Social Workers’ Knowledge and Attitudes About Evidence-Based Practice: Differences Between Graduate Students,Educators, and Practitioners

Clinical Social Work Journal - The implementation of evidence-based practice (EBP) is increasingly being stressed as a responsibility of social work practitioners and social work educators....     

A Starting Point for Navigating the World of Daily Fantasy Basketball

Fantasy sports, particularly the daily variety in which new lineups are selected each day, are a rapidly growing industry. The two largest companies in the daily fantasy business, DraftKings and Fanduel, have been valued as high as $2 billion. This research focuses on the development of a complete system for daily fantasy basketball, including both the prediction of player performance and the construction of a team. First, a Bayesian random effects model is used to predict an aggregate measure of daily NBA player performance. The predictions are then used to construct teams under the constraints of the game, typically related to a fictional salary cap and player positions. Permutation based and K-nearest neighbors approaches are compared in terms of the identification of “successful” teams—those who would be competitive more often than not based on historical data. We demonstrate the efficacy of our system by comparing our predictions to those from a well-known analytics website, and by simulating daily competitions over the course of the 2015–2016 season. Our results show an expected profit of approximately $9,000 on an initial $500 investment using the K-nearest neighbors approach, a 36% increase relative to using the permutation-based approach alone. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

Lightning Rods in the Local Moral Economy: Debating Unauthorized Migrants' Deservingness in Israel

Localized debates about who unauthorized migrants are and what they do, or do not, deserve unfold in a culturally specific register that is deeply charged with emotion and moral valuation. Structuring such debates are vernacular discursive frames that emerge from, and reflect, a common “local moral economy.” Taking Israel as case study, this article examines six elements of the country's local moral economy – biopolitical logic, historical memory, political emotion, popularized religion, an ideology of “fruitful multiplication,” and hasbara (“public diplomacy”/propaganda) – and explores their impact on public debates about unauthorized and irregular forms of migration. Here, as elsewhere, conventionalized distinctions that frame much migration scholarship – e.g. “economic” vs. “political” migrants, “migrant workers” vs. “refugees,” even the terms “authorized” and “unauthorized” themselves – bear but limited salience. Migration researchers who hope to influence local policy debates must recognize the weight and influence of local moral economies, and the chasms that divide vernacular from conventionalized frames. Achieving this sort of nuanced understanding is, at root, an ethnographic challenge.     

Parents’ and children’s power effectiveness during polyadic family conflict: Process and outcome

Parent–child power effectiveness was investigated during naturally occurring polyadic family conflict with young children involving three or more family members. In 35/39 families, 210 conflict sequences were identified and coded for type of power, power effectiveness, and conflict outcome. Effective use of power overall and by each partner was assessed using two methods: microscopic (target’s response to an actor’s power move during the process of conflict) and macroscopic (power moves related to conflict outcome). Actor findings revealed that parents were more effective using certain types of power microscopically (i.e., simple, legitimate, reward) and macroscopically (i.e., simple, legitimate, questioning), whereas children were more effective using reward power macroscopically. Our findings support the unique qualities of the parent–child relationship and the complex context of polyadic family conflict. The study contributes to the literature on the socialization of young children in the family context.     

The household inventory as urban ‘theatre’ in late medieval Burgundy

In 1413 at the death of his wife Guillemot, Jean Aubert, a group of witnesses and a clerk of the local mayoralty met to value the possessions of their residence, resulting in an inventory full of notes and values on rooms and their objects. Within the existing historiography of the Burgundian Netherlands and its northern European neighbours, inventories and their objects tend to be analysed from two perspectives: the Burgundian court and the ‘consumer revolution’. Applying insights from Erving Goffman and Bruno Latour, this article suggests a third perspective should have priority: the urban ‘theatre’ within which objects were documented and placed. Therefore it sets up an alternate methodology which begins with the inventory to build a picture of the theatre (the urban context and residence), the actors (the Aubert family) and the audience (the witnesses of the inventory) to establish new insights into the operation of Burgundian power and the dynamics of the ‘consumer revolution’.     

Intellectual disability and faith communities: perspectives of Catholic religious leaders

Faith communities create community and are important to many individuals with intellectual disability. However, relatively little is known about how intellectual disability is construed among faith leaders and the inclusion of people with intellectual disability in faith communities. To address these gaps in knowledge, we interviewed 12 Catholic priests, parochial vicars, and deacons to explore: their experiences with individuals with intellectual disability; their beliefs towards the involvement of individuals with intellectual disability within faith communities; and how religion informs their understanding of intellectual disability. We identified five religiously-anchored narratives of intellectual disability, and explore implications for individuals with intellectual disability and faith communities.     

Compassion Satisfaction,Compassion Fatigue,and Burnout: A Replication Study with Victim Advocates

Abstract

Past research has investigated the rates of compassion satisfaction (CS), compassion fatigue (CF), and burnout within health-care providers. Findings indicate higher levels of CS and lower levels of CF predict lower rates of burnout. The current study extended prior research by replicating past research findings, but with victim advocates. This study enrolled a national sample of 142 victim advocates. A hierarchal linear regression was run to test the research questions. In level 1, years of experience was not significant and only accounted for 1.1% of the variance in burnout. When adding CS, the model became significant (p?<?.001) and CS accounted for an additional 51.8% of the variance. When CF was added to the final model, it was significant (p?<?.001), and accounted for an additional 19.3% of the variance. When comparing the findings to past studies, our findings were similar; however, our study did find that CS and CF accounted for significantly more variance than past studies with health-care providers. Therefore, CS and CF might be greater predictors of burnout in victim advocates than in health-care providers. Future studies should aim to create interventions to increase CS and decrease CF, to reduce burnout.     

Two Perspectives on the Language of Special Needs Computing: towards a shared view

This paper reviews and examines the language used in literature that describes the educational and therapeutic use of microcomputers with people who have special needs. In the language of special needs computing two perspectives are identified. One perspective focuses on the microcomputer technology while the other focuses on the microcomputer user. While the language of both perspectives acknowledges the value of microcomputers, each perspective moves towards an acknowledgement that microcomputer use needs to be placed in an environmental context. This move in both language sets reflects an increasing focus on the potential barriers to microcomputer use.