Choices and Challenges: A Qualitative Exploration of Professional Women's Career Patterns

With the rapid changes occurring in the role of work in women's lives, this research project was designed to examine the career planning, career decision making, and work history of women in both female‐dominated and gender‐neutral careers (U.S. Department of Labor, n.d.‐a). A qualitative analysis of structured interviews identified 6 emerging themes: variations of career/family patterns, career encouragers, career obstacles, personal compromises, career changes, and career decision‐making patterns. Insights for strengthening the exploration process and strategies for supporting career management are presented based on the emerging themes.     

A review of international human resource management: Integration,interrogation, imitation

International human resource management (IHRM) represents an important dimension of international management. Over the past three decades, there has been considerable growth in research and practice in IHRM. While there have been extensive developments in this field, numerous scholars have identified aspects requiring review and revision. Hence, this paper reviews and interrogates the progress in IHRM's theoretical development. The review leads to the conclusion that research in IHRM has tended to emphasize integration over other forms of progress. In response, and in provocation, imitation rather than integration is suggested as an approach for the development of future theoretical and conceptual directions in IHRM.     

Pilot testing the detection of elder abuse through emergency care technicians (DETECT) screening tool: results from the DETECT pilot project

Objective: To pilot test the feasibility of implementing an elder abuse (EA) screening tool (DETECT) designed for medics.

Methods: Testing occurred between September 17th, 2015 and October 26th, 2015. MedStar Mobile Healthcare medics completed the DETECT tool when responding to calls for community-dwelling patients 65 years of age or older.

Results: The DETECT tool was used 1,248 times by 97% of medics responding to an eligible 911 call. Medics responded affirmatively to at least one screening item on 209 of the completed screenings (16.8%). Immediately following the introduction of the DETECT tool, there was an increase of 5.4 (226% above baseline) reports per month (p = 0.0056).

Conclusions: The DETECT tool was easily incorporated into medic’s field-based practice and resulted in an increase in medic generated reports of EA to APS. Future research designed to evaluate the tool’s validity and reliability are warranted.     

How is ‘racism’ understood in literature about black and minority ethnic social work students in Britain? A conceptual review

ABSTRACT

This conceptual review interrogates a body of literature concerned with black and minority ethnic (BME) social work students in Britain since 2008. This period has coincided with an increasing focus on diversity in Higher Education, but also lower prominence being given to race in social work. In social work education, there has been increased attention to the needs and experiences of BME students. While most of this literature acknowledges racism, what constitutes racism and how it can be understood usually remain implicit. This review aimed to explore influential concepts in the literature and the ways these affected how racism is understood and identified. A search was carried out for articles in peer-reviewed academic journals between 2008 and 2018. In this article, we discuss four recurring concepts of racism in this literature: subtle racism, institutional racism, cultural difference and pedagogical solutions. The article analyses the assumptions underpinning these concepts, and the implications for how racism has been understood and investigated in this literature. The subsequent discussion calls for a more reflexive approach and identifies questions that future research could explore, which could lead to improved understandings of racism in social work education.     

Economic and cultural influences on the decision to leave home in Peninsular Malaysia

Although the departure of children from the parental home is an important life-cycle event, few studies have investigated nest-leaving in developing countries. Using retrospective data from the Second Malaysian Family Life Survey, we estimate hazard models of nest-leaving in Peninsular Malaysia. We find that the departure of children, especially sons, responds to economic incentives, including housing costs, family businesses, education, and economic growth, and that ethnic differences in nest-leaving are important. We also find that the median age of departure from home has declined sharply over the past 40 years, a period of rapid social and economic change in Malaysia.     

Looking After Children: implications for social work education

Pilot schemes demonstrated a wide range of areas in which the Looking After Children materials might be used in social work training, both as part of the academic and the practice curriculum.     

A Multifactorial Risk Prioritization Framework for Foodborne Pathogens

We develop a prioritization framework for foodborne risks that considers public health impact as well as three other factors (market impact, consumer risk acceptance and perception, and social sensitivity). Canadian case studies are presented for six pathogen‐food combinations: Campylobacter spp. in chicken; Salmonella spp. in chicken and spinach; Escherichia coli O157 in spinach and beef; and Listeria monocytogenes in ready‐to‐eat meats. Public health impact is measured by disability‐adjusted life years and the cost of illness. Market impact is quantified by the economic importance of the domestic market. Likert‐type scales are used to capture consumer perception and acceptance of risk and social sensitivity to impacts on vulnerable consumer groups and industries. Risk ranking is facilitated through the development of a knowledge database presented in the format of info cards and the use of multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) to aggregate the four factors. Three scenarios representing different stakeholders illustrate the use of MCDA to arrive at rankings of pathogen‐food combinations that reflect different criteria weights. The framework provides a flexible instrument to support policymakers in complex risk prioritization decision making when different stakeholder groups are involved and when multiple pathogen‐food combinations are compared.     

Views of a Structured Assessment Tool for Observing Practice

Assessment of learning in practice through observation is a key part of social work training in the UK. There is no evidence of systematic dissemination or evaluation of observation tools in social work training. The Assessment of Learning in Practice Settings (ALPS-CETL) programme developed observation tools intended to provide comprehensive assessment through the collection of analytic student reflection, alongside commentary from practice assessor, professional colleague and service user. These ALPS tools were further developed to include specific social work assessment criteria. The purpose of this study was to establish student and practice assessor views about how the tools had been used and to understand their effectiveness, or otherwise, in practice. Through analysis of student focus groups, practice assessor interviews and completed ALPS tools, this paper evaluates the use of the social work adapted ALPS tools on an undergraduate social work programme in an English university. The findings of this study support the view that the ALPS tools can be used to promote reflective writing and support students in obtaining formative and summative evidence of their progress. In addition the tools appear to promote a student-led process of observational assessment thereby potentially helping to address the issue of power in the student/assessor relationship.