The impact of place? A reassessment of the importance of the South in affecting beliefs about racial inequality

Research shows that individuals living in the southern part of the United States express more negative racial attitudes than those living outside the South. Using data from The American National Election Study (NES), the purpose of this paper is to assess whether key factors often associated with the Southern attitude distinction are indeed more potent in the South than elsewhere. Drawing data from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, we further assess whether the impact of the South has increased or decreased over time. Results indicate that the impact of the South is negligible at best. Findings do show that place does matter for conservatives. However, in this case, non-South location matters more than the South. Relative to their liberal counterparts, conservatives in the non-South espouse more individualistic beliefs than do their Southern counterparts. These findings are discussed within the dominant theoretical framework in this area.     

Central State Steering of Local Collaboration: Assessing the Impact of Tools of Meta-governance in Homelessness Services in England

Much of the discussion of state steering of service delivery networks to encourage collaboration at the local level has been theoretical. This study builds on this analysis systematically to assess the relationship between meta-governance tools of central government steering and the extent of local collaboration, using the case of homelessness services in England. Contrary to the pessimist expectations of some contemporary theory, central government funding tools and facilitating the transfer of best practice encourages collaboration. However, simple information provision and authority based tools are only partially effective, risking tokenistic compliance. Authority tools are more effective when combined with other tools.

Educational inequality across three generations in Australia

The transfer of advantage and disadvantage across multiple generations is receiving increasing attention in the international literature; however, transfers of resources across multiple generations in Australian families are less well understood. Using a longitudinal dataset of Australian children, we have the opportunity to not only investigate the transfer of educational resources across three generations in Australia, but also investigate the gendered nature of these transfers, which has been a limitation of other studies. We find no evidence of individual grandparent education effects on numeracy and reading scores for grandchildren in Year 3, independent of parent educational attainment and other covariates. However, significant effects on numeracy and reading scores were observed for children in families where both the grandmother and grandfather in maternal and paternal grandparent sets had high educational attainment (a diploma or university qualification), and where either or both the mother and father had a university qualification. These results suggest that the contribution of grandparents to the academic achievement of grandchildren cannot be fully explained by the parent generation and that the concentration of human capital in families contributes to educational inequalities across multiple generations that can be observed by eight years of age.     

Receive or give? Contemporary views among middle-aged and older Chinese adults on filial piety and well-being in Hong Kong

This qualitative study aimed to examine the contemporary interpretation of filial piety by middle-aged and older Chinese adults in Hong Kong, and to explore its relationship with well-being in later life through focus groups. Data analysis revealed that all participants subscribed to the traditional value of filial piety, but had willingly reduced their filial expectations of their younger generation. Importantly, well-being in later life was found to be affected by both the younger generation’s filial commitments and older parents’ continued support of their younger generation so that the latter could lead a better life.     

Extrapolative simulation of neighborhood networks based on population spatial distribution: Do they predict crime?

Objectives

Previous criminological scholarship has posited that network ties among neighborhood residents may impact crime rates, but has done little to consider the specific ways in which network structure may enhance or inhibit criminal activity. A lack of data on social ties has arguably led to this state of affairs. We propose to avoid this limitation by demonstrating a novel approach of extrapolatively simulating network ties and constructing structural network measures to assess their effect on neighborhood crime rates.

Methods

We first spatially locate the households of a city into their constituent blocks. Then, we employ spatial interaction functions based on prior empirical work and simulate a network of social ties among these residents. From this simulated network, we compute network statistics that more appropriately capture the notions of cohesion and information diffusion that underlie theories of networks and crime.

Results

We show that these network statistics are robust predictors of the levels of crime in five separate cities (above standard controls) at the very micro geographic level of blocks and block groups.

Conclusions

We conclude by considering extensions of the approach that account for homophily in the formation of network ties.     

The Professional Schools. By William J. McGlothlin. New York: The Center for Applied Research in Education, 1964. 111 pp. $3.95

This paper presents a conceptual framework for viewing social planning and social administration as one “seamless web” of activity concerned with the identification of goals and the development of appropriate administrative structures for their implementation. The major educational implication of this analysis is that curriculum planning should maximize the integration of social policy, social planning, and administration. Alternative approaches to achieving this integration are discussed using data from a recent Council on Social Work Education survey.     

Teaching Family Policy Through a Policy Practice Framework

This article reports on the development of an innovative family policy practice course for direct practice students that emphasizes experiential learning to develop policy practice skills. The course uses a policy practice framework to understand the creation and implementation of major family legislation. A semester-long project provides students with opportunities to develop skills in advocacy, policy development, and planning by working for social change in the community. The article discusses examples of projects that have been implemented by students, discusses challenges to teaching experiential methods for skill building, and provides critical evaluation of the projects and their relevance for macro practice research.     

Teaching Note—Ask the Audience: Using Student Response Systems in Social Work Education

Social work educators are uniquely tasked with balancing content while helping students evaluate personal biases and develop ethical conduct necessary for social work professionalism. Social work education may benefit from technology like Student Response Systems (SRS) that allow educators to pose questions on sensitive topics in real time while simultaneously eliciting students' anonymous responses and leading discussion. This article reviews literature on SRS, also known as “clickers,” and presents findings from a survey regarding the use of SRS in a BSW-level social policy class. A model is presented to guide educators in their decisions to incorporate SRS into the classroom, and implications for social work education are discussed.     

Using experiential knowledge to understand urban rat ecology: A survey of Canadian pest control professionals

Rats (Rattus rattus and Rattus norvegicus) are among the most prolific and widespread urban pest species in the world. However, there is relatively little contemporary data regarding the ecology of rats in urban centers, preventing the development of effective strategies for urban rat management. Practical constraints associated with field studies suggest the need for more efficient methods of data collection, one of which could involve pest control professionals, who have considerable experiential knowledge of urban rats. The objective of this study was to gather data regarding urban rat ecology through a survey of Canadian pest control professionals and to determine whether such a survey could be useful for the collection of ecological data regarding pest species. Survey results suggested that rat infestations fluctuate seasonally and that there are a variety of environmental factors that may attract rats, particularly exposed garbage, abandoned buildings, and compost. Respondents suggested that rat infestations are most frequent and/or severe in residential areas, commercial areas dealing with food, as well as in neighborhoods of low socioeconomic status. The majority of respondents believed that rats pose at least a moderate health risk to the general public and to themselves, and they also believed that although poison baiting is the cheapest and easiest method of rat control, environmental modification is the most effective way to control rat infestations in the long term. Despite issues with low response rates, these results suggest that pest control professionals may be a valuable source of data regarding urban pest species.