Listening/Nonverbal Communication Training

Multiculturalism increases communities' hopes of reducing racism and increasing productivity. Diversity training, however, is receiving negative criticism. Still, effective communication is viewed as critical. Thus, training in this area is encouraged. Cultural understanding and communication skills provide frameworks for developing tolerance and understanding. This study was conducted to provide more applied research to multicultural diversity with applications for business and education. Further, the purpose of this study was to analyze the influence of listening/nonverbal communication training on an individual's level of multicultural sensitivity. A statistically significant relationship was found between the listening/nonverbal communication training used in this study and multicultural sensitivity.     

Graffiti as a Form of Contentious Political Participation

Graffiti is a popular topic in the sociological, criminological, and linguistic literature with several book length treatments of various types of graffiti including tagging, gang graffiti, murals, and “bombings”. Yet, political sociologists have paid little attention to the role of graffiti as a form of contentious politics despite the often political nature of graffiti messages. As a result, most of the political research on graffiti is by non‐sociologists. We believe this is an oversight and that both political sociologists and social movement scholars need to seriously consider this form of micro‐level political participation. In this review we (1) demonstrate why some forms of graffiti should be considered a serious form of political participation; (2) compare and contrast graffiti to other forms of resistance including squatting and culture jamming; (3) review research findings on graffiti; and (4) discuss some of the conceptual and methodological challenges for doing graffiti research.     

Linguistic and developmental influences on superordinate facial configuration categorization in infancy

Humans perceive emotions in terms of categories, such as “happiness,” “sadness,” and “anger.” To learn these complex conceptual emotion categories, humans must first be able to perceive regularities in expressive behaviors (e.g., facial configurations) across individuals. Recent research suggests that infants spontaneously form “basic-level” categories of facial configurations (e.g., happy vs. fear), but not “superordinate” categories of facial configurations (e.g., positive vs. negative). The current studies further explore how infant age and language impact superordinate categorization of facial configurations associated with different negative emotions. Across all experiments, infants were habituated to one person displaying facial configurations associated with anger and disgust. While 10-month-olds formed a category of person identity (Experiment 1), 14-month-olds formed a category that included negative facial configurations displayed by the same person (Experiment 2). However, neither age formed the hypothesized superordinate category of negative valence. When a verbal label (“toma”) was added to each of the habituation events (Experiment 3), 10-month-olds formed a category similar to 14-month-olds in Experiment 2. These findings intersect a larger conversation about the nature and development of children's emotion categories and highlight the importance of considering developmental processes, such as language learning and attentional/memory development, in the design and interpretation of infant categorization studies.     

Relational Personality Theory and Holland's Typology Among Women: An Exploratory Investigation

Relational personality theorists propose that women have a tendency to view themselves in the context of relationships with others and to make decisions to optimize and maintain relationships. The current study explored whether relational identity may underlie women's career interests as measured by Holland's typology and examined possible implications of this relationship in career settings. Measures of women's connected self and the Social dimension of Holland's typology were found to be related but separate constructs. Participants with Social interests also indicated some variation in their interest in working in collaborative environments and/or in helping roles on the job.     

Social accounting for nonprofits: Two models

After giving an overview of the development of social accounting, this article presents two models of social accounting for nonprofits: the community social return on investment model and the expanded value‐added statement. The discussion focuses on the process for establishing a comparative market value for nonmarket social outputs. The authors discuss these models and the comparative market value in relation to social accounting, an academic field that has evolved as part of a critique of financial accounting, especially its failure to analyze the impact of the organization on society and the natural environment. For the most part, scholars have not related social accounting to nonprofits. This article attempts to draw nonprofits into the field of social accounting. Both models address the social impact of nonprofits by including social inputs and outputs that accounting statements normally exclude.     

The Adoptee's Journey

The subject of adoption has often been mired in wishful thinking and denial. Because of the secrecy in the system, adopted children have been forced to repress their need to know about their origins; many feel invisible because an essential part of them is unacknowledged by their adoptive parents and society. The purpose of this article is to help mental health and legal professionals, as well as those in the extended community, to see what is specific about the formation of the adoptee's inner world. It introduces the concept of cumulative adoption trauma and discusses the adoptee's need to dissociate feelings of loss, grief, and anger. The struggle to form a coherent sense of self may eventually lead to the adoptee's need to search out the birth parents in order to integrate the past and the present and move on into the future.     

Complicated grief symptoms in caregivers of persons with lung cancer: the role of family conflict, intrapsychic strains, and hospice utilization

Guided by a stress process conceptual model, this study examines social and psychological determinants of complicated grief symptoms focusing on family conflict, intrapsychic strains, and the potential moderating effect of care quality and hospice utilization. Relying on data from 152 spouse and adult child lung cancer caregiver survey respondents, drawn from an ancillary study of the Assessment of Cancer CarE and SatiSfaction (ACCESS) in Wisconsin, hierarchical multiple regression analysis was used to examine determinants of complicated grief. After controlling for contextual factors and time since death, complicated grief symptoms were higher among caregivers with less education, among families with lower prior conflict but higher conflict at the end-of-life, who had family members who had difficulty accepting the illness, and who were caring for patients with greater fear of death. Additionally, hospice utilization moderated the effect of fear of death on complicated grief. Findings suggest that family conflict, intrapsychic strains, and hospice utilization may help to explain the variability found in complicated grief symptoms among bereaved caregivers. Implications for enhancing complicated grief assessment tools and preventative interventions across the continuum of cancer care are highlighted.     

Validating a Behavioral Health Instrument for Adults: Exploratory Factor Analysis

ABSTRACT

Increasingly, social workers and behavioral health practitioners use assessment instruments to support service planning and to monitor progress. Following statewide implementation of the Adult Needs and Strengths Assessment (ANSA) to identify behavioral health symptoms, related functional challenges, risks, and strengths, this validation study explored the underlying structure of the instrument. An exploratory factor analysis used routinely collected information for Midwestern adults with diagnosed behavioral health disorders who participated in community-based services (N = 46,013). Five factors with adequate to good internal consistency (α = 0.733?0.880) emerged: personal recovery, trauma and stress related problems, substance use risks, self-sufficiency, and cultural-linguistic considerations. Validation of the ANSA supports use of the instrument to engage individuals and families, to plan services, to monitor progress, and to conduct research. Implications for social work education, supervision, and practice include the importance of understanding culture, holistic assessment, and services supporting personal recovery for individuals living with mental illness or substance use disorders. Confirmation of findings requires additional research.     

Two-location families

In a study of two-location families, we have seen that this lifestyle is not historically atypical. Male-determined two-location families have been established for economic and other reasons. The women-determined two-location family seems to be a relatively new pattern. We suggest that the Women's Movement has helped create a situation where it is possible for women to get more support than men for women-determined two-location families. The sustaining of intimacy in such marriages becomes problematic. Stress may be minimized when there is high career motivation in both parties, acceptance of the wife's career motivation by the husband, high incomes, geographical propinquity, and a long-term marital relationship.     

Changing the Future: The Story of Attachment with a Child with Special Needs

This article, initiated by personal experience, looks at parental fear of attachment to children with conditions which put them at risk, the experiencing of grief at the loss of the fantasy baby, and the acceptance by the parents which enables the attachment to proceed. Reference is made to attachment issues in the case of adoption, styles of attachment, and some notion of reconstruction in therapy with 'special needs' survivors where attachment has been insecure or the process has been attenuated by length of risk.