Motivational Interviewing: An Evidence-Based Practice for Improving Student Practice Skills

Motivational interviewing (MI) is an evidence-based communication method to assist clients in resolving their ambivalence regarding change. With a school emphasis on evidence-based practice and learning outcomes, a social work department implemented a semester-long course on MI. The purpose of this study was to determine baseline skills and evaluate student skill outcomes. Students in 4 sections of the course (N = 137) completed validated pre- and posttest measures of empathy and MI skills to determine skill acquisition. Results indicated that students significantly increased on all skill measures with 85% scoring at beginning proficiency at posttest. Rationale for including MI in social work education and future research such as the need to determine skill transference into fieldwork are discussed.     

Perceptions of and reactions to the homeless: A survey of fourth-grade, high school, and college students in a small Midwestern community

A total of 459 fourth-graders, high school students, and undergraduates completed a Homelessness Questionnaire developed for use in this study. Although participants generally expressed positive and supportive attitudes toward the homeless, attributing homelessness to either social maladjustment (e.g., drug problem) or negative characteristics (e.g., laziness) within the homeless was positively associated with “fear of and anger toward the homeless” for all groups of participants. In addition, perceptions of and reactions to the homeless were influenced by both the participants’ gender and age group. Although high school and college students’ interest in helping the homeless was associated with various attitudes and reactions (e.g., feelings of sympathylsupport), their indication that they had ever helped homeless people (either directly or indirectly) was consistently associated only with the acknowledgement that their mother and father had ever helped homeless people (either directly or indirectly). Among these older participants, homelessness in the United States was rated as a more serious problem at the end of the questionnaire than at the beginning.     

Longitudinal non-euclidean networks: Applying Galileo

This article discusses the theoretical utility of using a non-Euclidean spatial manifold when describing social networks. It proposes that a variant of metric MDS, the Galileo System, can be particularly useful in analyzing social networks and their changes over time, partially because it does not impose Euclidean assumptions on the data. Two sets of longitudinal network data are examined with Galileo. One is the American air traffic network from 1968–1981. The other is ten groups engaged in a computer conference over a 24 month period. In both cases, the results indicate that a Riemannian spatial manifold is required to describe the network structure. Consistent theoretically valid results based upon the non-Euclidean components of spatial manifold are obtained. Further, they could be readily explained by exogenous factors. The implications of these results for network analysis are discussed.     

On Get Out and the Problem of Racialized Aliveness

In this short article, I explore Jordan Peele’s 2017 film Get Out as a compelling illustration of racialization as an attack on human “aliveness.” I argue that Peele’s film, a new kind of zombie narrative, urges psychosocial transformation not only through the radically inventive acts of its creatively resurrected protagonist, Chris, but also through its own subversive collaboration with the spectator.     

When She Earns More Than He Does: A Longitudinal Study of Dual‐Earner Couples

In a random sample of 286 full‐time‐employed dual‐earner couples, we tested 3 competing hypotheses: when wives earn more than their husbands, (a) each partner's marital‐role quality (MRQ) decreases; (b) his MRQ increases, whereas effects on her MRQ are mixed; and (c) relationships vary with gender‐role beliefs (i.e., gender‐role ideology and subjective rewards of salary). We conceptualized salary as a couple‐level predictor with 4 components, 2 time varying and 2 time invariant, and estimated the relationship between 2 time‐varying components and MRQ. Women's MRQ was not significantly related to change in relative earnings. However, among men, the relationship varied by salary rewards.     

Perceptions of and Reactions to the Homeless: A Survey of Fourth-Grade,High School,and College Students in a Small Midwestern Community

A total of 459 fourth-graders, high school students, and undergraduates completed a Homelessness Questionnaire developed for use in this study. Although participants generally expressed positive and supportive attitudes toward the homeless, attributing homelessness to either social maladjustment (e.g., drug problem) or negative characteristics (e.g., laziness) within the homeless was positively associated with “fear of and anger toward the homeless” for all groups of participants. In addition, perceptions of and reactions to the homeless were influenced by both the participants’ gender and age group. Although high school and college students’ interest in helping the homeless was associated with various attitudes and reactions (e.g., feelings of sympathy/support), their indication that they had ever helped homeless people (either directly or indirectly) was consistently associated only with the acknowledgment that their mother and father had ever helped homeless people (either directly or indirectly). Among these older participants, homelessness in the United States was rated as a more serious problem at the end of the questionnaire than at the beginning.     

New Indices of Money Supply and the Flexible Laurent Demand System

The article begins by surveying the existing results on the new Divisia monetary aggregates. Charts display the differences in behavior between the Divisia aggregates and the Federal Reserve's official simple-sum monetary aggregates. The article then compares system-wide fit for the simple-sum and Divisia monetary aggregates when used as data in the joint estimation of a system of demand equations. The demand system is derived from a new Laurent expansion approximation to the reciprocal indirect utility function. The Laurent expansion provides a better-behaved remainder term than that of the more commonly used Taylor series. The results favor the Divisia aggregates.     

The effects of climate change on the geography and timing of human mobility

Human mobility over different distances and time scales has long been associated with environmental change, and the idea of climate change is now affecting movement in new ways. In this paper, we discuss three cases from the South Pacific to explain the ways anticipated climate futures are changing mobility in the present. First, we examine village relocation in response to coastal erosion and inundation in Fiji, drawing on our study of the unfolding experience of Narikoso village in Kadavu Province. In contrast to this spatially constrained process of permanent relocation, we examine the spatially extended yet temporally constrained seasonal migrant worker programme that aims to support economic development in the Pacific Islands by providing temporary work visas in Australia and New Zealand. Finally, we examine the likely effects of proposed open labour markets as a means to promote climate change adaptation, through a study of the analogous example of Niuean migration to New Zealand which has resulted in both permanent migration and a slow circulation of people between both countries. Across these examples, we highlight emerging and potentially constructive ways in which climate change is altering the spatio-temporal patterns and rhythms of mobility.     

Private versus public old-age security

We directly compare two institutions, a family compact—a parent makes a transfer to her parent in anticipation of a possible future gift from her children—with a pay-as-you-go, public pension system, in a life cycle model with endogenous fertility wherein children are valued both as consumption and investment goods. Absent intragenerational heterogeneity, we show that a benevolent government has no welfare justification for introducing public pensions alongside thriving family compacts since the former is associated with inefficiently low fertility. This result hinges critically on a fiscal externality—the inability of middle age agents to internalize the impact of their fertility decisions on old-age transfers under a public pension system. With homogeneous agents, a strong-enough negative aggregate shock to middle-age incomes destroys all family compacts, and in such a setting, an optimal public pension system cannot enter. This suggests the raison d’être for social security must lie outside of its function as a pension system—specifically its redistributive function which emerges with heterogeneous agents. In a simple modification of our benchmark model—one that allows for idiosyncratic frictions to compact formation such as differences in infertility/mating status—a welfare-enhancing role for a public pension system emerges; such systems may flourish even when family compacts cannot.     

Barriers to antenatal psychosocial assessment and depression screening in private hospital settings

Problem

The evidence of benefit for antenatal psychosocial assessment and depression screening has been sufficient to lead the implementation of screening in public hospitals in all states of Australia. Details of the implementation of perinatal screening in private obstetric settings is less well known.