An Exploration of Differences Between Small Samples of Female Sex Offenders With Prepubescent Versus Postpubescent Victims

The general consensus among researchers is that the prevalence of sexual paraphilias among female sexual offenders is low relative to male sexual offenders (Cortoni & Gannon, 2013). In addition, there is very limited information about gender specific paraphilic behaviors and characteristics pertaining to females who commit sexual assaults (Pflugradt & Allen, 2014). This study examined the characteristics of female, solo sexual offenders who sexually assaulted prepubescent (n = 14) and postpubescent (n = 15) children. A content analysis was utilized to examine their psychological characteristics. Nonparametric analysis indicated that significantly more offenders with prepubescent victims had multiple paraphilias, poor cognitive problem-solving, noncompliance with supervision, and negative social influences. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.     

Asking for a Child: The Refashioning of Reproductive Space in Post-War Northern Vietnam

In the mid-1980s, population movement, wartime male mortality, and changing notions of marriageability converged to create a radically different marital terrain than that previously encountered by Vietnamese women. Finding themselves without suitable marriage prospects a small number of single women asked men they would not marry to get them pregnant. This paper focuses on three elements that contributed to this refashioning of reproductive space: the women's post-war experiences that prompted them to ‘ask for a child’, state policies that provided a different dynamic for bearing children out of wedlock, and the manner in which the Women's Union sought to provide social acceptance for women who ‘asked for a child’. As a result of the women's agency and the state's decision to incorporate single mothers into society a new reproductive space was forged in which ideologies of motherhood, family, and reproduction took on new meaning in post-war northern Vietnam.     

Out of the Blue: the dark side of creative enterprise

This paper draws on an archive of media texts that document the making of the film Out of the Blue. Within these media accounts are statements made by a group of residents resisting the film project, and the film‐makers responding to this resistance. We employ a Foucauldian informed discourse analysis to read these statements of resistance as a starting point to examine the power relations within contemporary knowledge generation processes of creative industries. We theorise creative industries as a discursive object located at the intersection of three discursive formations: ‘creativity’, ‘enterprise’ and ‘place’. Through analysing the particular place–identities of Aramoana engaged by the resisting residents and the film‐makers, we are able to suggest how this film project came to be discursively constituted as creative enterprise. In so doing, we find that the resisting residents’ statements work to disrupt the taken‐for‐granted ‘goodness’ of film enterprise, and creative industries more generally.     

Religion and Spirituality as Defined by Older Adults

ABSTRACT

This exploratory qualitative study examined the intrinsic definitions of spirituality and religion across three different religious or ethnic groups of older adults – Jewish, African American Protestants and Caucasian Protestants. The study explores how older adults from these various backgrounds self-identify with the terms religion and spirituality. Because both African-Americans and Jewish older adults are underrepresented in the research on spirituality and religion, their inclusion lends insights to this topic and helps to anchor the findings in a cross-cultural context. Focus groups were employed to understand how these groups characterize their relationship to spirituality and religion. Social work professionals can utilize these findings to work more effectively with the diverse and complex issues of older adults.     

Translating messages from research on child development into social work training and practice

Social work training should equip students with both the knowledge and the skills required for good practice. Although research messages are available through books and papers, they may more easily be conveyed through the repeated use of practice tools which have been developed from research findings. The Looking After Children Assessment and Action Records have been used in formal social work training to help students develop competencies, but their value as a means of conveying a knowledge basis of key issues in child development has yet to be exploited. The Children and Families Assessment Programme has a similar potential, to help practitioners set child protection issues within a developmental framework and further their understanding of those factors that impede children's satisfactory progress. New requirements to provide routine data on children's progress for aggregation and analysis can both improve practitioners' skills and understanding of the purpose of management information, as well as providing evidence of the effectiveness of services.     

Implementing a Gero-Infused Curriculum in Advanced-Level MSW Courses in Health,Mental Health and Substance Abuse: An Evaluation

This article presents evaluation results from a curricular innovation aimed at increasing the capacity of social work graduates to serve older adults in health, mental health, and substance abuse settings. Working as a team, faculty developed, incorporated, and evaluated gerontology-infused syllabi and teaching modules in multiple sections of the 3 courses, with 2 sections serving as a comparison group. Results indicated that students exposed to the gero-infused curriculum increased their age-related knowledge and self-competence from pre- to posttest, and achieved a greater increase in knowledge than did the comparison group. Implications of the findings to social work education are discussed.     

Genocide as a matter of degree

This article employs Max Weber's ideal-type method to classify genocides based on their degree of mass killing, unilateralism, and ethnic liability. The identification of the elements of genocide draws from a general theory of genocide (Campbell 2009, 2010) and from theories of social control employing Donald Black's (1995, 1998) theoretical approach, known as pure sociology. Because these theories identify the social features associated with each element of genocide, they can explain the form genocides take.