‘Meeting Face to Face Creates New Insights’: Recruiting Persons with User Experiences as Students in an Educational Programme in Social Work

Even though empowerment and involvement of users have, for a long time, been important goals for educational programmes in social work, these programmes have only to a very little extent availed themselves of the resources that people with user experiences have to offer. This article will present a course that is part of the bachelor programmes in social work and social education at Lillehammer University College in Norway. Persons with user experiences were recruited and took part in a course on equal terms with the bachelor students. Four lecturers from the college, including the author as the project leader, carried out the planning and implementation of the course. The article gives an account of the experiences gained from the course as expressed by the students.     

Initial assessment: A key stage in social work intervention

Abstract

This paper examines the intake practices in child protection in the New South Wales Department of Community Services as a case study of initial assessment in social work intervention. Data was collected in three Department of Community Services local offices where 39 practitioners were interviewed about their child protection work practices. An observational study of the workers' intake practices was also undertaken for a period of approximately 110 days. While official Department of Community Services policy and procedures provided the basis for intake practice, this research found that other important factors relating to the informant, the characteristics of the frontline worker, the workplace environment and the context of child protection practice influenced the intake process. The implications of the research findings for other social work practice settings are considered.     

Validation of the Flourishing Scale and Scale of Positive and Negative Experience in Portugal

The Flourishing Scale (FS) and the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (SPANE) created by Diener et al. (Soc Indic Res 97:143–156, 2010) are instruments that assess psychological flourishing and feelings (positive and negative, and the difference between the two). In this study, the psychometric properties of both scales were explored by using two Portuguese samples (I: n = 734; II: n = 194). Reliability analysis and a multi-group confirmatory factorial analysis (MCFA) of both scales were performed. To examine the validity of FS and SPANE we analyzed their correlations with other well-being and happiness measures. Results showed that the Portuguese versions of both scales have good psychometric properties, and they also showed convergent validity. Results also demonstrated the unidimensional structure of the FS and a two-factor solution for the SPANE. The multi-group CFA of both scales evidenced an invariant structure. Both Portuguese versions of the scales behave consistently with the original and may be used in future studies of well-being.     

Quality of Web-based Information on Pathological Gambling

The present study aims to evaluate the quality of web-based information on gambling and to investigate potential content quality indicators. The following key words: gambling, pathological gambling, excessive gambling, gambling problem and gambling addiction were entered into two popular search engines: Google and Yahoo. Websites were assessed with a standardized proforma designed to rate sites on the basis of “accountability”, “presentation”, “interactivity”, “readability” and “content quality”. “Health on the Net” (HON) quality label, and DISCERN scale scores aiding people without content expertise to assess quality of written health publication were used to verify their efficiency as quality indicators. Of the 200 links identified, 75 websites were included. The results of the study indicate low scores on each of the measures. A composite global score appeared as a good content quality indicator. While gambling-related education websites for patients are common, their global quality is poor. There is a need for useful evidence-based information about gambling on the web. As the phenomenon has greatly increased, it could be relevant for Internet sites to improve their content by using global score as a quality indicator.     

Green giant or straw man? Environmental pressure and civil conflict, 1961–99

The proposition that environmental scarcity causes violent conflict attracts both popular and academic interest. Neomalthusian writers have developed theoretical arguments explaining this connection, and have conducted numerous case studies that seem to support the view that scarcity of biological assets such as land and other renewable resources causes conflict. So far there have been few systematic quantitative or comparative studies, and the few that exist have focused on particular forms of environmental degradation or on a small subset of resources, particularly mineral wealth. We test a more general argument about the effects of resource scarcity by examining the most widely-used measure of environmental sustainability: the ecological footprint. Contrary to neomalthusian thinking, we find that countries with a heavier footprint have a substantially greater chance of peace. Biocapacity and the ecological reserve also predict to peace, but these results are more fragile. Separate tests for smaller conflicts, for the post-Cold War period, and with additional control variables do not yield stronger support for the scarcity thesis. On the whole, the neomalthusian model of conflict receives little support from this analysis. We cannot exclude that erosion of the earth’s carrying capacity can increase conflict in the long run, but an empirical analysis with the ecological footprint measure does not provide any support for such a position.     

Does International Migration Encourage Consumerism in the Country of Origin?—A Turkish Study

As part of a larger inquiry into the consequences of international migration for those who remain in the country of origin, detailed interviews were conducted with 234 adults in four Turkish provinces. Three migrant-status categories were defined: (a) Returned migrants, (b) Non-migrant close kin or friends of migrants, and, as a control group, (c) All others. Group (a) was the most likely to own various manufactured items, and group (c) the least, with group (b) in between. But when, within each migrant-status category, those who did not own but wanted a particular item were added to those who already owned it, much of the difference by migrant-status disappeared. This was particularly so with regard to necessities. Controlling for age, sex, urban-rural residence, and schooling produced an essentially inconsistent pattern of association between these characteristics and owning or wanting a particular item. It did, however, reveal a widespread persistence of not wanting one or another of these items side by side with a pattern of wanting it. While owning or wanting something seemed to receive only limited support from the consumption patterns of relatives and friends, not wanting something seemed to receive considerable support from this source. This seems unlikely to continue, however, in the face of changes now taking place in Turkey.     

A mixed method study of propensity for participatory evaluation

One way to increase the use of evaluation results is practical participatory evaluation (PPE), which enables non-evaluator participants to join the evaluation process in a participatory mode. We examined the propensity for PPE of health professionals by focusing on four components: learning, working in groups, using judgment and using systematic methods. We interviewed the professionals at a Haitian health institution to determine their positioning on a scale of propensity (low, medium and high) for the four components. The professionals defined each component in relation to the energy puts into them, being more or less proactive. Facilitating elements for all three levels of propensity integration included past positive experiences, external pressure and a desire for better individual and organizational performance. Impeding factors included a lack of available resources perceived responsibilities and commitments toward private patients. The reported advantages included improved organizational performance and idea sharing, and the disadvantages included availability of, difficulty implementing solutions and altered human relationships.     

Non-anonymous growth incidence curves, income mobility and social welfare dominance

The distributional incidence of growth is generally analyzed by comparing the quantiles of the pre- and post-growth income distribution—e.g. the so-called Growth Incidence Curves. Such an approach based on an implicit re-ranking of individual incomes ignores income mobility by assuming that only post-growth income matters in social welfare. By contrast, this paper takes the view that “status quo matters” and that social welfare should logically be defined on both inital and terminal income. This leads to consider ’non-anonymous’ Growth Incidence Curves that plot income growth rates against the various quantiles of the initial distribution. Dominance criteria that generalize those available for standard growth incidence curves are derived, which account for the inequality of individual income changes, conditional on initial income. An application to the cross-country distributional feature of global growth illustrates the analysis.