Alone and adrift: The association between mass school shootings,school size,and student support

Background

School shootings have approached epidemic levels in recent years. While mental illness is undoubtedly involved in nearly all cases of mass school violence, we sought to determine how environmental context may exacerbate preexisting personal factors. The present study investigated the associations between mass school shootings, school enrollment size, student–teacher ratios, and student transitions.

Impact of a continuing professional development intervention on midwifery academics’ awareness of cultural safety

Background

Cultural safety in higher education learning and teaching environments is paramount to positive educational outcomes for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander (hereafter called First Peoples) students. There is a lack of research evaluating the impact of continuing professional development on midwifery academics' awareness of cultural safety.

Descriptive Analysis of Foster Care Adoptions in New South Wales,Australia

This paper describes the population of children in care in New South Wales, Australia, who were adopted by their foster families (N?=?372) from 2003 to 2014. Data pertaining to 370 of these adoptees were available and obtained from administrative records accompanying adoption applications. Most of these children had been placed with their subsequent adoptive family during infancy. However, adoption orders occurred much later in their lives. According to the available information at the time of adoption, these children did not suffer the high levels of mental health problems typically identified in populations of children in foster care. Though the data do not include follow-up to determine if the contact agreed upon at the time of adoption orders translated into practice, the most frequently postadoption arrangement recorded was face-to-face contact, four times a year with mother and siblings. The high levels of openness and face-to-face contact in Australian adoptions from care are a significant point of difference with other adoption models, and presents a need for research in the area.

IMPLICATIONS

• Following the change of legislation in New South Wales, Australia, that prioritises open adoption over foster care, social workers in the field of child protection are well placed to assist in this process.

• Social workers can assess children entering care to identify those who will benefit from adoption in a timely manner; undertake casework and administrative aspects of the adoption process; work closely with the child, and birth and adoptive families by delivering pre- and post-adoption supports; and conduct longitudinal research on the outcomes for children adopted from care.

     

Implementing Rigorous Survey Methodology within Contexts of Social Work Education,Training and Practice: A Case Study in Substance Use

With the integration of evidence-based practice central to all areas of social work education and training across the globe, it is crucial that we continue to engage with the methodological challenges inherent in gathering this evidence, particularly when it is related to the nature of social work education itself. As a result, this paper addresses some of the methodological challenges involved in examining the education available to social workers on engaging with substance use, both within the social work academy and local authorities in England. Drawing on experiences of implementing large scale online surveys from three substantial research projects completed by the authors, this paper highlights four methodological themes: (1) Constructing a representative sampling frame; (2) Identifying participants within organisations with many departments; (3) Response rates; and (4) Questionnaire design. While these are familiar methodological considerations, this article draws attention to the specific complexities of gathering ‘representative’ knowledge to inform educational strategies on substance use within social work education and employment contexts. Finally this paper offers lessons learned and guidance for social work academics, students and practitioners who are minded to build, or draw from, an evidence-base using representative samples from and within these environments.     

The Cost-Effectiveness of Alternative Advance Mailings in a Telephone Survey

Advance letters are being used increasingly to combat the declinein response rates, but their effectiveness depends partly ontheir being read. In the face of the post-9/11 anthrax mailingscare, the Office for Survey Research (OSR) converted to usingadvance postcards rather than advance letters. Subsequently,the OSR conducted an experiment to test the effectiveness ofsending letters, postcards, or nothing to directory-listed numbersselected in a large random digit dial (RDD) telephone survey.In terms of response rates, the results clearly indicate thatsending advance letters is more effective than sending postcards,which, in turn, is more effective than sending nothing. A detailedcost-effectiveness evaluation indicates that sending lettersactually saves money, despite the increased costs associatedwith the mailings, compared to sending postcards; sending postcardsis also more cost-effective than not sending anything.     

The green leaves of love: Japanese romantic heroines,authentic femininity,and dialect1

How is ‘authentic’ linguistic femininity in Japan manifested in popular texts? We analyze the dialogue of female characters in Wakaba, a 2005 Japanese drama set in two very different parts of ‘regional’ Japan – Miyazaki and Kobe. Through this analysis, we examine two contradictory discourses circulated through popular media. The first is that linguistic femininity is based in Standard Japanese – a surprisingly persistent ideology despite a current trend to examine cases in which language ideology and practice do not match. Other studies reflect another dominant discourse, that of the ‘authentic’ dialect speaker, who expresses local alignment by using dialect forms outside the bounds of ideologically modern linguistic forms. The tension between acting linguistically feminine and ‘authentically’ local raises some interesting questions for Japanese language and gender studies, including studies of gendered representations: are women who are speakers of regional dialects authentically ‘feminine’? Can they be? Do some dialects express femininity better than others?     

"It's all in your mind": The final common pathway

The relatively new field of Psychoneuroimmuonology (PNI) seeks to reveal links between many systems of the body once thought to work independently of each other. Through a growing body of research, scientists are revealing that what goes on in our mind impacts not only our mental well being but our state of physical health. Presented here is an overview of the stress response and discussion regarding the effects of stress on physiological processes. Of particular interest is the role stress plays on the ability of the immune system to function properly. Both landmark and current research is cited which supports connections between these systems. Finally, the future of PNI is discussed as well as the role health care providers may take to embrace mind/body philosophies.