Social Workers' Implementation of Client Participation: What Factors Make the Difference?

ABSTRACT

Client participation is both a value and a strategy in social work, involving clients in decisions influencing their lives. Nevertheless, the factors encouraging its use by social workers in social services have received little research attention. This article reports on a study drawing on Goal Commitment Theory to examine, for the first time, four categories of variables that might predict its implementation: background variables (intervention method, age, experience, education, supervision); personal resources (self-esteem, mastery); organizational variables (superiors' support, organizational commitment); and situational factors (previous client participation, perception of client participation).

A sample of 661 Israeli social workers completed questionnaires. Hierarchical regression analysis and t-tests revealed that intervention method, mastery, superiors' support, and both situational variables contributed significantly to explaining the variance in client participation. Moreover, social workers valued client participation significantly more than they used it. The implications for researchers and professionals in social services are discussed. Proper training could increase social workers' awareness of client participation and provide tools for implementation. Policy makers should set standards for its use and evaluation, and require its inclusion in all interventions. Further research investigating clients and managers of social services could provide a broader picture of the factors impacting client participation.     

Binge drinking: not the word of choice

Educators and researchers strive to use terms that reflect a replicable measure of behavior. A term commonly used to describe drinking of a problematic nature is binge drinking. Binge drinking defines behavior by a number of drinks of an alcoholic beverage consumed in a space of time. The authors argue that the term does not describe drinking behavior that students believe is problematic. They claim that students define problem drinking not in terms of quantity, but rather by the outcome (and occasionally by frequency), and attribute different negative connotations to the term binge. They suggest using a term that has shared meaning with students, such as dangerous drinking, to describe the drinking behavior that results in undesirable or unintended consequences.     

Bayesian binary quantile regression for the analysis of Bachelor-to-Master transition

The multi-cycle organization of modern university systems stimulates the interest in studying the progression to higher level degree courses during the academic career. In particular, after the achievement of the first level qualification (Bachelor degree), students have to decide whether to continue their university studies, by enrolling in a second level (Master) programme, or to conclude their training experience. In this work we propose a binary quantile regression (BQR) approach to analyse the Bachelor-to-Master transition phenomenon with the adoption of the Bayesian inferential perspective. In addition to the traditional predictors of academic outcomes, such as the personal characteristics and the field of study, different aspects of student's performance are considered. Moreover, the role of a new contextual variable, representing the type of university regulations experienced during the academic path, is investigated. The utility of the Bayesian BQR to characterize the non-continuation decision after the first cycle studies is illustrated with an application to administrative data of Bachelor graduates at the School of Economics of Sapienza University of Rome. The method favourably compares with more conventional model specifications concerning the conditional mean of the binary response.     

Neoliberal transitions: the Santiago general cemetery and the affective economies of counter-revolution

Anchored in the Santiago General Cemetery, this essay analyses the management of revolutionary memory under neoliberalism. Juxtaposing the gravesites of Salvador Allende and Víctor Jara, I theorise the gendered and racialised processes through which collective dreams for justice – and even radical politics themselves – come to be co-opted under neoliberal capitalism. If in Jara’s grave we see the state performing the part of the hyper-masculine disciplinarian father, I argue, in Allende’s grave we witness the state as the begrudgingly accepting father, ready to take in the repentant children back into the nation, in exchange for obedience. Finally, I turn to alternative memorialisation practices performed by the nation’s discontents, and namely ongoing struggles for collective self-determination and decolonisation. Ultimately, I situate critiques of neoliberalism in Chile in dialogue with intersectional queer and transnational feminist scholarship on the seductive logics of neoliberalism – and emergent forms of justice that appear just beyond its purview.     

Group selection for production yield among k manufacturing lines

Producing qualified items or products is essential to meet the requirement preset by customers. Evaluation and selection of desired manufacturing lines become challenging tasks for decision makers. Production yield is one of the important factors in measuring production performance. The goal of this paper is to screen a group of manufacturing lines and identify the best one with the highest yield. For the production lines with extremely low fraction of defectives, the yield index, S_pk, is an efficient indicator for quality level. This paper considers the production selection problem by using S_pk to compare k (k>2) manufacturing lines. A subset is constructed to contain the production lines with the highest yield. A systematic approach of test order k compares selected pairs of manufacturing lines along with the Bonferroni method is proposed to solve this problem. Each pair of production yields is compared by taking ratio. The paper provides critical values and required sample sizes of the group selection procedure. An application example on evaluating four power inductor productions is presented to illustrate the practicality of the proposed approach.     

Lower confidence bounds as precision measure for truncated processes

Process capability index C_p has been the most popular one used in the manufacturing industry to provide numerical measures on process precision. For normally distributed processes with automatic fully inspections, the inspected processes follow truncated normal distributions. In this article, we provide the formulae of moments used for the Edgeworth approximation on the precision measurement C_p for truncated normally distributed processes. Based on the developed moments, lower confidence bounds with various sample sizes and confidence levels are provided and tabulated. Consequently, practitioners can use lower confidence bounds to determine whether their manufacturing processes are capable of preset precision requirements.     

Evaluation of the importance of ornamental plants for pollinators in urban and suburban areas in Stuttgart,Germany

Urban Ecosystems - Urban landscapes are often characterized by a wide range of diverse flowering plants consisting of native and exotic plants. These flower-rich habitats have proven to be...     

Model Migration Schedules: Three Alternative Linear Parameter Estimation Methods

ABSTRACT

Observed schedules of migration rates exhibit strong regularities in age patterns. These regularities may be captured and represented by a mathematical expression known as the multiexponential model migration schedule. Fitting this function to empirical data requires non-linear regression methods and often some experimentation with alternative initial estimates of the parameters. Simpler, linear methods of estimation are adequate for most applications. These may be carried out with hand calculators or simple spreadsheet-based calculations on the computer. Such methods are studied and appear to perform satisfactorily.     

The Centenarian Question: Old-Age Mortality in the Soviet Union, 1897 to 1970

There is a long history of claims of extraordinary longevity among the populations of the Soviet Union, and the Russian Empire before it, especially in the Caucasus region. Exceptionally high proportions of centenarians have been reported in the censuses, and much publicity has accompanied the announcements of ‘super-centenarians’ living well beyond 150 years. The major question regarding this phenomenon of supposed extraordinary longevity is whether the claims are, indeed, true or, rather, the result of age exaggeration. This paper examines the available Russian and Soviet census and mortality data from 1897 to 1970 in order to assess Soviet claims of extraordinary numbers of centenarians. A detailed analysis of age overstatement in the census data and death registration statistics shows that the long history of longevity claims goes hand in hand with a long history of age overstatement. The extraordinary longevity observed in the Soviet Union is in all likelihood the result of that age overstatement.     

Lone Mother‐led Families: Exemplifying the Structuring of Social Inequality

Almost 25% of Canadian families are headed by a lone parent (Jensen 2003) and over 90% of poor lone parents are women (National Council of Welfare 2002). In Canada lone mother‐led families have been significantly impacted by two major and interrelated changes in Canada; welfare reforms that resulted in the elimination of a separate family benefit and includes the imposition of a work requirement combined with dramatic changes to the labor market. The reduction of welfare benefits and the increase in precarious or non‐standard work have created a high level of social jeopardy for lone mothers and their children. This paper explores the different realms of life where lone‐mothers are particularly disadvantaged and argues that governments need to clearly identify areas of policy intersection before the inequalities that lone mother‐led families face can be ameliorated.