degree of importance, representativeness, of 'typicality' of the predictions they make.The procedure seems to yield satisfactory results. When applied to thetwo studies by Rapoport and Kahan (1976) and Kahan and Rapoport(1980) it has not favored models making line predictions over modelsmaking point predictions. It has established either strong or weak domi-nance relations between all pairs of models tested in these two studies.And it has confirmed the major conclusions of the two studies, which hadbeen originally reached by less rigourous tests of a smaller number ofmodels.     

Individual vs. couple behavior: an experimental investigation of risk preferences

In this article, we elicit both individuals’ and couples’ preferences assuming prospect theory (PT) as a general theoretical framework for decision under risk. Our experimental method, based on certainty equivalents, allows to infer measurements of utility and probability weighting at the individual level and at the couple level. Our main results are twofold. First, risk attitude for couples is compatible with PT and incorporates deviations from expected utility similar to those found in individual decision making. Second, couples’ attitudes towards risk are found to be consistent with a mix of individual attitudes, women being more influent on couples’ preferences at low probability levels.     

Parent Education vs. Parent Involvement

The Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (PL 96-272) requires that a permanent plan be developed for all youngsters in out-of-home placement. It also requires that agencies provide services to prevent placement out of the home, and that where placement cannot be prevented, the child is to be returned to the biological family as soon as possible. Following the passage of 96-272 increasing pressure developed in the practice community to reunify families, with extensive discussion focusing on the merits of the overall outcome. However, there has been very little emphasis a the systematic investigation of which kinds of reunification efforts work best. This study provided three types of parental involvement at Five Acres-The Boys' and Girls' Aid Society of Los Angeles County, and carefully measured to ascertain which of the different models was most successful toward the goal of reunifying families.     

辩证思维方法:合理性及现实性

知性思维是有限的思维方法,它没有能力把握事物的整体和全貌.辩证思维方法是从对知性思维的超越和批判中建立起来的.辩证思维方法的产生是人类实践和思维发展的必然结果.     

Stable coalition structures in symmetric majority games: a coincidence between myopia and farsightedness

The objective of this paper is to study stable coalition structures in symmetric majority games. We assume that players deviate from a coalition structure to another to maximize their power given by the Owen power index. We introduce three myopic core concepts and one farsighted stability concept, the farsighted vNM stable set. Our main result is that the pessimistic core, the largest myopic core, coincides with some farsighted vNM stable set for any number of players. Moreover, we show that a coalition structure belongs to the pessimistic core and the farsighted vNM stable set if and only if it contains an exact majority coalition.     

Empowerment in social work: an individual vs. a relational perspective

Social workers with only an individualistic understanding of empowerment will easily end up as moralising agents rather than as facilitators for their clients. It is in the complex interaction between a given socio-material situation and the individual capacity to interpret and act that one finds the key to an empowerment worthy of its name. This presupposes two things: that social workers have as a part of their education theoretical knowledge about organisational structures, and that they themselves have been empowered in ways that give them practical competence to act in relation to situations. They need the competence to identify the complexities of interests and power relations in society. The implication of such a recogni-tion should be clear for the education of social workers: the ideology of empowerment has to be contextualised . To discuss this topic the author makes a distinction between an individua-listic and a relational perspective and between social problems conceived of as a 'lack of money' vs. a 'lack of meaning'.