The Use of a Workshop on Group Work for Field Instructors to Enhance Students' Experience with Group Work in the Field Practicum

To enhance student's learning about group work in the field practicum, one undergraduate program provided a continuing education workshop to field instructors in which core group work content was identified as were suggestions for how they could provide appropriate learning opportunities for their students. Results suggest that such training may positively affect students' opportunities to practice group work. The findings also are consistent with previous research that has demonstrated that social work students often have only limited opportunities to practice group work in the field.     

Healing the Incest Wound: Adult Survivors in Therapy (2nd ed.) by Courtois,C.

During the past decade, alcoholism treatment services in the United States have experienced unprecedented growth. The federal and local governments and the general public have become increasingly aware of the devastating impact of alcohol abuse and alcoholism on people's health and welfare and on the overall economy. As a result of this growing awareness, diversified alcoholism services are now available in communities throughout the country. Despite this preponderance of treatment, there is at least one segment of the alcoholic population which has been virtually unserved. This is the deaf alcoholic. This paper will describe an innovative program of alcoholism treatment for the deaf.     

Mental health and aging in the 21st century

This article reviews pressing issues in mental health care for older adults in the 21st century. After examining current forces for change in older adults' mental health care and coverage, the authors discuss barriers to accessing mental health care resulting from the fragmentation of the United States health care system as well as the history behind the multiple and competing systems of care for older adults. The article continues with a discussion of goals for the provision of good mental health service delivery for older adults and concludes by addressing potential responses and future target areas regarding mental health care for older adults as well as a potential realistic collaboration to address mental health and aging.     

The Earned Income Tax Credit and Rural Families: Differences Between Non-participants and Participants

Differences between rural low-income mothers who were non-participants and participants in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) were examined. About one-third (35%) of the 224 eligible mothers in a multi-state USDA study, Rural Families Speak, did not claim the tax credit. The EITC non-participants were more likely to be Hispanic, be less educated, have larger families, perceive their income as being inadequate, live in more rural counties, and possess little understanding of the EITC. Participating mothers were more likely to be single, food secure, and satisfied with life. Analysis of qualitative data revealed that the mothers had many misconceptions about the EITC. These findings assist in formulating policies and outreach efforts that may increase rural low-income families’ EITC participation.     

Opening our eyes,changing our practices: learning through the transnational lifeworlds of teachers

This article examines the inclusion of a culturally relevant curricular practice of social identity papers within teacher education in the USA that incorporates the transnational lifeworlds of teachers. Using tenets of feminist interdisciplinary frameworks, we highlight how this curricular practice allows teachers and teacher candidates in urban and rural contexts to examine transnational lifeworlds and their influence on culturally relevant practices in relation to notions of oppression and privilege. We focus on linguistic border crossings and both/and perspectives of teacher’s social identities. More research is needed to better understand the construction of teacher’s social identities within and across transnational lifeworlds and the ways it impacts their practices and student’s academic and social achievement.     

An alternative to unit root tests: Bridge estimators differentiate between nonstationary versus stationary models and select optimal lag

This paper introduces a novel way of differentiating a unit root from stationary alternatives using so-called “Bridge” estimators; this estimation procedure can potentially generate exact zero estimates of parameters. We exploit this property and treat this as a model selection problem. We show that Bridge estimators can select the correct model with probability tending to 1. They estimate “zero” parameter on the lagged dependent variable as zero (nonstationarity), if this is nonzero (stationary), estimate the coefficient with standard normal limit. In this sense, we extend the statistics literature as well, since that literature only deals with model selection among only stationary variables.