Thrown back: Reintegration experiences of National Guard/Reserve mothers of young children

Few studies have examined the experiences and perceptions of servicewoman mothers and their children, even as an increasing number of them have experienced deployment and combat exposure. The present paper describes a qualitative study that explored National Guard/Reserve (NG/R) mothers' experiences with mothering and co‐parenting during reintegration and their perceived priorities, supports, challenges and needs. Interpretive phenomenological analysis of seven in‐depth qualitative interviews produced themes including reunion and loneliness, the importance of time, help seeking and gendered experiences. Notably, all participants transitioned immediately back into primary caregiver roles upon homecoming, and several described how difficult it was to readjust while privately dealing with unmet mental health needs. Findings underscore the importance of a flexible suite of service options that meet key needs, most importantly, child care, social–emotional support for children and peer‐based parenting support specific to servicewoman mothers. For NG/R mothers, who may live far from base, community‐based services are essential, but as participants described, civilian social workers and other professionals must develop specialized knowledge, skills and experience to provide appropriate support.     

Challenges and boundaries in implementing social return on investment: An inquiry into its situational appropriateness

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) and social enterprises are increasingly under pressure to justify their use of resources and report their impact on society. Frameworks that monetize social value such as social return on investment (SROI) have emerged as a response. The existing literature highlights many benefits and technical challenges of SROI, but largely ignores strategic and organizational learning aspects. This paper explores the use of SROI in an NPO conducting cultural heritage preservation. By analyzing the challenges managers face in agreeing on a reliable (“correct”) computation of SROI and in assessing the validity and relevance (“appropriateness”) of SROI, we seek to understand the challenges and boundaries of SROI. Challenges with a reliable computation of SROI are identifying stakeholders, the choice of proxies, the time horizons, and deadweight factors. Challenges with an appropriate SROI calculation are comparability, subjectivity, legitimacy, and resource utility. We argue that SROI calculations might not be reliable or appropriate in organizations with fuzzy purposes, broad value creation goals, broad target groups, very individual or subjective proxies, strongly lagged outcomes, complex or unobservable causality, and with lack of legitimacy among stakeholders. Organizations should not trustingly adopt SROI without being aware of these limitations.     

Burnout and reciprocity: Towards a dual-level social exchange model

A tentative dual-level social exchange model of burnout and organizational commitment is proposed that includes social exchange relationships at the interpersonal level (i.e. between human services professional, or caregiver, and recipient) as well as at the organizational level (i.e. between employees and organization). The model was tested and cross-validated in two independent samples that consisted of 220 and 142 student nurses, respectively, by using linear structural modelling with LISREL VII. The hypothesized model assumes that lack of reciprocity at both levels is positively related to burnout, whereas poor organizational commitment is exclusively related to lack of reciprocity at the organizational level. This model fitted reasonably well to the data of both samples. The limitations of the study and its practical implications are discussed, and directions for future research on the dual-level social exchange model are proposed.     

Elicitation of Quantitative Data from a Heterogeneous Expert Panel: Formal Process and Application in Animal Health

This paper presents a protocol for a formal expert judgment process using a heterogeneous expert panel aimed at the quantification of continuous variables. The emphasis is on the process's requirements related to the nature of expertise within the panel, in particular the heterogeneity of both substantive and normative expertise. The process provides the opportunity for interaction among the experts so that they fully understand and agree upon the problem at hand, including qualitative aspects relevant to the variables of interest, prior to the actual quantification task. Individual experts' assessments on the variables of interest, cast in the form of subjective probability density functions, are elicited with a minimal demand for normative expertise. The individual experts' assessments are aggregated into a single probability density function per variable, thereby weighting the experts according to their expertise. Elicitation techniques proposed include the Delphi technique for the qualitative assessment task and the ELI method for the actual quantitative assessment task. Appropriately, the Classical model was used to weight the experts' assessments in order to construct a single distribution per variable. Applying this model, the experts' quality typically was based on their performance on seed variables. An application of the proposed protocol in the broad and multidisciplinary field of animal health is presented. Results of this expert judgment process showed that the proposed protocol in combination with the proposed elicitation and analysis techniques resulted in valid data on the (continuous) variables of interest. In conclusion, the proposed protocol for a formal expert judgment process aimed at the elicitation of quantitative data from a heterogeneous expert panel provided satisfactory results. Hence, this protocol might be useful for expert judgment studies in other broad and/or multidisciplinary fields of interest.     

A Structured Expert Judgment Study for a Model of Campylobacter Transmission During Broiler-Chicken Processing

A structured expert judgment study was organized to obtain input data for a microbial risk-assessment model describing the transmission of campylobacter during broiler-chicken processing in the Netherlands. More specially, the expert study was aimed at quantifying the uncertainty on input parameters of this model and focused on the contamination of broiler-chicken carcasses with campylobacter during processing. Following the protocol for structured expert judgment studies, expert assessments were elicited individually through subjective probability distribution functions. The classical model was used to aggregate the individual experts' distributions in order to obtain a single combined distribution per variable. Three different weighting schemes were applied, including equal weighting and performance-based weighting with and without optimalization of the combined distributions. The individual experts' weights were based on their performance on the seed variables. Results of the various weighting schemes are presented in terms of performance, robustness, and combined distributions of the seed variables and some of the query variables. All three weighting schemes had adequate performance, with the optimized combined distributions significantly outperforming both the equal weight and the nonoptimized combined distributions. Hence, this weighting scheme, having adequate robustness, was chosen for further processing of the results.     

It's Not What You Do,But Who You Are: Informal Social Control,Social Status,and Normative Seriousness in Organizations

This paper analyzes the impact of managerial social status on the normative evaluation of managerial acts in organizational contexts. We test several propositions on the relationship between social status and normative evaluation derived from Donald Black's theoretical framework on social control. The research design consists of a factorial survey of 200 managers. Each respondent evaluated the seriousness of a normatively questionable managerial act. In each vignette, the perpetrator's social status was systematically manipulated in either a high or a low condition. The results generally support the argument that the higher a manager's social status the less vulnerable that individual is to unfavorable normative evaluations, holding constant the act. The paper closes with discussion of our findings in light of social structural and rational choice perspectives on informal social control in organizations. Additionally, we discuss methodological issues related to experimental research on informal social control in organizations, the consistency of our findings with those from previous studies of social control across diverse settings, potential theoretical applications and extensions of Black's framework in organizational contexts, and practical implications for the implementation of corporate codes of conduct and corporate dispute resolution systems.     

Disrupted Bodies: Experiencing the Newly Limited Body in Stroke

This article explores the intersection of recovery and bodily practices among stroke survivors. Drawing on the extensive literature on the socially constructed body in general, on chronic illness, and on interactionist thought, we explore bodily experience as a mechanism that informs stroke survivors' understanding and practices of everyday life in recovery. We ask a central question: what practical mechanisms does the survivor employ to provide meaning to her or his newly disrupted body? Data gathered from in‐depth interviews with fifty‐one discharged stroke survivors show that they use three specific technologies of bodily management and meaning‐making. These are managing the body within a mind‐body dualism, testing the body in its everyday practices, and orienting to the body as a biographically informed phenomenon.     

Forecasting murder within a population of probationers and parolees: a high stakes application of statistical learning

Summary.  Forecasts of future dangerousness are often used to inform the sentencing decisions of convicted offenders. For individuals who are sentenced to probation or paroled to community supervision, such forecasts affect the conditions under which they are to be supervised. The statistical criterion for these forecasts is commonly called recidivism, which is defined as a charge or conviction for any new offence, no matter how minor. Only rarely do such forecasts make distinctions on the basis of the seriousness of offences. Yet seriousness may be central to public concerns, and judges are increasingly required by law and sentencing guidelines to make assessments of seriousness. At the very least, information about seriousness is essential for allocating scarce resources for community supervision of convicted offenders. The paper focuses only on murderous conduct by individuals on probation or parole. Using data on a population of over 60000 cases from Philadelphia's Adult Probation and Parole Department, we forecast whether each offender will be charged with a homicide or attempted homicide within 2 years of beginning community supervision. We use a statistical learning approach that makes no assumptions about how predictors are related to the outcome. We also build in the costs of false negative and false positive charges and use half of the data to build the forecasting model, and the other half of the data to evaluate the quality of the forecasts. Forecasts that are based on this approach offer the possibility of concentrating rehabilitation, treatment and surveillance resources on a small subset of convicted offenders who may be in greatest need, and who pose the greatest risk to society.     

USING PATIENT NARRATIVES TO TEACH PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

Psychopathology courses are usually taught using a biomedical perspective and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV (DSM IV) as the primary text. This can result in students developing little empathy for their patients and objectifying them as disorders rather than people with problems. Using narrative, music, and art in teaching psychopathology can balance the scientific, objective style of the DSM IV. Resources and suggestions for ways to humanize a psychopathology course are given.