Plural identities and preference formation

This article explores under what conditions an agent can derive a transitive all-things-considered preference from a plurality of non-comparable objectives, values or judgements mirroring her plural identity. In contrast to existing contributions, the multiple values are reflected by partial (viz. incomplete) orderings. It is shown that a slight modification of the conditions employed by Arrow implies a spread of the dictate of one identity to its ‘incomplete parts’. The second result reveals that if one requires the decision making power to be spread a bit more equally across the various parts of a person’s identity, then even the derivation of an acyclic all-things-considered preference is rendered impossible. A third result shows that requiring some minimal consistency among a person’s plural identities, introduced via a domain restriction, allows the avoidance of the highlighted impossibilities.     

Children's Physiological Regulation and Sibling Conflict as Correlates of Children's Conscience Development

Children's conscience, including the ability to experience guilt and engage in rule‐compatible behavior, develops across early childhood. The current study investigated whether within‐family variation in children's baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and sibling conflict behavior were associated with individual differences in children's guilt and internalized conduct. Between‐family differences across sibling dyad gender compositions were also examined. A within‐family design that included 70 families with two siblings between the ages of 2 and 5 was utilized. Children's baseline RSA was measured while sitting quietly with their family. Mothers and fathers completed questionnaires that assessed siblings’ conflict behavior, guilt, and internalized conduct. Older siblings had higher levels of guilt and internalized conduct than younger siblings. Results from actor‐partner interdependence models indicated that there were no direct effects of children's baseline RSA. The interaction effects approached significance (p's ≤ .08) suggesting that older siblings’ conflict moderated the association between older siblings’ baseline RSA and both older and younger siblings’ guilt. In contrast, older siblings’ conflict was positively associated with older and younger siblings’ internalized conduct. Guilt and internalized conduct also differed for older and younger siblings in different dyad gender compositions. The results underscore the need for greater clarity regarding the function that siblings serve in promoting children's moral development during early childhood.     

Assessing Value Differences Between Leaders of Two Social Venture Types: Benefit Corporations and Nonprofit Organizations

This study considers key value differences between leaders of two types of social ventures: for-profit social benefit corporations and nonprofit organizations. The research question asks to what degree the value sets of leaders of benefit corporations are congruent with those of similarly situated individuals in nonprofit organizations. The results show the values of leaders working in benefit corporations and nonprofit organizations are in many ways aligned, but there are notable statistical differences. A sectoral association of values is also present with employees in both types of organization, especially when the previous work experience of employees is considered.     

Evaluating the Quality of Social Work Supervision in UK Children’s Services: Comparing Self-Report and Independent Observations

Understanding how different forms of supervision support good social work practice and improve outcomes for people who use services is nearly impossible without reliable and valid evaluative measures. Yet the question of how best to evaluate the quality of supervision in different contexts is a complicated and as-yet-unsolved challenge. In this study, we observed 12 social work supervisors in a simulated supervision session offering support and guidance to an actor playing the part of an inexperienced social worker facing a casework-related crisis. A team of researchers analyzed these sessions using a customized skills-based coding framework. In addition, 19 social workers completed a questionnaire about their supervision experiences as provided by the same 12 supervisors. According to the coding framework, the supervisors demonstrated relatively modest skill levels, and we found low correlations among different skills. In contrast, according to the questionnaire data, supervisors had relatively high skill levels, and we found high correlations among different skills. The findings imply that although self-report remains the simplest way to evaluate supervision quality, other approaches are possible and may provide a different perspective. However, developing a reliable independent measure of supervision quality remains a noteworthy challenge.     

The Great Recession of 2007: An Agenda for Social Justice

The Great Recession, the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, officially began in December 2007 with an 8 trillion dollar housing bubble and lasted until June 2009, resulting in loss in consumer spending and collapse in the nation’s business investment. For American workers, the Great Recession had far-reaching implications: unemployment, underemployment, pay cuts, and cutbacks in household spending. Although social work has a historical commitment to address the vulnerabilities of people and communities, we argue that the profession neglected to understand fully the factors associated with the Great Recession and to mount an agenda for justice in response to its worker-related impact.     

Recruitment and Retention of Latinos in Social Work Education: Building on Students’ Community Cultural Wealth

Spanish-speaking and culturally sensitive social workers are in high demand throughout the country to work with Latino clients. Latinos currently represent about 11% of active social workers, limiting the capacity of social work to effectively address the needs of the Latino population. Despite this shortage, little attention has been paid to the recruitment and retention of Latinos in social work. This article presents a case study that examines a BSW program accredited by the Council on Social Work Education, at a bilingual, private college where 90% of students self-identify as Latinos. It details how the BSW program builds on the students’ community cultural wealth to ensure continued recruitment and retention of Latino students. Implications for social work education are discussed.     

Quantifying the Value of Collecting: Implications for Financial Advisers

This paper documents the extent to which collectors—specifically, those owning collectible classic US postage stamps—experience an opportunity cost associated with expenditures on their collection. Results show, based on stamp price, S&P 500, bond, and T-bill rate data over the period 1969 through 2013, that collectible stamps tend to underperform stocks and bonds on a risk-adjusted basis. Using estimates based on the Modigliani measure (M²), it was determined that collectors incur an opportunity cost when selecting collectible stamps over more traditional investments. However, it is known that collecting as a hobby provides sociological and psychological benefits. This paper adds to the literature by illustrating how collecting also provides psychic return benefits that can be valued similarly to investment returns. In this study, the foregone return rate of stamp collecting for those who allocate a significant percent of available resources to their collection equates to between 3 and 13 % on an annual basis.     

Effects of parental absence on child labor and school attendance in the Philippines

This paper uses longitudinal data from the Philippines to analyze determinants of children’s time allocation. The estimation method takes into account both the simultaneity of time use decisions, by allowing for correlation of residuals across time uses, and unobservable family heterogeneity, through the inclusion of household fixed effects. Importantly, this improved estimation method leads to different results than when applying the methods previously used in the literature. Girls suffer significantly from the absence of their mother with a reduction in time spent in school that is equivalent to dropping out completely. This effect is substantially larger when controlling for household unobservables than when not. Boys increase time spent working on market related activities in response to an absent father, although this time appears to come out of leisure rather than school or doing household chores. Land ownership substantially increase the time boys spend on school activities, whereas renting land reduces the time girls spend on school. Finally, there does not appear to be a substantial trade-off between time spent on school and work, either in the market or at home.     

The embodied becoming of autism and childhood: a storytelling methodology

In this article I explore a methodology of storytelling as a means of bringing together research around autism and childhood in a new way, as a site of the embodied becoming of autism and childhood. Through reflection on an ethnographic story of embodiment, the body is explored as a site of knowledge production that contests its dominantly storied subjectivation as a ‘disordered’ child. Storytelling is used to experiment with a line of flight from the autistic-child-research assemblage into new spaces of potential and possibility where the becomings of bodies within the collision of autism and childhood can be celebrated.