Using live supervision to teach counselling skills to social work students

This article reports on a research project which explored how anxiety can be managed when social work students receive live supervision as they are learning counselling skills. Eight social work students volunteered to participate in an eight session project in which they role played counselling sessions and received live supervision of their work. Their subjective experience of live supervision was elicited via survey reported surveys over the course of the project. They also submitted pre-and post-project recordings of their counselling role plays which were evaluated for changes in skill level. The participants’ survey results showed that, over the course of the project, each participant became less anxious about live supervision and came to find it a valuable learning experience. Their recorded role plays all showed improvements in skill level across a range of domains. The authors contend the establishment and maintenance of positive and trusting relationships between participants and between participants and the supervisor was crucial to the success of this project, as was attention to power dynamics and differences in learning styles. These results suggest that, under the right conditions, live supervision can be a valuable addition to counselling skills teaching strategies with social work students.     

Bidirectional Relationships Between Parenting Processes and Deviance in a Sample of Inner‐City African American Youth

This study assessed bidirectional relationships among supportive parenting (knowledge), negative parenting (permissiveness), and deviance in a sample (N = 5,325) of poor, inner‐city African American youth from the Mobile Youth Survey over 4 years. Cross‐lagged path analysis provided evidence of significant bidirectional paths among parenting processes (knowledge and permissiveness) and deviance over time. Follow‐up multigroup tests provided only modest evidence of dissimilar relationships by sex and by developmental periods. The findings improve our understanding of developmental changes between parenting behaviors and deviance during adolescence and extend current research of the bidirectionality of parent and child relationships among inner‐city African American youth.     

Differences in the relationship between depression and self-rated life satisfaction in older Korean and Chinese immigrants

This study aims to examine self-rated life satisfaction and describe its relationship with depression and socioeconomic status among older Chinese and Korean immigrants. A cross-sectional study of 175 older Chinese immigrants and 205 older Korean immigrants was conducted in Los Angeles County. The study found that depression was negatively associated with self-rated life satisfaction for both the Chinese and Korean groups. For older Chinese immigrants, depression was the only significant factor related to self-rated life satisfaction. However, for older Korean immigrants, age, education, and depression were significantly associated with self-rated life satisfaction. This study suggests empirical strategies to reduce depression among these populations, such as the importance of culturally-tailored programs.     

How Prevalent Are Stable-Paretian Distributed Financial Variables?

Many studies have claimed that the stable-Paretian distribution should be used to model a wide variety of financial variables, ranging from stock and futures prices to exchange rates. Using a newly developed method, this study shows that the stable distribution is unsuitable for modeling most financial variables that are stable-distributed. We found that the distributions of a few accounting ratios may be stable. Our conclusions support a change in the future directions of financial-variable modeling.     

Exploring the promotion of youth voice in community-based youth development programmes

This constructivist grounded theory study used semi-structured interviews with 19 youth service providers in community-based youth development programmes to develop a context-specific framework of how and why youth voice promotion occurred. Factors external to the youth programmes, such as funder expectations, influenced the conceptualization of role for youth workers. The social process of meaning making in relation to role identity impacted how youth workers perceived self-efficacy when working with youth, especially when engaged with behaviours falling outside programmatic expectations or norms. Workers prioritized fostering physical and psychological safe spaces for youth participants. When conflict occurred, perceptions of efficacy guided workers in taking positions that either promoted or restricted youth voice based on their perceptions of efficacy in resolving conflict safely. Youth programmes have the capacity to resist or replicate oppression present within the educational system. The adoption and adaptation of educational models of resistance offer a strategy for community-based youth organizations to promote equity and thriving youth.     

MULTIPLE ECONOMIES AND YOUTH LIVELIHOOD

In this paper we present a model of multiple economic spheres in order to understand and explain the income-generating activities of young people. These spheres include the formal sector, the informal waged sector, the informal non-waged sector, the welfare sector and the criminal sector. We conclude that, due to changes in the labour market that affect them in particular ways, young people are engaged in a diverse range of activities within and across each economic sphere.     

Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Scales Measuring Trust,and Control-Self-efficacy of Young Iranian Women

This study is among the first to assess Trust and Control-Self-efficacy scales as measures of cognitive social capital in transitional societies such as Iran. 391 Iranian young women aged between 18 and 35 years (M 27.3, SD 4.8) were recruited at ten sites in the city of Shiraz by cluster convenience sampling to participate in this cross-sectional study. The measures used included “Trust” and “Control-Self-efficacy” scales adapted from the British General Household Survey social capital survey. Confirmatory factor analysis with Structural Equation Modelling was used to assess the model adequacy. In addition, reliability and validity of the model was measured. After assessing all possible models to yield the best fit for the data, the “Trust” scale model represents a change of structure from three subscales to four subscales which provided a best fit with the data (χ² = 2.231, RMSEA = 0.056). While for “Control-Self-efficacy” scale with three subscales, five items were deleted in order to have a fit model (χ² = 2.128, RMSEA = 0.054). As a result, the collective evidence suggested that the instrument includes relevant items for its target population and can be a reliable and valid measure for the population of interest.

     

Behavioral insurance: Theory and experiments

“Risk and insurance” provides an illustrative set of decisions made in the presence of uncertainty. As behavioral models become more integrated into economics and finance, many of their effects are illustrated quite well within insurance markets. Especially noteworthy are the complementary roles of theory and experiments. This article reviews the interactive role of experiments and theory in analyzing insurance demand from a behavioral perspective. We pay special attention to several models of underinvestment in insurance or in other risk-mitigation markets.