A Case for the Case Study: How and Why They Matter

In this special issue we have asked the contributors to make a case for the case study. The guest editors, Jeffrey Longhofer, Jerry Floersch and Eric Hartmann, intergrate ideas from across the disciplines to explore the complexties of case study methods and theory. In education, Gary Thomas explores the importance of ethnographic case studies in understanding the relationships among schools, teachers, and students. Lance Dodes and Josh Dodes use the case study to articulate a psychoanalytic approach to addiction. In policy and generalist practice, Nancy Cartwright and Jeremy Hardie elaborate a model for a case-by-case approach to prediction and the swampy ground prediction serves up to practitioners. Christian Salas and Oliver Turnbull persuasively write about the role of the case study in neuro-psychoanalysis and illustrate it with a case vignette. In political science, Sanford Schram argues for a bottom up and ethnographic approach to studying policy implementation by describing a case of a home ownership program in Philadelphia. Eric Hartman queers the case study by articulating its role in deconstructing normative explanations of sexuality. In applied psychology, Daniel Fishman describes a comprehensive applied psychology perspective on the paradigmatic case study. Richard Miller and Miriam Jaffe offer us important ways of thinking about writing the case study and the use of multi-media. Each contributor brings a unique perspective to the use of the case study in their field, yet they share practical and philosophical assumptions.     

Staff Member Reactions to Same-Gender,Resident-to-Resident Sexual Behavior Within Long-Term Care Facilities

The current study assesses ageism and heterosexism relating to older adult sexual activity within long-term care facilities. To assess caregiver reactions, 153 residential care facility staff members read one of three vignettes. Each vignette described a scenario in which a staff member walks in on two residents (male/female, male/male, or female/female) engaging in sexual activity. Although no main effects were discovered for vignette type, exploratory analyses revealed that the facility where participants were employed was significantly related to their ratings of approval. Furthermore, an interaction effect between vignette and facility types was also discovered for caregivers’ approval of sexual activity among residents. Additionally, a strong overall approval rating of older adult sexuality was reported by staff members. The results of this study warrant that further research is necessary regarding older adults’ perception of caregiver bias, as well as further investigation of caregivers’ perceptions of older adults’ sexual activity.     

WeChat: social and political development of China’s dominant messaging app

This article traces the development of the Chinese social media app WeChat from its origins to its current role as a leading communications tool for some 600 million Chinese citizens. It analyzes the ways the small-group oriented app is changing China’s social connections, as it enhances trusted, personal contacts while transforming opportunities for larger online group formation. The article assesses methods the Chinese Government employs to monitor and control WeChat communication, and provides a case-focus study. It also considers the apolitical features, in particular, those related to entertainment and personal social relations, which have made important contributions to WeChat’s great popularity.     

Managing Serials in an Institutional Repository: An Interview With Kay Teel

ABSTRACT

In this interview from March 2017, Kay Teel, metadata librarian for serials and arts resources at the Stanford University Libraries, discusses the issues involved in providing access to serials through an institutional repository.     

Short Break and Respite Services for Disabled Children in England: Comparing Children's and Parents' Perspectives of Their Impact on Children

Researchers, health and social care workers often seek to understand the perspectives of children; but gathering views directly from children can present difficulties. Parents are often asked to provide accounts of children's feelings or opinions on the assumption that their proxy reports are accurate and unproblematic. This qualitative thematic analysis of open‐question responses from 352 parents and 73 disabled children examines their accounts of the impact of short break services on disabled children. Participants' perspectives differed; children tended to describe immediate outcomes such as enjoying activities and participation; parents acknowledged these, but focused on longer term developmental outcomes for children.     

Efficient Heuristics for MRP Lot Sizing with Variable Production/Purchasing Costs*

Two heuristics based on branch and bound (B&B) are developed to solve closed-loop material requirements planning (MRP) lot-sizing problems that have general product structures and variable costs. A “look ahead method'’(LAM) heuristic allows for variable production/purchasing costs and uses a single-level B&B procedure to rapidly improve lower bound values; thus, LAM efficiently uses computer-storage capacity and allows solution of larger problems. The “total average modification'’(TAM) heuristic uses B&B, applied level by level, and modified setup and carrying costs to solve the variable production/purchasing costs MRP lot-sizing problem. LAM and TAM are tested on problems and compared to heuristics in the literature. TAM may be used to solve large MRP lot-sizing problems encountered in practice.     

Efficiency Wages,Productivity and Simultaneity: A Meta-Regression Analysis

This study reports a meta-analysis of 75 estimates of the efficiency-wage effect. It reveals a strong efficiency-wage effect that depends upon whether researchers control for potential simultaneity between wages and productivity. Studies that control for simultaneity tend to report stronger effects. Clear evidence of publication selection is also found. E24, J30.

Group betweenness and co-betweenness: Inter-related notions of coalition centrality

Vertex betweenness centrality is a metric that seeks to quantify a sense of the importance of a vertex in a network in terms of its ‘control’ on the flow of information along geodesic paths throughout the network. Two natural ways to extend vertex betweenness centrality to sets of vertices are (i) in terms of geodesic paths that pass through at least one of the vertices in the set, and (ii) in terms of geodesic paths that pass through all vertices in the set. The former was introduced by Everett and Borgatti [Everett, M., Borgatti, S., 1999. The centrality of groups and classes. Journal of Mathematical Sociology 23 (3), 181–201], and called group betweenness centrality. The latter, which we call co-betweenness centrality here, has not been considered formally in the literature until now, to the best of our knowledge. In this paper, we show that these two notions of centrality are in fact intimately related and, furthermore, that this relationship may be exploited to obtain deeper insight into both. In particular, we provide an expansion for group betweenness in terms of increasingly higher orders of co-betweenness, in a manner analogous to the Taylor series expansion of a mathematical function in calculus. We then demonstrate the utility of this expansion by using it to construct analytic lower and upper bounds for group betweenness that involve only simple combinations of (i) the betweenness of individual vertices in the group, and (ii) the co-betweenness of pairs of these vertices. Accordingly, we argue that the latter quantity, i.e., pairwise co-betweenness, is itself a fundamental quantity of some independent interest, and we present a computationally efficient algorithm for its calculation, which extends the algorithm of Brandes [Brandes, U., 2001. A faster algorithm for betweenness centrality. Journal of Mathematical Sociology 25, 163] in a natural manner. Applications are provided throughout, using a handful of different communication networks, which serve to illustrate the way in which our mathematical contributions allow for insight to be gained into the interaction of network structure, coalitions, and information flow in social networks.     

Overcoming Barriers to Using Empirically Supported Therapies to Treat Childhood Anxiety Disorders in Social Work Practice

Anxiety disorders are among the most common psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents. Most empirically supported treatments (ESTs) for pediatric anxiety disorders include various cognitive-behavioral methods. Although demonstrated efficacious in controlled and clinic settings, there are barriers to implementing these types of therapies in social work settings due to beliefs about the usefulness of ESTs in community settings; limitations of treatment manuals; time constraints of implementing ESTs; fidelity and flexibility of implementing ESTs; and limited training opportunities. This article provides an overview of ESTs for childhood anxiety disorders, highlighting options for overcoming common barriers to implementing ESTs. Collaborative multi-method approaches to advance implementation of ESTs in social work practice are suggested.