Academic Affiliations of Social Work Journal Article Authors from 1999–2003: A Productivity Analysis from the United Kingdom

ABSTRACT

Following the protocols established by Ligon, Jackson, and Thyer (2007), author affiliations of 639 articles published in five UK social work journals between 1999 and 2003 were tabulated to generate a ranking of universities. Seventy-three universities published three or more articles. The findings are discussed in relation to the earlier article by Ligon et al. (2007) Ligon, J., Jackson, D. L. and Thyer, B. 2007. Academic affiliations of social work journal article authors from 1993–2003: A productivity analysis spanning 25 years of social work scholarship. Journal of Social Service Research, 33(2): 13–20. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]. It is argued that a globalized approach to the analysis of the productivity of social work academics should be developed. A first step might be the integration of the U.S. and UK productivity analysis for relevant years.     

Gender-Based Violence in a Kenyan Slum: Creating Local,Woman-Centered Interventions

ABSTRACT

Gender-based violence in the developing world is beginning to receive serious scholarly attention. However, much of that research still overlooks violence against women in the burgeoning slum communities around the globe. This survey of 200 women between the ages of 18 and 30 years old describes gender-based violence in the “informal” settlement of Kibera, Kenya, the largest slum in sub-Saharan Africa. Prevalence and attitudes toward gender-based violence among survey participants are compared to those measured in the general population. Because results of the Kiberan survey show a higher rate of gender-based violence among women than the general population of Kenya, it appears that interventions are urgently needed in the slum. At the same time, slum-dwelling women reported lower attitudinal tolerance of gender-based violence than the larger population, supporting the readiness to accept interventions if available. The current study is one of the first to report data specifically about gender-based violence among women in Kibera and thus serves as a platform upon which larger future studies may be built. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Allowances: Incidence in the US and Relationship to Financial Capability in Young Adulthood

This study describes the use of allowance payments by parents to children in the United States (US) and documents the association between receiving an allowance as a child and financial capability as a young adult. Based on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the majority of children in the US ages 6 to 15 receive an allowance in childhood. Allowances are a commonly used strategy by parents across many demographic and socioeconomic groups, with no strong relationship between parental income or education and parents offering an allowance. Young adults who received an allowance as children reported modestly higher levels of financial responsibility, suggesting that allowances for children and teenagers may be a useful complement to other financial development strategies for young people.

     

Reforming the oversight of multi-site clinical research: a review of two possible solutions

The current system for the ethical oversight of clinical research suffers from structural, procedural, and performance assessment problems. Initially conceived primarily to handle local investigator-initiated single-site studies, the system of institutionally-based committee review has become progressively more inefficient given the increased prevalence of commercially or federally sponsored multi-center trials. To date, proposed solutions do not adequately address these problems. Beginning with a review of these structural, procedural, and performance assessment problems, this article will then consider two proposals for addressing these deficiencies: (a) regional ethics organizations; and (b) IRBNet, a newly developed web-based program for cooperative IRB review. The strengths and weaknesses of these two approaches will be evaluated in light of recent experience with centralized review. The proposal to establish a system of regional ethics organizations presents a comprehensive approach to many of the problems faced by the current system. However, IRBNet offers an immediate and feasible solution to many of the problems faced by the review of multi-site clinical studies.     

Cyberterrorist Messages and Their Effects on Targets: A Qualitative Analysis

This study provides a semiotic perspective on cyberterrorism and its opportunity to cause maximal damage while using terrorist propaganda. Data were gathered via in-depth qualitative interviewing. Information was obtained from 10 participants, all of them being law enforcement (LE) agents (e.g., from a U.S. federal agency such as the FBI) or cyber forensics experts. From the participants' narratives, five themes emerged: (1) acknowledgement of the existence of cyberterrorism, (2) postmodern propaganda and publicity, (3) detrimental effects on targets, (4) media implications, and (5) communicative messages.     

Obscured Inequalities in Mechanisms for Managing Workplace Disputes

Although the law gives workers a variety of rights, actually implementing them is a battle in itself. When settling workplace disputes outside the courtroom, the dispute is met with a mandate to compromise, often ignoring the parties' rights. If dispute resolution occurs within the workplace, employees often face an even more uneven playing field when confronting their employers, who enjoy greater experience, the appearance of legitimacy, and substantial experience with many such grievances. Moreover, the hierarchical organization of the workplace further hampers employees' abilities to effectively resolve their disputes if they are able to raise the grievance at all.     

Recognizing Diversity and Group Processes in International, Collaborative Research Work: A Case Study

The myth that most if not all senior researchers who have national prominence can 'successfully' manage international research is alive and well in the academy today. Many researchers believe that research management and consultancy is acquired through a process of trial and error and demands little contemplation or training. The purpose of this paper is to break these myths and to establish various benchmarks for good research management, particularly on an international level. The guiding assumption of the paper is that as research becomes more global, high-quality research management is a necessary resource, which demands sensitivity to diversity as well as an awareness of group processes. This means those issues such as language, race, ethnicity, gender, disability and group work should not only inform our research findings but also guide our research practice in international collaborative settings. Throughout this paper, I use a case study of a large EU-funded project as a way of illustrating key themes.