Reconstruction of social work education in China through transformative partnership: Case study of the 30 years’ partnership between The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Peking University

ABSTRACT

Social work education, first introduced to the Chinese mainland in the 1920s, was eliminated from all universities in the early 1950s, but was restored to higher education institutions to respond to the growing demand for social workers in the end of 1980s to resolve escalating social problems triggered by the open-door economic policy. In this paper, the authors will present the concept of transformative partnership and discuss the evolvement of the partnership relationship between The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Peking University during the past thirty years in fostering the reconstruction of social work education in Mainland China from 1988 to 2018 and beyond. The authors will illustrate the gradual deepening of our partnership from one which was transactional to one that is transformative in nature. The authors believe that our partnership has not only transformed the traditional paradigm of professional education in China but has also transformed all the key stakeholders involved, particularly the educators, students and service-users through the partnership process.     

Distance-based outlier detection for high dimension,low sample size data

Despite the popularity of high dimension, low sample size data analysis, there has not been enough attention to the sample integrity issue, in particular, a possibility of outliers in the data. A new outlier detection procedure for data with much larger dimensionality than the sample size is presented. The proposed method is motivated by asymptotic properties of high-dimensional distance measures. Empirical studies suggest that high-dimensional outlier detection is more likely to suffer from a swamping effect rather than a masking effect, thus yields more false positives than false negatives. We compare the proposed approaches with existing methods using simulated data from various population settings. A real data example is presented with a consideration on the implication of found outliers.     

A Model for Measuring Supplier Risk: Do Operational Capability Indicators Enhance the Prediction Accuracy of Supplier Risk?

The purpose of this study was to develop a supplier risk assessment model for buyers to estimate supplier risk. It is one of the few empirical studies that considers both operational capability indicators and financial indicators; a standard logit model with five key variables (switching cost, operating profit margin, asset turnover ratio, quality capability and technological capability) was suggested as a practical tool. This model not only enhanced the accuracy of supplier risk assessment, but also served as a core element of a new supply chain management tool, ‘supplier management at risk’. More practically, the model enables purchasing firms to assess supplier risk and take proactive measures against the estimated risk.     

The Relationships of Flexible Work Schedules,Workplace Support,Supervisory Support,Work-Life Balance,and the Well-Being of Working Parents

ABSTRACT

This study, using a secondary dataset from the 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce, examines how working parents cope with work demands and family responsibilities. The design is a study on the relationships of flexible work schedule, workplace support, supervisory support, and work-life balance on the well-being of working parents employing the Structural Equation Model (SEM). In this study, employee well-being is an endogenous latent construct. Work-schedule flexibility, workplace support, supervisory support, and work-life balance are latent exogenous constructs. This information will assist social workers in developing more effective intervention efforts in the workplace, with the ultimate goal of increasing the quality of life.     

Medicare Privatization and the Erosion of Retirement Security

This paper describes initiatives to privatize the Medicare program over the last 10 years and the implications of these initiatives for the future of retirement security. Our analysis focuses on the privatization provisions of the Medicare Modernization Act, which is largely designed to benefit the corporate health care sector without containing costs or significantly reducing the threat of rising health care costs to the economic security of current and future retirees. In fact, as designed, the Medicare Modernization Act is likely to increase the threat to retirement security in the years ahead. We conclude with a series of policy alternatives to the neoliberal agenda for the privatization of Medicare.     

Coping Strategies for Victims of Crime: Effects of the Use of Emotion-Focused,Problem-Focused,and Avoidance-Oriented Coping

Assessment of coping strategies of crime victims is an integral function of the ensuing well-being for those victims. This study examines the relationship between coping strategies and levels of distress, social support, and subjective well-being among victims of crime. Interviews were conducted with 175 crime victims. Findings indicate a complex relationship between and among variables. A positive relationship was found between emotion-focused coping and well-being. Additionally, an inverse relationship between avoidance-oriented coping and well-being, social support, and levels of distress was found.     

Developing a measure of celebrity reputation

This study was designed to develop a measure of celebrity reputation and attempt to identify key dimensions for evaluating diverse components of celebrity reputation, including personalities, relationship, appearance, expert abilities, private life management, and reputation. Using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, this study confirmed that the measure applied was both reliable and valid.     

Assets and a wife's marital satisfaction in Korea

Assets have the potential to influence marital happiness and satisfaction. Using the two waves of the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women & Families (KLoWF), this study examines the extent to which assets, debts (negative assets) and their changes are related to a wife's marital happiness and relation satisfaction with her husband, controlling for the socio-economic characteristics of the wife. This study found that financial assets, real assets and their changes have significant associations with a wife's marital happiness and relation satisfaction with her husband. Relatively, income was not strongly related to marital satisfaction. The findings of this study underscore the importance of assets for marital satisfaction.     

The influence of ideational contests of social policy on government welfare efforts

There has been limited empirical research on the interaction between media influence and governments' decision-making in the social policy field. Drawing on a wider study of the ideation of poverty in South Korea, this research tests if policy ideas represented in the media have bottom-up framing effects on policymaking and can be a reliable indicator of the government's social policy efforts. This study analysed the editorials of major Korean daily newspapers, over the period of a decade from 2000 to 2009. The analysis outcomes identified a significant correlation between the extent of poverty discussions in the media and government welfare spending.     

Parental knowledge trajectory and its relationships with parental warmth and adolescent disclosure for Korean adolescents

The purpose of this study was to expand the knowledge base on parental knowledge by assessing a developmental trajectory and factors that might predict parental knowledge among Korean adolescents. To address this purpose, the current study assessed changes in parental knowledge during the transition to adolescence using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). In addition, parental warmth and adolescent disclosure were considered as time-variant predictors of knowledge. The data from Korea Youth Panel Survey (KYPS) of Grade 4 students who were followed for five years was analyzed. The results indicated that there was a significant average increase followed by a slight decrease in parental knowledge over time; that is, the data followed a quadratic trend. Controlling for gender and family structure, the study found that parental warmth and adolescent disclosure had significant effects on parental knowledge over time. The study's results suggest that parental warmth and adolescent disclosure are important elements to be emphasized in prevention and intervention programs that promote parental knowledge.