Information for Clinical Social Work Practice: A Potential Solution

The field of social work requires knowledgeable, skilled and self-confident professionals. We assume that many of these social workers will have less than optimal access to professionally relevant information, within and outside of their workplaces. We also assume that they, like others searching for information, will have a limited set of search skills yet will want to obtain the information for practice they need as easily as possible. Finally, we assume they will continue turning to the Internet to access relevant information. This paper describes Information for Practice (IP), an Internet service designed for social work practitioners based on these assumptions. Data regarding use of this service are presented.     

Conducting evaluation in contested terrain: challenges, methodology and approach in an American context

Using case examples, the author describes circumstances under which violence and conflict, overt and covert, have impinged on his evaluation field work. When fear is pervasive, it constrains people's ability and willingness to participate in an evaluation and their candor if they do. It can also be dangerous. Safety and well-being of participants and researchers in his view take priority over the evaluation's goals. Evaluation involving people who are survivors of violence, torture and conflict requires special sensitivity and examples are offered of appropriate methodologies. Stakeholders in evaluations presumably have beneficent interest in a program's success. However in conflict situations ‘malevolent’ stakeholders, who standing to gain from a project's failure, will actively try to thwart it. Undermining the evaluation as well and impugning the evaluator's objectivity, skill, knowledge and credibility are among the tactics they employ. Evaluators are urged to stay attuned to field conditions, consider alternative methods and locations for collecting data and be self-conscious and deliberate about how their study and role are defined and understood by contending parties.     

The Transformative Power of Youth Grants: Sparks and Ripples of Change Affecting Marginalised Youth and their Communities

This study, based on research into a youth empowerment initiative in Canada, examines the transformational power of youth grants for marginalised youth and their communities. The positive changes on individual youth included increased confidence and skills, as well as strengthened social interactions between youth, and involved adults and organisations. To leverage grant impact, we identify the critical role of creating accountability at multiple levels, promoting sharing among grantees, and fostering allies and system thinkers. The evaluation points to the potential of grants for changing community's perception that youth are incapable of fostering community youth development.     

Comparing measures of homicide trends: Methodological and substantive differences in the Vital Statistics and Uniform Crime Report time series (1933–1975)

Several Uniform Crime Reports (FBI) and Vital Statistics (NCHS) homicide time series for the United States, 1933–1975, are compared with respect to (a) definitions and collection procedures used; (b) differences in estimating procedures; and (c) substantive differences that result from use of either series. Among the findings from this investigation are that: (1) the sampling procedures employed by the NCHS appear to be superior to those of the FBI; (2) the FBI time series most commonly employed by researchers is discontinuous prior to 1958 due to revision procedures which were instituted at that time. Analyses over time periods which began prior to this year should employ a more accurate FBI time series which is published by the Office of Management and Budget (1973). (3) The specific time period under study may lead to different substantive conclusions with different indicators; (4) the results of statistical analyses of structural equation models contained herein indicate that while the difference is not generally statistically significant, the deterrent effect of execution is consistently estimated to be greater with the Vital Statistics series. This finding has important policy implications if estimates of the number of lives saved by executing prisoners are projected and utilized by policy makers. (5) Neither series indicates serious problems of autocorrelation of disturbances with the exogenous variables employed here; and (6) use of either series for the period after 1949 appears to produce the same substantive results.     

Exploring the Transferability of Competency-Based Education Model to Social Work Education in Vietnam

The Socialist Republic of Vietnam (hereafter Vietnam) has made extraordinary strides in terms of economic progress during the past two decades. Such rapid economic change has also created many social problems such as poverty, family abuse, substance abuse, HIV/AIDS, and mental health problems. Vietnam has taken steps to develop workforce capacity to ameliorate such challenges by investing in social work educational programs, including participation in an international collaborative initiative, the Social Work Education Enhancement Program (SWEEP). This article describes the procedures and process of the initial stage of the development of a competency-based social work curriculum in Vietnam through SWEEP. More specifically, this paper presents the following collaborative strategies between partners in Vietnam and the SWEEP team in the United States: conducting a needs assessment; providing trainings on competency-based education (CBE) to the partners in Vietnam; and receiving feedback from the partners to grasp the challenges at the early stage of development of CBE in Vietnam. While this article focuses on Vietnam, the SWEEP project can be a reference from which to develop social work education in other countries in regard to global collaboration for development of social work curriculum based on the CBE model.     

Qualitative sociology in Israel—A brief survey

Conclusion Despite the proliferation of quantitative studies in Israeli sociology, qualitative approaches remain vigorously pursued by a large number of academic sociologists, who address a wide variety of problems by a heterogeneous mix of theoretical approaches, methodologies, and research techniques. While these studies yielded a rich harvest of respectable publications, the majority are not conducted in terms of theories and methodologies which are presently at the forefront of qualitative research in the United States and Europe. This is true even for the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which is still the leading exponent of QS in Israel. It is difficult to decide whether some of the currently fashionable approaches, such as French neostructuralism and American ethnomethodology, propose viable programs which will have a major impact on sociology or are just passing fashions. Nevertheless, Israeli sociologistsshould pay more attention to these and similar current developments on the international scene and examine critically the usefulness of these developments for their own research interests and projects.The same is true in the field of application of the new computer technologies to qualitative data. Very few Israeli sociologists have made any serious efforts in the development or application of such technologies in their studies. It is in these areas that greater attention and a possible partial reorientation of QS in Israel will be necessary in the future, if Israeli qualitative sociologists are to keep the place which they currently occupy in the international professional community.     

Young Infants' Perception of Object Unity in Rotation Displays

Much research has been devoted to questions regarding how infants begin to perceive the unity of partly occluded objects, and it is clear that object motion plays a central role. Little is known, however, about how infants' motion processing skills are used in such tasks. One important kinetic cue for object shape is structure from motion, but its role in unity perception remains unknown. To address this issue, we presented 2‐ and 4‐month‐old infants with displays in which object unity was specified by vertical rotation. After habituation to this display, infants viewed broken and complete versions of the object to test their preference for the broken object, an indication of perception of unity in the occlusion display. Positive evidence for the perception of unity was provided by both age groups. Concomitant edge translation available in 1 condition did not appear to contribute above and beyond simple rotation. These results suggest that structure from motion, and perhaps contour deformation and shading cues, can contribute important information for veridical object percepts in very young infants.     

Counter-Cultural Movements and Totalitarian Democracy

Talmon's concept of "totalitarian democracy" is generalized, to make it applicable to the variety of counter-cultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s. In particular, we expanded Talmon's concept of political liberty into a more general desire for "liberation," offered in different forms by these movements. Accordingly, the movements are classified by two variables: the direction of liberation (inner or outer) to which they aspired, and the degree of their attempt to monopolize the means of its realization (monopolistic or pluralistic). Four types of movements are identified and examined for their potential for totalitarian democracy: (1) Movements of Self-Fulfillment, (2) Cults of Self-Realization, (3) Radical Protest Movements, (4) Revolutionary Movements. Marked differences in totalitarian potential were found, the lowest in movements of self-fulfullment and the highest in cults of self-realization.     

Self-perceived unpopularity: Its relationship to emotional and behavioral problems

Childhood unpopularity has been a focus of study but earlier studies have not highlighted children's self-perceptions and their relationship to childhood adaptation. The authors studied 404 children preschool to third grade to examine early risk and current factors associated with feelings of unpopularity. Children who perceived themselves as unpopular in grade three experienced multiple problems in functioning, although they were largely unobtrusive silent sufferers. Self-perceived unpopularity was most strongly related to current factors and served as a marker of emotional difficulties. Implications for identification of these vulnerable children and suggestions for future research are presented.