The Victim of Rape: WHAT Progress?

This article utilizes a recent statement made by a member of the judiciary, in which female 'hitch-hikers' are admonished on the basis that such behaviour is likely to provoke a sexual assault. The attitudes, recent research and genesis of sex-role stereotypes are explored in order to elucidate the rationale underlying this statement. Particular attention is drawn to the fact that such statements are addressed exclusively to females.     

An educational model for child welfare practice with English-speaking Caribbean families

Implemented in New York City, the Child Welfare Fellowship Project is an international collaboration between social work educators in the United States and Jamaica, the West Indies, the public child welfare agency, and selected community-based agencies. This model educational program prepared selected Masters of Social Work (MSW) Fellowship students for exemplary child welfare practice with English-speaking Caribbean families by providing enhanced programs designed to support culturally competent skill development and a preventive approach to child welfare practice. These educational enhancements, combined with academic course work, increased professionalism, self-efficacy, and culturally competent skill development among participants and averted foster care placement for families seen over the duration of the project.     

Understanding parental leave experiences: connecting the dots with a multiple-methods approach

ABSTRACT

This research note draws selected findings from a multiple-methods study conducted in partnership with a large public-sector employer in Portland, OR to describe the added value of this approach for research translation. We focus on how our study of a newly implemented paid parental leave policy can translate to actionable steps for two important end-users: employers and policymakers. Using administrative records (N?=?579), a countywide employee survey (N?=?137 leave-takers) and focus groups (N?=?35), we describe how each data source contributes important and unique information about how the policy’s implementation affected diverse employees. We find gender differences in how employees changed leave-taking in response to the policy, and describe the critical but nuanced role that supervisors play. Working with employers and policymakers to develop and implement thoughtful policies will help to ensure equitable distribution of the benefits of paid leave policies.     

Virtual Communities of Practice in Social Group Work Education

Virtual communities of practice are an international phenomenon in social work around the world. However, they are rare in social work in the United States. This article describes an online community, the Social Group Work Commons, designed to complement courses in social group work. Using Web 2.0 Internet tools, such as blogs, discussion boards, and chats, the developers employed group work skills to help students establish a vehicle for mutual support as students struggled to integrate course content in their field placements. Examples from course blogs indicate students became increasingly intimate in their online exchanges over time and readily provided each other support in applying course content in their practice.     

A survey of recent research on race and residential location

This article reviews the post-1975 theoretical and empirical research on race and residential location in metropolitan areas of the United States. We interrelate the main themes of recent research, focusing on the causes and consequences of racial residential segregation. Racial prejudice and discrimination, black suburbanization, school segregation, labor market discrimination, and city/surburban environmental differentials are among the issues examined.     

Valuation of education and crime neighborhood characteristics through hedonic housing prices

This article studies households' valuation of neighborhood amenities through analysis of housing as a bundle of structural and neighborhood characteristics. Using statistical techniques, hedonic prices, or incremental values in the market, can be imputed to each element of the bundle. Twelve variables describe neighborhood crime; twenty-one variables describe neighborhood schools. Together with structural variables, they significantly and substantially explain house prices in the Baltimore metropolitan area. The technique is also shown to provide a market framework for approximating the benefits of localized neighborhood improvements.The authors wish to thank David Puryear, Ralph Taylor, and the two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. We also thank Central Maryland Multiple Listing Service, the Baltimore City and Baltimore County Police Departments, and the Johns Hopkins Center for the Social Organization of Schools for house price, crime, and education data. None of the people or organizations listed is in any way responsible for the analyses or conclusions presented. Requests for reprints should be addressed to Dr. Allen C. Goodman, Center for Metropolitan Planning and Research, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218.     

The Effect of Competition on R&D Portfolio Investments

Although project portfolio management has been an active research area over the past 50 years, budget allocation models that consider competition are sparse. Faced with the competition, firms contemplating budget allocation for their project portfolio cannot limit their attention to the returns from their projects' target markets, as is the case for monopoly firms, but must also anticipate the competitive effects on these returns. Assuming firms allocate their budgets between projects offering incremental innovation targeting a mature market and projects offering radical innovation targeting an emerging market, we show that while the monopoly firm bases its budget allocation decision solely on the marginal returns of the markets, competing firms—as they take into account their counterparts' investment decisions—need to also consider the projects' average returns from their respective markets. This drives competing firms into incrementalism: faced with competition, firms invest larger portions of their budgets into projects targeting mature markets. This effect is amplified as the number of competing firms increases and firms allocate an even greater share of their budget into projects targeting a mature market. We further demonstrate the effects that changes to firms' individual budgets, as well as to market characteristics, have on firms' budget allocation decision.