Researching Children: Methods and Ethics

The appropriateness and desirability of researching children have been issues of some debate. Children may be perceived as non-competent or vulnerable, and proxies have been used as children's representatives. Increasingly researchers are speaking to children directly. Why is this so and what are the methodological and ethical implications of researching children's views? In this paper the authors draw on their own experiences of researching children in the fields of child carers and the impact of the Child Support Act 1991. A number of social, political and legal trends are identified which form a background to the growing interest in children as potential and actual participants in the research process. The theoretical, methodological, ethical and practical issues involved are then identified and described, using examples from two separate studies conducted by the authors.     

Live Supervision and Instant Feedback in Marriage and Family Therapy*

In the context of the increasing attention paid to, and increasing demand for training in marital and family therapy, this paper briefly describes several models of supervision and treatment appropriate for use in this field. Advantages and disadvantages of four basic supervision and treatment models are discussed: traditional, co-therapy, direct observation with delayed feedback, and direct observation with instant feedback. The increased options in adopting the latter model are emphasized and a verbatim sample of a case illustrating its use is presented.     

谁会促进你的事业？

你必须分清谁的工作重点与你一致,谁跟你不一致谁会帮助你得到你想要的结果?对每个经理人来说,这都是一个关键问题。要回答这个问题,你必须能够分清谁的工作重点与你相一致,谁跟你不一致。但我们中很少有人使用自己可以支配的工具这样去做。运用同理心进行思考与哈佛商学院教授霍华德·史蒂文森合著《自己敲开机会的门》一书的艾琳·夏皮罗(Eileen Shapiro)称,要确定谁最有可     

Who participates,who does not,and why? An analysis of voluntary neighborhood organizations in the United States and Israel

Lack of participation in voluntary associations and the associated issues of why people do or do not participate are major areas of interest in the research literature concerning citizen participation. The present study used three types of variables (demographic, social psychological, and costs/benefits) to investigate the characteristics of participants and nonparticipants in neighborhood-type organizations in the United States and Israel. Findings from analysis of the demographic variables show some cross-cultural similarities (including a surprising lack of race/ethnic and education differences between participants and nonparticipants). There were striking cross-cultural similarities using the social psychological variables. The data from the Israel sample provide important information on the costs and benefits of participation. A discriminant analysis points to the predictive strength of social psychological and cost/benefit variables in comparison to demographic variables. Implications of these results for explanatory and predictive purposes are discussed.     

Poverty, inequality, and development: A distributional approach

Economists have concentrated on aggregate economic growth to measure countries' development progress and in recent years have also considered income distribution performance. This paper reverses the conventional emphasis by placing income distribution at the forefront. I examine what is known about the distributions of income and poverty in the developing countries of the world and probe the correlations between poverty, inequality, and development. I explore the main sources of inequality and the extent to which individual countries have managed to alleviate poverty and reduce inequality in the course of economic growth. Employing evidence from case studies of six developing nations. I suggest some explanations for differing patterns of development and call for development planning founded on a firm commitment to helping the poor.     

NETWORK AND MEANING: AN INTERACTIONIST APPROACH TO STRUCTURE*

Social network is a concept interactionists might use to link individual behavior to the larger social system. A symbolic interactionist formulation of network would: 1) approximate the original, anthropological usage better than the current structural conception does, 2) offer symbolic interactionists a unit of social organization better suited to their perspective than the small group, and 3) allow symbolic interactionists to deal with “macro” sociological concerns. Network is conceived of as a set of relationships which people imbue with meaning and use for personal or collective purposes. By emphasizing subjective meaning and the investigation of multi-purpose and weak ties, the interactionist formulation provides theoretical insights into those aspects of society which “structural” approaches overlook.