Meeting the Unique Needs of Grandparent-Headed Families Using a Community-University Interdisciplinary Model

An interdisciplinary initiative engaging graduate students and faculty from education, social work, and physics was developed to address the unique needs of grandparent-headed families. The goal of this qualitative study was to deepen the current knowledge base about the challenges and benefits of using an interdisciplinary, collaborative community-university model to meet the unique needs of grandparent-headed families. Findings are discussed in terms of literature relevant to advancing grandparent-headed families’ educational progress and health with an emphasis on the interprofessional collaborative process.     

What Kinds of Places Attract and Sustain Amish Populations?

The Amish are one of the fastest growing ethnoreligious groups in rural America. They are not only growing in historic settlements but are also starting new settlements. This study synthesizes and tests hypotheses about Amish migration destinations and settlement sustainability. Specifically, hypotheses address factors related to population, agriculture, and proximity to other Amish. Findings suggest that the locations Amish settle have several defining characteristics including: low population density, nonmetropolitan county designation, context conducive to small‐scale farming (e.g., low farm acreage price, moderately rolling hills), vicinity to a small commercial center, low to negative population growth, and proximity to an existing Amish settlement. Some characteristics are showing increasing flexibility, such as a small‐scale farming context and proximity to a commercial center. Conversely, settling in areas with a growing population or at a distance from another Amish settlement contributes to a higher likelihood of community dissolution.     

Responding to remediation and gatekeeping challenges in supervision

Thirty faculty in randomly selected Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education (COAMFTE) programs representing four geographical regions of the United States were asked to respond to a survey that included seven brief vignettes depicting gatekeeping and remediation challenges supervisors may face when working with therapists-in-training. Research participants were asked to select from among a range of 17 response options and were also asked to provide a rationale for the selection of their responses. The response rate for the mailed survey was 34%. Telephone interviews were conducted with three respondents who had provided especially detailed responses to the open-ended portions of the mailed survey and who also volunteered to be questioned regarding how supervision decisions are made. Results support the conclusion that COAMFTE faculty take their gatekeeping function seriously as they balance commitments to multiple stakeholders. When presented with hypothetical "bare-bones" vignettes, the supervisors in our study consistently recommended talking with the student in order to more fully understand the context of the student's performance problem before deciding how to proceed. Supervisors recommended a variety of remediation efforts, but reserved the most severe consequences, such as probation, dismissal, and filing an ethics complaint, for the vignette involving dishonesty and lack of personal integrity.     

The Role of Industry Studies and Public Policies in Production and Operations Management

The research domain Industry Studies and Public Policy (IS&PP) seeks to further our understanding of industrial practices and managerial challenges by explicitly considering contextual details in the design and interpretation of research studies. These details can be vital considerations when shaping public policies. This article reviews a sample of IS&PP publications and analyzes the content of 180 selected papers—85 papers published in the Production and Operations Management (POM) journal and 95 papers published in related journals between 1992 and 2014. Our analysis of the sample dataset and examination of exemplar papers provide four findings. First, studies in different industries emphasize different themes of operational decisions. This difference in emphasis reveals potential research opportunities, especially for conducting inter‐industry studies. Second, our analysis reveals a shift in focus over time. Earlier studies contain a mix of benchmarks and inter‐industry comparisons, while later studies tend to be context‐specific, intra‐industry studies. Third, we report on empirics → analytics → empirics cycles that reveal gaps for building novel theories. Finally, we observe that the relationship between POM decisions and public policy is bi‐directional. This highlights the need to jointly examine operational decisions with policy considerations, especially in information goods, healthcare, sustainable operations and high‐tech manufacturing industries.     

Trends in College Binge Drinking During a Period of Increased Prevention Efforts: Findings from 4 Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study Surveys: 1993–2001

Abstract

The 2001 Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study surveyed students at 119 4-year colleges that participated in the 1993, 1997, and 1999 studies. Responses in the 4 survey years were compared to determine trends in heavy alcohol use, alcohol-related problems, and encounters with college and community prevention efforts. In 2001, approximately 2 in 5 (44.4%) college students reported binge drinking, a rate almost identical to rates in the previous 3 surveys. Very little change in overall binge drinking occurred at the individual college level. The percentages of abstainers and frequent binge drinkers increased, a polarization of drinking behavior first noted in 1997. A sharp rise in frequent binge drinking was noted among students attending all-women's colleges. Other significant changes included increases in immoderate drinking and harm among drinkers. More students lived in substance-free housing and encountered college educational efforts and sanctions resulting from their alcohol use.     

The Clubhouse Model of Community Support for Adults with Mental Illness: An Emerging Opportunity for Social Work Education

The Clubhouse Model of community support is enjoying renewed interest among social workers and social work educators concerned with alternatives to traditional forms of community mental health treatment and rehabilitation. This article describes the model and its underlying congruence with social work theory and practice. Findings of the National Task Analysis Study of Social Work Practice are presented that suggest an increasingly important role for social workers and social work educators in the continued growth of this practice model.     

Institutional Fads and the Medicalization of Drug Addiction

The purpose of this article is to historically review biologically based explanations of drug addiction to demonstrate the increased utility of the institutional fads approach in understanding modern medicalization. Our examination reveals that the medicalization of drug addiction has been long in the making, traveling through numerous fads that have attributed drug addiction to various biological matter, including body type or constitution, genetics, psychopathology, and neuroscience or brain imaging. These explanations follow a common trajectory (emerging, surging, and purging) in institutional fad research. Moreover, our analysis indicates that while scientific and technological developments have shaped these approaches’ influence and pathways, so too have political actors and institutional agendas. We begin by discussing how an institutional fads approach enables an improved understanding of the medicalization of drug addiction – a form of deviance – followed by a critique of four main biological explanations: body constitution, genetics, psychopathology, and brain chemistry/imaging. Our review pinpoints the specific narratives advanced and the academic and political interests at work. In doing so, it exposes the limitations of medicalizing one of the nation’s oldest social problems.     

Catanova for multidimensional contingency tables: Nominal-scale response

This paper extends an analysis of variance for categorical data (CATANOVA) procedure to multidimensional contingency tables involving several factors and a response variable measured on a nominal scale. Using an appropriate measure of total variation for multinomial data, partial and multiple association measures are developed as R² quantities which parallel the analogous statistics in multiple linear regression for quantitative data. In addition, test statistics are derived in terms of these R² criteria. Finally, this CATANOVA approach is illustrated within the context of 2 three-way contingency table from a multicenter clinicaltrial.