Evaluation of an Online Group Intervention to Improve Test-Taking Self-Efficacy and Reduce Licensure Test Anxiety

We evaluated whether a synchronous online group intervention, using the Association for Social Work Boards Group Review Practice Test© items, increased students’ LMSW licensure test-taking confidence and decreased their test anxiety. A non-equivalent comparison group study was used to measure change in 59 graduate students’ confidence in test-taking and test anxiety. Almost 45% of students reported test anxiety in the clinical range at pretest. Using a repeated measures GLM, we found that students in the intervention group experienced a significant increase in confidence from pretest posttest. For overall anxiety, impairment anxiety, and worry anxiety, students in the intervention group experienced less anxiety over time, and students in the comparison group experienced more anxiety over time. Implications for programs are discussed.     

Resilience in Non-Offending Mothers of Children Who Have Reported Experiencing Sexual Abuse

Growing evidence shows that non-offending mothers experience significant loss and trauma following their child reporting experiencing sexual abuse. Maternal support offered to sexually abused children following disclosure can be a crucial factor in children’s recovery. Although mothers are often seen as playing a central role in facilitating the recovery of their sexually abused child, there has been little focus on their own needs and profiles. This present study aimed to increase our understanding of the diversity of profiles of non-offending mothers of sexually abused children by exploring the differences in psychosocial traits of non-offending mothers (N = 68; age range 28–67 years) reporting higher and lower resilience.

The mediating role of these psychosocial factors on the relationship between resilience and psychological distress will also be explored. Results found that non-offending mothers in the higher resilience group reported higher levels of positive reappraisal, self-compassion, social support, and significantly lower levels of psychological distress compared to non-offending mothers in the lower resilience group. Additionally, multiple mediation analysis indicated positive reappraisal, self-compassion, and social support to be significant mediators of the relationship between resilience and psychological distress. Increased levels of self-compassion and social support were found to be predictive of lowered psychological distress, while increased positive reappraisal predicted increased psychological distress. The findings of the present study provide support for the targeting of the psychosocial factors such as self-compassion, social support, and positive reappraisal in interventions for non-offending mothers in an effort to promote resilience.     

Exploratory study of the use of community treatment orders with clients of an Ontario ACT team

ABSTRACT

Community Treatment Orders (CTOs) have raised questions about coercion, lack of autonomy, and effectiveness in reducing hospitalizations and improving service users’ quality of life. This study examined the experiences of clients and clinicians when CTOs are used in combination with Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) in a recovery oriented approach. Eleven clients who were or had previously been on a CTO and eight ACT clinicians were interviewed. Although most clients had negative feelings about CTOs, some acknowledged their lives had improved. Clinicians reported that the decision to employ a CTO is sometimes debated within the team but they agreed that combining CTOs and ACT resulted in regular access to mental health supports, fewer hospitalizations and overall improvement of quality of life for their clients.     

Towards Critical Intersections of Ageing,Housing and Well-Being

ABSTRACT

Across the life course, far-reaching socio-demographic and health related transformations are influencing the meaning of home in the UK. The collection presented in this Special Issue of Home Futures critically interjects into the ‘where and when’ of dwelling during the process of ageing with key concepts explored within this introductory article. It argues that, change is seen through the disruption of conventional ideas of ageing ‘at home’, traditional understandings of ‘the older person’ and its corollary social imaginaries, alongside the relationship between care practices and homes. Many of these shifts are being addressed through a range of emerging housing (and collaborative) alternatives. The article concludes by considering how discussions in this special issue disclose the home, from a range of social and material angles, as a diverse process and experience of meaning making over time, deeply entangled with health and well-being, disrupting traditional understandings of ‘place making’ in later life.     

The Information Problems in Organizations: A Research Model for the Value of Information and Information Systems*

Growing recognition of the need for better management information system (MIS) theory and practice centers around problems with identifying the value of information and information systems in organizations. This paper addresses this issue by showing that existing theory in organizational economics and industrial organization directly relates to information problems in organizations (their nature, and their effects in terms of organization structure and performance). The paper categorizes these problems and associated theories into four distinct classes and shows that MIS research and practice can be mapped to information problems of each type. Because the economic theory pertinent to specific information problems includes the nature of the organizational response to information constraints, it also provides insight into the nature of the improvement to be realized if information constraints can be overcome. These improvements can then be interpreted as the value of the associated information systems which suggests using the resultant classification scheme to map between information problems and system value. The paper shows that this methodology provides a more appropriate level of focus than either traditional normative or business value methods, especially because many improvements have structural as well as performance consequences.     

Sex Ratio and Family Structure in the Nonmetropolitan United States

The sex ratio hypothesis maintains that the ratio of marriageable men to marriageable women can have major implications for family formation and structure. Despite extensive research attention, the sex ratio hypothesis has yet to be tested on general nonmetropolitan populations. This study of nonmetropolitan counties in the United States found strong support for the sex ratio hypothesis. Counties with low sex ratios (shortage of men) had lower proportions of married couple households and a corresponding higher proportion of female-headed households. These low sex ratio counties also had fewer adults married, and a lower proportion of their children living in married couple households with a higher proportion of children living in female-headed households.     

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING'S "FAMILY DISEASE": ANOREXIA NERVOSA

What was Elizabeth Barrett Browning's mysterious and variously diagnosed “disease”? This study reviews biographical material in the light of modern family systems theory and develops a hypothesis that Elizabeth Barrett lived with her family of origin in “anorectic transaction”, and that chronic anorexia nervosa was embedded in the Victorian poet's lifestyle. The characteristics of anorectic families: enmeshment, overprotection, rigidity, and lack of conflict resolution, are shown to have been abundantly present in Barrett family patterns. Robert Browning is compared with a family therapist whose interventions restructure a system and free the anorectic from her dysfunctional symptom.     

Faces Behind the Figures: Interviews with Children Excluded from Primary School

This article presents a viewpoint on school exclusion from 22 primary-age children excluded from 20 different schools in two English local education authorities, (a county council and an inner London borough) during the 1993–94 academic year. Some of the methodological and ethical issues about researching children are outlined and considered. The approach and methods used in the research are explained. Interviews with children showed exclusion to be a significant but negative event for them, yet they were optimistic about a return to school. Children showed an awareness of what was considered to be appropriate or inappropriate behaviour in their school. They frequently referred to incidents of physical aggression as the reason for their exclusion. It is concluded that this awareness of appropriate behaviour as well as their optimism must be recognised and harnessed when young children are reintegrated into school following a period of exclusion.     

J. S. MILL'S REDISTRIBUTION POLICY: NEW POLITICAL ECONOMY OR OLD?

This paper challenges the new view that J. S. Mill's redistribution policies share the same pro-poor philosophy of modern negative income tax advocates who stress the minimum injury to labour incentives. While they assume a progressive tax structure, Mill wanted a proportionate tax, and, in practice, if his actual tax proposals favoured any group it was the middle class. "The moderns" object to welfare schemes that impose a 100 percent tax on the welfare recipient's own earnings. The New Poor Law, that Mill supported, did just this. The Old Poor Law (under Gilbert's Act), that outraged him, came closest to modern NIT scheme. It provided outdoor relief in cash, whereas Mill wanted indoor relief in kind. And it answered the inefficiencies and indignities of conventional welfare (work-house) administration, a problem in which Mill showed no interest. His scheme did contain incentives; but these were directed to the needs of a future poor, educated according to Mill's own special design.