The Impact of Social Work Education: A Personal Construct Reconceptualization

Abstract

Despite educators' and practitioners' assumptions, research on the professional socialization of social work students has generally failed to document an impact of the educational process and has consequently hampered informed debate on the nature, outcome, and processes of social work education. In this paper the impact of social work education on the individual is reconceptualized in terms of Kelly's personal construct theory, which posits the individual in social work education as personally construing the social work systems of meaning. This conceptualization formed the basis of a cross-sectional study of students at the beginning, middle, and end of social work education. The comparison showed that graduating students used a repertoire of more abstract social work constructs. They also showed an understanding of social work and its role in the world consistent with that articulated by the department in which they completed their professional education. However, a disjuncture was noted between the graduates' understanding of social work and its role in the world (social change) and the constructs they used to understand situations encountered by social workers. Possible reasons for this disjuncture are suggested.     

Exploratory Evaluation of a School-Based Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Program

Internationally, efficacy studies of school-based child sexual abuse prevention programs display a series of methodological shortcomings. Few studies include adolescent participants, recording of disclosures has been inconsistent, and no studies to date have assessed presenter adherence to program protocols or summated the costs of program implementation. A pretest–posttest waitlist control design was used to evaluate the Tweenees program delivered to grade 6 (n?=?88) and grade 7/8 students (n?=?117) compared to a control (n?=?185). Outcome measures included a knowledge/skills questionnaire, systematic coding of disclosures, and video interaction analysis of lessons. Costs were calculated per student, class, and school. Adolescents made small knowledge and skills gains indicating a program ceiling effect. Implementation analysis suggests low levels of adult control facilitated disclosures. Program costs were relatively inexpensive. Recommendations are made for future research.     

Evaluating Group Work within a Summer Camp Intervention for Children and Adolescents with Asthma

Findings suggest that residential camps and group work within camps are highly valued by children and their parents. Children predominantly valued recreational and educational aspects of camp programming whereas parents emphasized appreciation for the safety that a condition-specific camp can offer a child with illness. Within the camp program, group work and peer support were integrally provided along with clinical monitoring and health teaching. A psychoeducational approach was implemented in which group participants engaged in sessions addressing self-care strategies and constructive ways to integrate childhood asthma in daily life. Participants identified the residential camp setting as a promising environment for group work among children and adolescents with asthma. Implications and recommendations are discussed.     

Adult obesity prevalence and state policymaking in the United States: Is problem severity associated with more policies?

This study explores the relationship between adult obesity prevalence and obesity-related state policymaking in the United States. We examine whether 2009 obesity prevalence and the change in prevalence between 2000 and 2009 are associated with obesity-related state laws and regulations introduced or enacted between 2009 and 2011. Policies that exclusively target youth are eliminated from our analysis. Adult obesity prevalence increased in all 50 states over the decade studied, with a slight decrease in Washington, DC. Increases in prevalence are significantly associated with fewer policies in the South and Midwest Census regions and the East North Central and South Atlantic Census divisions. Findings suggest the need for greater advocacy and an opportunity for obesity to rise on state policy agendas.     

A Case Study of Sample Design for Longitudinal Research: Young Lives

This paper presents a case study to illustrate the range of decisions involved in designing a sampling strategy for a complex, longitudinal research study. It is based on experience from the Young Lives project and identifies the approaches used to sample children for longitudinal follow‐up in four less developed countries (LDCs). The rationale for decisions made and the resulting benefits, and limitations, of the approaches adopted are discussed. Of particular importance is the choice of sampling approach to yield useful analysis; specific examples are presented of how this informed the design of the Young Lives sampling strategy.     

Public opinion towards gambling and gambling regulation in Australia

In recent years, public opinion towards gambling has become a more important factor in shaping public policy. Using a national public opinion survey conducted in Australia in 2011, this paper examines public opinion towards gambling in general and towards the government regulation of gambling in particular. Australia is an important case study because of the internationally high prevalence of gambling among the public, combined with a strong regulatory framework. Public opinion is measured by a reduced form of a scale first developed in Britain. The results confirm the generally negative views that the public holds towards gambling, which have been found internationally. In addition, the Australian public is open to the introduction of further restrictions on gambling. Overall, the public views the liberalization of gambling as having moved as far as most citizens find acceptable; to meet public expectations, future policies need to address more adequately the negative social consequences associated with problem gambling.     

Being in the City: The Sociology of Urban Experiences

Though urban sociologists tend to study the growth and development of cities, there is a venerable yet often marginalized tradition that addresses the embodied experience of urban life. Studies of urban experiences have recently begun to flourish due, in part, to the rise of sensory scholarship. Recognizing the connections between urban experiences and sensory stimulations provides nuanced ways to explore the actions and interactions between individuals and their relationships to and with urban places. Relying on a diverse literature of recent studies that focus on cities as dense sensory environments, this article shows the significance of studying city life at the experiential and sensory levels. First, a few seminal early works are discussed, with specific emphasis on Georg Simmel. Then, each of the five bodily senses and their correlated sensescapes – seescapes, soundscapes, smellscapes, tastescapes, and touchscapes – are presented in order to show individuals and groups use their senses to experience and make sense of the city. The article concludes with a brief discussion of methods and few suggestions to encourage future analyses of the everyday embodied and emplaced practices and interpretations of being in the city.     

Imputation of MĀori Descent for Electoral Calculations in New Zealand

The New Zealand Government Statistician decided that, for electoral purposes, Statistics New Zealand should impute Māori–descent status for individuals not responding Yes or No to theMāori–descent question in the 1996 Census of Population and Dwellings. Imputation provides a sounder basis for calculating electoral populations than the approach used in 1994, when all who had not answered clearly Yes or No in the 1991 Census were effectively allocated to non–Māori descent. For the purposes of imputation, the key variables related to the Māori–descent variable were identified using a statistical technique called CHAID (Chisquared Automatic Interaction Detector). Subgroups were created by cross–classification across five variables—island, iwi, Māori ethnic group, Māori–descent composition of the rest of the household, and age group. Within each subgroup, the proportion who responded Yes or No for Māori descent was used to allocate the remainder to Yes or No. The imputation increased the proportion allocated to Māori descent from 16.0% to 17.4% of the total population. However, the proportion of the population imputed to Māori descent was smaller than the proportion who specified Māori descent originally.     

Modelling non-response in the National Child Development Study

Summary.  There is widespread concern that the cumulative effects of the non-response that is bound to affect any long-running longitudinal study will lead to mistaken inferences about change. We focus on the National Child Development Study and show how non-response has accumulated over time. We distinguish between attrition and wave non-response and show how these two kinds of non-response can be related to a set of explanatory variables. We model the discrete time hazard of non-response and also fit a set of multinomial logistic regressions to the probabilities of different kinds of non-response at a particular sweep. We find that the best predictors of non-response at any sweep are generally variables that are measured at the previous sweep but, although non-response is systematic, much of the variation in it remains unexplained by our models. We consider the implications of our results for both design and analysis.     

Using number of failed contact attempts to adjust for non-ignorable non-response

Summary.  We present a general method of adjustment for non-ignorable non-response in studies where one or more further attempts are made to contact initial non-responders. A logistic regression model relates the probability of response at each contact attempt to covariates and outcomes of interest. We assume that the effect of these covariates and outcomes on the probability of response is the same at all contact attempts. Knowledge of the number of contact attempts enables estimation of the model by using only information from the respondents and the number of non-responders. Three approaches for fitting the response models and estimating parameters of substantive interest and their standard errors are compared: a modified conditional likelihood method in which the fitted inverse probabilities of response are used in weighted analyses for the outcomes of interest, an EM procedure with the Louis formula and a Bayesian approach using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. We further propose the creation of several sets of weights to incorporate uncertainty in the probability weights in subsequent analyses. Our methods are applied as a sensitivity analysis to a postal survey of symptoms in Persian Gulf War veterans and other servicemen.