Celiac disease in North America: the disabling experience

Diagnosed as having celiac disease during my final year of undergraduate studies at McGill University, in the spring of 2005, my identity and lifestyle have undergone a transformative process. In this article I examine my experience of having celiac disease post-diagnosis, using the social model of disability framework. I examine the barriers that persons having celiac disease experience, both generally and personally. At the general level I explore the parallels between the experience of having celiac disease and the experience of being disabled: culturally, environmentally and financially. At the personal level I recount the emotional experience of being disabled.     

All Our Stuff: Families and Consumption

In this article, we provide a different lens through which to understand how we evaluate family relationships. There is general consensus that family relationships, whether between adults or between parents and children, should be rooted in love and caring. But how do we evaluate love and care? We review of literature that shows that consumption and commodities are key criteria through which we determine the quantity and quality of the love and care in family relationships.     

MODEL SELECTION FOR PENALIZED SPLINE SMOOTHING USING AKAIKE INFORMATION CRITERIA

Two different forms of Akaike's information criterion (AIC) are compared for selecting the smooth terms in penalized spline additive mixed models. The conditional AIC (cAIC) has been used traditionally as a criterion for both estimating penalty parameters and selecting covariates in smoothing, and is based on the conditional likelihood given the smooth mean and on the effective degrees of freedom for a model fit. By comparison, the marginal AIC (mAIC) is based on the marginal likelihood from the mixed‐model formulation of penalized splines which has recently become popular for estimating smoothing parameters. To the best of the authors' knowledge, the use of mAIC for selecting covariates for smoothing in additive models is new. In the competing models considered for selection, covariates may have a nonlinear effect on the response, with the possibility of group‐specific curves. Simulations are used to compare the performance of cAIC and mAIC in model selection settings that have correlated and hierarchical smooth terms. In moderately large samples, both formulations of AIC perform extremely well at detecting the function that generated the data. The mAIC does better for simple functions, whereas the cAIC is more sensitive to detecting a true model that has complex and hierarchical terms.     

Counselor Turnover in Substance Abuse Treatment Centers: An Organizational-Level Analysis

This article draws on institutional and ecological perspectives on work and organizations to develop a workplace level model of variation in voluntary counselor turnover rates across privately funded substance abuse treatment centers in the United States. Results show that participatory management structures reduce turnover rates principally by promoting organizational commitment. The analysis also tests hypotheses regarding the effects on turnover rates of other relevant theoretic domains of treatment center structure and organization. We discuss theoretical implications of the findings and suggest directions for future research.     

Ethical Issues in Disaster Research: Lessons from Hurricane Katrina

Conducting research in the wake of a catastrophic event imposes the dual responsibilities on researchers of protecting the rights of the survivors as research subjects, while also ensuring research quality and the dissemination and application of findings. This article, based partially on the authors’ experiences of conducting research in school districts following Hurricane Katrina, examines the ethical issues that arise when working with survivors, reticent organizations, and institutional review boards. Challenges experienced by researchers concerning access, informed consent, confidentiality, subject compensation, and enlisting the assistance of stressed institutions are described. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0036566000. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.     

A Primer for Social Worker Researchers on How to Conduct a Multinomial Logistic Regression

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to explain how to conduct a multinomial logistic regression (MLR) to increase its usage among social work researchers. A challenge for social work researchers carrying out practice-based research is to incorporate statistical analyses that are comprehensible to clinicians. Another challenge is that categorical variables, as opposed to continuous, commonly occur in clinical settings, yet their usage is seldom taught in social work education. This article will discuss MLR, a categorical data analysis used when there are three or more unordered categories in the outcome variable. Multinomial logistic regression determines differences across client groups, and can be useful in assessment, case planning, and examination of outcomes.     

Teaching Note—Infusing Social Justice Into Doctoral Programs of Social Welfare: An Incremental Approach

This article describes an effort to further infuse social justice education into doctoral programs in social welfare. It articulates the rationale and tactical approaches for aligning mission statements with the operational realities of university contexts. Within 1 school of social work, doctoral students with diverse orientations to social justice came together to articulate a vision for social justice education that expanded the educational contract between students and the institution by enhancing their respective opportunities and responsibilities in the areas of scholarship, teaching, and service. This article shares 30 learning objectives emergent from an incremental change process for enhancing social justice education at the doctoral level and reflects on the strengths and limitations of this approach to advancing social justice priorities.     

“No One Talked About It”: Social Work Field Placements and Sexual Harassment

ABSTRACT

Increasing student safety is an important part of Title IX compliance for colleges and universities. Sexual harassment is an all too common experience for college students, although little is known about incidences in social work field placements. The extent of training and preparation received by students from social work program and field instructors is also unknown. This study explores the extent of training and knowledge about sexual harassment in social work field placements from a sample of 535 BSW and MSW students. Only 51% of social work students received training about sexual harassment, with 21% receiving training from their school’s field office. Participants who had received training felt more prepared to address safety concerns in field. Implications for social work education are discussed.     

Using Concept Mapping to Promote Community Building: The African American Initiative at Roseland

ABSTRACT

While many organizations recognize the value of community building, they often encounter difficulty in actualizing projects and developing tangible results. This article presents how a planning and evaluation method known as concept mapping was used to drive a community building effort by a large not-for-profit organization in Chicago around the issue of at-risk African American male youth. This work grew out of a grant related to the needs of African American families, called the African American Initiative, which was funded by the United Way of Metropolitan Chicago. The article describes the first phase of the African American Initiative at Roseland, and lessons learned. Primarily, this study was able to generate a conceptual framework of problems facing African American male youth, which was used to revise previously defined outcomes and also create new ones. In addition, use of concept mapping to drive community building generated reflection on intended and unintended benefits. At the same time, challenges around this approach demonstrate the need for continued research.