Cultivating a Research Tool Kit for Social Work Doctoral Education

ABSTRACT

Social work doctoral education can prepare students to become research scholars whose work has impact by providing and promoting the development of an appropriately sophisticated and diverse research methods tool kit. Students can cultivate their tool kits through course work, mentored research experience, and specialized workshops. The tool kit is best grounded in guided reading of methodological texts—that is, reading methodological texts while conferring with advanced peers, faculty, and research supervisors—which provides essential teaching and experiences to enhance understanding and use. This article lays out a rationale for guided reading and provides an example of primer text and recommended readings to support guided reading for one set of related research methods: randomized experimentation and finite mixture modeling.     

Gibt es „interkulturelles Coaching“?

The definition of intercultural coaching depends as well on expectations and objectives of the clients as on underlying concepts of culture. To detect the required competencies of the coach we differentiate between coaching as intercultural learning, coaching in inter- and multicultural contexts and transcultural coaching. Taken these perspectives in mind, culture is and cultures are immanent dimensions in all coaching processes. Hence, in a globalized world of hybrid cultures and individuals the coach needs to use culture(s) as reflexive resource for any kind of coaching process and session.     

Love in the Time of Communism: Intimacy and Sexuality in the GDR

Edith Ennen, The Medieval Town (1979), 287 (North Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam, Dfl. 85.00). Translation by Natalie Fryde of Die europäische Stadt des Mittelalters (Gottingen, 1972).

J. Michael Hittle, The Service City: State and Townsmen in Russia, 1600–1800 (1979), xii+297 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, £10.50).

John T. Evans, Seventeenth‐Century Norwich. Politics, Religion and Government, 1620–1690 (1980), xii+346 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, £12.50).

David Thomas Konig, Law and Society in Puritan Massachusetts, 1629–1692 (1979), xix+215 (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, $21.00).

Jonathan C. Brown, A Socioeconomic History of Argentina, 1776–1860 (1979), xiv+302, Cambridge Latin American Studies, volume XXXV (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, £15.00).

Evelyn Sakakida Rawski, Education and Popular Literacy in Ch'ing China (1979), 294 (Michigan Studies on China, Ann Arbor, £11.55).

Sandra Burman (ed.), Fit Work For Women (1979), 201 (Croom Helm, £8.50, paperback, £4.50).

David M. Katzman, Seven Days a Week: Women and Domestic Service in Industrializing America (1979), xi+374 (Oxford University Press, New York, £7.75).     

Using NTEE to classify non-profit organisations: an assessment of human service and regional applications

The National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) constitutes a major contribution to the field of non-profit research, but is beset by conceptual and practical problems. The application of the taxonomy to the list of charitable organisations recognised by the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is also an important resource for research, although it has limitations as well, especially for industry-specific and regional analyses. Using survey data from the Chicago metropolitan region, I show that regional estimates for human services based on only those charitable organisations which are required to file tax returns may miss over 40 per cent of the total number of organisations and under-estimate total revenues by almost half. Finally, I point to conceptual, technical and institutional challenges that must be addressed if the NTEE is to gain maximum utility.     

Optimal designs for non-competitive enzyme inhibition kinetic models

In this paper, we present a new method for determining optimal designs for enzyme inhibition kinetic models, which are used to model the influence of the concentration of a substrate and an inhibition on the velocity of a reaction. The approach uses a nonlinear transformation of the vector of predictors such that the model in the new coordinates is given by an incomplete response surface model. Although there exist no explicit solutions of the optimal design problem for incomplete response surface models so far, the corresponding design problem in the new coordinates is substantially more transparent, such that explicit or numerical solutions can be determined more easily. The designs for the original problem can finally be found by an inverse transformation of the optimal designs determined for the response surface model. We illustrate the method determining explicit solutions for the D-optimal design and for the optimal design problem for estimating the individual coefficients in a non-competitive enzyme inhibition kinetic model.     

A Multidimensional Approach to Measuring Quality of Employment (QoE) Deprivation in Six Central American Countries

This paper proposes a methodology for measuring Quality of Employment (QoE) deprivation from a multidimensional perspective in six Central American countries (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama) using a dataset specifically designed to measure employment conditions. Building on previous work on multidimensional poverty and employment indicators, the paper uses the Alkire/Foster (AF) method to construct a synthetic indicator of the QoE at an individual level. It selects four dimensions that must be considered as essential to QoE deprivation: income, job stability, job security and employment conditions. These dimensions then subdivide into several indicators, a threshold for each indicator and dimension is established before defining an overall cut-off line that allows for the calculation of composite levels of deprivation. The results generated by this indicator show that Central American countries can be divided into three distinct and robust performance groups in terms of their QoE deprivation. Overall, approximately 60% of the deprivation levels are attributable to non-income variables, such as occupational status and job tenure. The methodology used can allow policymakers to identify and focus on the most vulnerable workers in a labour market and highlights the fact that having a formal written contract is no guarantee of good job quality, particularly in the case of women.

     

Cultural Complexity and Border Markers in Norwegian Kindergartens

This article has analysed practices towards and views on cultural diversity by staff in two Norwegian kindergartens. The article has focused on food traditions both among minorities and the Norwegian majority that serve as border markers and are used in differentiating processes among the staff. The analysis found concurrent processes towards cultural homogenisation and increased diversity and experienced that staff members are in the process of developing a perception about minority children that is complex, shifting and intersecting, rather than a straightforward perception based solely on minority status. However, the study also identified a tendency operating in parallel where, even though the ideal goal is equality in results, the outcome in practice is often a majority‐based equality practice that leaves little room for difference.     

Ecosystem services from converted land: the importance of tree cover in Amazonian pastures

Deforestation is responsible for a substantial fraction of global carbon emissions and changes in surface energy budgets that affect climate. Deforestation losses include wildlife and human habitat, and myriad forest products on which rural and urban societies depend for food, fiber, fuel, fresh water, medicine, and recreation. Ecosystem services gained in the transition from forests to pasture and croplands, however, are often ignored in assessments of the impact of land cover change. The role of converted lands in tropical areas in terms of carbon uptake and storage is largely unknown. Pastures represent the fastest-growing form of converted land use in the tropics, even in some areas of rapid urban expansion. Tree biomass stored in these areas spans a broad range, depending on tree cover. Trees in pasture increase carbon storage, provide shade for cattle, and increase productivity of forage material. As a result, increasing fractional tree cover can provide benefits land managers as well as important ecosystem services such as reducing conversion pressure on forests adjacent to pastures. This study presents an estimation of fractional tree cover in pasture in a dynamic region on the verge of large-scale land use change. An appropriate sampling interval is established for similar studies, one that balances the need for independent samples of sufficient number to characterize a pasture in terms of fractional tree cover. This information represents a useful policy tool for government organizations and NGOs interested in encouraging ecosystem services on converted lands. Using high spatial resolution remotely sensed imagery, fractional tree cover in pasture is quantified for the municipality of Rio Branco, Brazil. A semivariogram and devolving spatial resolution are employed to determine the coarsest sampling interval that may be used, minimizing effects of spatial autocorrelation. The coarsest sampling interval that minimizes spatial dependence was about 22 m. The area-weighted fractional tree cover for the study area was 1.85 %, corrected for a slight bias associated with the coarser sampling resolution. The pastures sampled for fractional tree cover were divided between ‘high’ and ‘low’ tree cover, which may be the result of intentional incorporation of arboreal species in pasture. Further research involving those ranchers that have a higher fractional tree cover may indicate ways to promote the practice on a broader scale in the region.