Pushing back the margins: power,identity and marginalia in survey research with young people

The study of marginalia has not been widely discussed in social sciences research and occupies a marginal space in terms of methodological legitimacy. We highlight the value of paying attention to the ways in which participants speak back to the researcher. This paper draws on marginalia found in surveys written or drawn by young people in classrooms across South Wales, demonstrating how various notes and marks made spontaneously by participants can tell us something important and worthwhile about how young people engage with research. We position marginalia as a manifestation of complex power dynamics in the research process that illuminate participants’ negotiation of complex and multiple subjectivities in the literal margins and between the lines of the survey pages. Whilst the sensitive and rigorous analysis of marginalia is fraught with ethical and methodological challenges, we argue that paying closer attention to marginalia presents an opportunity for deeper engagement with participants when undertaking survey research.     

How do you solve a problem like Maria? Family complexity and institutional complications in UK social work

ABSTRACT

This paper draws on UK data from an international, comparative project involving eight countries. The study examined how social workers’ conceptions and definitions of family impact on the way they engage with complex families, and how social policies that frame social work context impact on the way social workers engage with families. Focus groups were held in which social workers from four service areas (child welfare, addictions, mental health and migration) were asked to discuss a case vignette. Several factors were embedded in the vignette to represent a realistic situation a social worker may come across in their day-to-day work. Social workers clearly identified the complexity of the family’s situation in terms of the range of issues identified and candidate ‘causes’. However, typical first responses were institutional, looking for triggers that would signify certainty about their, or other agencies’ involvement. This resulted in a complicated story, through which the family was disaggregated into individual problem-service categories. This paper argues that understanding these processes and their consequences is critical for exploring the ways in which we might develop alternative, supportive professional responses with families with complex needs. It also demonstrates how organisational systems manifest themselves in everyday reasoning.     

Distorted Views Through the Glass Ceiling: The Construction of Women's Understandings of Promotion and Senior Management Positions

The article explores the issue of whether women's under‐representation in senior management positions can be explained in part by the messages they are given about the promotion process and the requirements of senior jobs. Through interviews with over 50 male and female junior and senior managers in a UK high street bank, issues relating to the required personality and behaviour characteristics seen to be associated with success and with the long hours culture emerged as important. In many cases men and women identified the same issues but the significance of them for their own decision‐making and the way others interpreted their behaviour varied — particularly in relation to the perceived incompatibility between active parenting and senior roles. The findings provide an account of the context in which women make career choices which highlights the limitations of analyses which see women's absence as the result either of procedural discrimination or women's primary orientation towards home and family. The findings also highlight the problems of treating commitments towards gender equality as an isolated issue and stress the importance of understanding responses to policies and ways of achieving change within the broader context of an analysis of the organization's culture.     

Nonlinear measures of association with kernel canonical correlation analysis and applications

Measures of association between two sets of random variables have long been of interest to statisticians. The classical canonical correlation analysis (LCCA) can characterize, but also is limited to, linear association. This article introduces a nonlinear and nonparametric kernel method for association study and proposes a new independence test for two sets of variables. This nonlinear kernel canonical correlation analysis (KCCA) can also be applied to the nonlinear discriminant analysis. Implementation issues are discussed. We place the implementation of KCCA in the framework of classical LCCA via a sequence of independent systems in the kernel associated Hilbert spaces. Such a placement provides an easy way to carry out the KCCA. Numerical experiments and comparison with other nonparametric methods are presented.     

American Indian Women Report on the Community Impact of a Tribal Casino

This qualitative study of the community impact of a Midwest American Indian casino examined semi-structured interview data (N = 20) from American Indian women. Results indicate that the opening of the tribal casino has provided opportunities for intergroup contact to occur resulting in improved relations between Indians on the reservation and those who are not Indian from surrounding communities. These improved relations are positively affecting the relationships that develop between the members of the communities. The findings highlight the need for social workers to examine the impact of intergroup contact that is naturally occurring in tribal casino communities and develop interventions that can assist in reducing stereotypes and prejudices.     

The life of the gay gene: from hypothetical genetic marker to social reality

The gay gene was first identified in 1993 as a correlation between the genetic marker Xq28 and gay male sexuality. The results of this original study were never replicated, and the biological reality of such an entity remains hypothetical. However, despite such tenuous provenance, the gay gene has persisted as a reference in science news, popular science writings, and in press releases and editorials about biomedical research. An examination of the life of the gay gene in U.K. news media demonstrates that the gay gene has become an assumed back-story to genetic sexuality research over time, and that the critique of its very existence has been diminished. Latterly, the gay gene has entered into the online biomedical databases of the 21st century with the same pattern of persistence and diminishing critique. This article draws on an analysis of the U.K. press and online databases to represent the process through which the address of the gay gene has shifted and become an index of biomedicalization. The consequent unmooring of the gay gene from accountability and accuracy demonstrates that the organization of biomedical databases could benefit from greater cross-disciplinary attention.     

Donor engagement through Twitter

This research examines how non-profit organizations can build and strengthen relationships with donors using the social media tool Twitter. Strong relationships are what lead to donor engagement in a non-profit cause, and the participatory culture that grows online as a result of using Twitter can help to initiate and build relationships with online donors. In this research, tweets were collected from two non-profit organizations, Care2 and United Way Toronto, and one for-profit corporation, Ford Motor Company. The textual construction of the tweets was analyzed using discourse analysis and a rhetorical framework as methodologies. Two main communication theories – the Social-Judgement Theory and the Social Networking Theory – emerged from the analyzed data and were driving forces behind the results. When applied to the data, it was evident that both these theories supported and illustrated ways to build and strengthen relationships using the social media tool, Twitter.     

Family decision making in child welfare: challenges in developing a knowledge base for practice

Over the past two decades, engaging families in decision‐making has grown in popularity across child welfare systems internationally. The family group conference in particular has generated interest as a practice model that facilitates broader family engagement in care and protection. As the practice has flourished, research has been undertaken to strengthen the knowledge base and to support the introduction of family engagement strategies across jurisdictions. This paper examines the recent research relating to family engagement strategies in child welfare and explores the ways in which family involvement in decision‐making can be incorporated into emerging protective practices. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.