Compassion Satisfaction,Compassion Fatigue,and Burnout: A Replication Study with Victim Advocates

Abstract

Past research has investigated the rates of compassion satisfaction (CS), compassion fatigue (CF), and burnout within health-care providers. Findings indicate higher levels of CS and lower levels of CF predict lower rates of burnout. The current study extended prior research by replicating past research findings, but with victim advocates. This study enrolled a national sample of 142 victim advocates. A hierarchal linear regression was run to test the research questions. In level 1, years of experience was not significant and only accounted for 1.1% of the variance in burnout. When adding CS, the model became significant (p?<?.001) and CS accounted for an additional 51.8% of the variance. When CF was added to the final model, it was significant (p?<?.001), and accounted for an additional 19.3% of the variance. When comparing the findings to past studies, our findings were similar; however, our study did find that CS and CF accounted for significantly more variance than past studies with health-care providers. Therefore, CS and CF might be greater predictors of burnout in victim advocates than in health-care providers. Future studies should aim to create interventions to increase CS and decrease CF, to reduce burnout.     

The use of client surrogates in determining the reliability of a standardized assessment instrument in multiple, diverse settings

Since its introduction in 1980, the widely-used Addiction Severity Index has been subjected to extensive validity and reliability studies. Reliability procedures have commonly entailed test–retest and multiple judge video reviews, all within controlled environments. The following study uses a method that differs substantially from conventional reliability assessment by employing trained, professional actors as client surrogates to examine the reliability of the instrument when administered in the field, in naturalistic, diverse agency settings. This article details this method, addressing the question, to what extent did this method produce consistent stimuli to enable the measurement of reliability?     

Family support in Romania and the UK: different circumstances,similar challenges

This paper offers reflections on the challenges of refocusing child and family social work services towards family support in Romania and the UK. It analyses the major reforms to Romania's child care legislation introduced in 1997, identifying political, economic and social factors which create both opportunities and obstacles for changing policy and practice in that country. Ways in which intercountry adoption undermines the development of family support services are given particular attention. The insights generated by the discussion are doubled back to shed new light on the continuing difficulties of refocusing services from child protection to family support in the UK. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Peace and Conflict Resolution Organizations in Three Protracted Conflicts: Structures,Resources and Ideology

Guided by organizational and social movement theories, this study compares the structures, resource bases, ideologies, and strategies of nongovernmental organizations engaged in peace and conflict resolution (P/CROs) in three regions with extended violent conflicts: Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine. Qualitative content analysis techniques are used to analyze 27 detailed case reports. We analyze the funding patterns and structural attributes of the P/CROs in our sample, with particular attention to how they obtain fiscal resources and membership in spite of the risks they may experience. We then explore the degree of formalization among P/CROs over time and, finally, we examine the ideological frames that P/CROs use and how these frames relate to their tactics. Throughout the analysis we pay attention to how the political context of each region influences P/CRO behavior.     

Beyond Identity: Queer Values and Community

This essay traces the movement within the LGBT community from relying on identity politics to considering a politics of value as a political and community-forming strategy. In the process, the author uses the work of Michel Foucault to think through how the articulation of shared values might open up personal, communal, and political possibilities otherwise delimited when LGBT people think of themselves within the confines of separate, and often separating, identity categories.     

Consumption Over the Life Cycle

This paper estimates a structural model of optimal life‐cycle consumption expenditures in the presence of realistic labor income uncertainty. We employ synthetic cohort techniques and Consumer Expenditure Survey data to construct average age‐profiles of consumption and income over the working lives of typical households across different education and occupation groups. The model fits the profiles quite well. In addition to providing reasonable estimates of the discount rate and risk aversion, we find that consumer behavior changes strikingly over the life cycle. Young consumers behave as buffer‐stock agents. Around age 40, the typical household starts accumulating liquid assets for retirement and its behavior mimics more closely that of a certainty equivalent consumer. Our methodology provides a natural decomposition of saving and wealth into its precautionary and life‐cycle components.     

Technology,Geography, and Trade

We develop a Ricardian trade model that incorporates realistic geographic features into general equilibrium. It delivers simple structural equations for bilateral trade with parameters relating to absolute advantage, to comparative advantage (promoting trade), and to geographic barriers (resisting it). We estimate the parameters with data on bilateral trade in manufactures, prices, and geography from 19 OECD countries in 1990. We use the model to explore various issues such as the gains from trade, the role of trade in spreading the benefits of new technology, and the effects of tariff reduction.     

The Skilled Wage Premium and the Growth of Small Firms in UK Manufacturing

We document the role of small firms in explaining the growth of the skilled/unskilled wage premium in UK manufacturing over the 1980s. Our major findings are (i) the share of manufacturing employment in small firms' (0–99) employees has risen by 35 percent over this period; (ii) small firms pay more unequal wages than do large firms: the non-manual/manual wage premium is 1.53 in small firms and 1.50 in firms of over 1,500 workers; (iii) the growth in small firms over the period explains about 20 percent of the rise in the skilled/unskilled wage premium.     

GMM with Weak Identification

This paper develops asymptotic distribution theory for GMM estimators and test statistics when some or all of the parameters are weakly identified. General results are obtained and are specialized to two important cases: linear instrumental variables regression and Euler equations estimation of the CCAPM. Numerical results for the CCAPM demonstrate that weak‐identification asymptotics explains the breakdown of conventional GMM procedures documented in previous Monte Carlo studies. Confidence sets immune to weak identification are proposed. We use these results to inform an empirical investigation of various CCAPM specifications; the substantive conclusions reached differ from those obtained using conventional methods.