Remembering Norma (In Memory of Norma C. Lang, 1927–2012)

This tribute to Norma Lang, who died on June 26, 2012, recognizes her contributions to the field of social work and, especially, to social work with groups. Although Lang was a very private person who would not have approved of a tribute, she would have been pleased that a group effort contributed to this article. The group, dubbed the “Toronto Five” by coauthor Patricia Moffat, describes Dr. Norma C. Lang as a matriarch in the social work profession—a complex, strong, capable, and independent pillar with an incredible way of caring for us.     

Advance Care Planning by Unmarried Women of Different Sexual Orientations: The Importance of Social Support

We examined social support as a facilitator of advance care planning in unmarried women of different sexual orientations. Survey participants consisted of 215 women, 90 who reported a preference for partnering with women (WPW) and 125 for partnering with men (WPM). Our findings indicate that the association between social support and advance care planning was mixed. Specifically, social support had no significant impact on executing a will for either WPW or WPM. Among WPW, naming a health-care proxy was associated with reporting a partner who provided social support. For WPM, having a partner for social support was not associated with naming a health-care proxy. These insights help in the understanding of women's advance care planning.     

The use of self-generated identification codes in longitudinal research

Longitudinal research designs involve data collection at multiple time points to measure change over time. Therefore, identification of the same respondents is essential at each time point so that data from the same respondents can be matched for comparison over time. Subject-generated identification codes permit an anonymous means to track respondents over multiple data collection points. This article describes the evolution of subject-generated identification codes, techniques to improve respondent match rates, and the authors' experience using this mechanism in a longitudinal study of staff registered nurses working in hospitals. Challenges, recommendations, and implications for using subject-generated identification codes are discussed.     

Trauma and stress among older adults in the criminal justice system: a review of the literature with implications for social work

The purpose of this article was to review the empirical literature that investigated trauma and stress among older adults in the criminal justice system. Nineteen journal articles published between 1988 and 2010 were identified and extracted via research databases and included mixed age samples of adjudicated older and younger adults (n = 11) or older adult only samples (n = 8). Findings revealed past and current trauma and stress, consequences and/or correlates, and internal and external coping resources among aging offenders. The implications and future directions for gerontological social work, research, and policy with older adults in the criminal justice system are advanced.     

Estimating improvement in prediction with matched case–control designs

When an existing risk prediction model is not sufficiently predictive, additional variables are sought for inclusion in the model. This paper addresses study designs to evaluate the improvement in prediction performance that is gained by adding a new predictor to a risk prediction model. We consider studies that measure the new predictor in a case–control subset of the study cohort, a practice that is common in biomarker research. We ask if matching controls to cases in regards to baseline predictors improves efficiency. A variety of measures of prediction performance are studied. We find through simulation studies that matching improves the efficiency with which most measures are estimated, but can reduce efficiency for some. Efficiency gains are less when more controls per case are included in the study. A method that models the distribution of the new predictor in controls appears to improve estimation efficiency considerably.     

Foxes who want to be hedgehogs: Is ethical pluralism possible in psychology's replication crisis?

In this article, we draw attention to public-private dilemmas among psychologists that make sense of the debates around the replication crisis, citation practices and networking practices. We argue that the values of justice and caring map onto the public sphere and private sphere respectively and create the horns of a dilemma for academics. While bureaucratic justice is a publicly revered value of modernity in psychological research that underpins ethics, validity, reliability and equality of opportunity, ‘caring’ is a more subtle value of traditionalism that runs in parallel and is detected only by our psychological practices. In particular, we argue that it is detected by practices such as disputes between the replicated and their replicators in replication studies (understood as a dramatic counter reality) as to who is more ‘careless’ with procedure; citation (including the self-care of self-citation) as thanksgiving and incantation of powerful others in enchantment rituals, and the system of professional indebtedness that accrues in ‘kinship’ networks – where kinship is understood broadly as adoption into a research group and its network. The clashes between these values can lead to a sense of hypocrisy and irony in academic life, as incommensurate values split between private and public expression. From this position, we delve into Isaiah Berlin's work on incommensurate values to suggest that ethical pluralism, involving more public recognition of the equal but different ethical demands of these values can help overcome these everyday dilemmas in the public sphere.