Has Opposition to Immigration Increased in the United States after the Economic Crisis? An Experimental Approach

We employ two population‐level experiments to accurately measure opposition to immigration before and after the economic crisis of 2008. Our design explicitly addresses social desirability bias, which is the tendency to give responses that are seen favorably by others and can lead to substantial underreporting of opposition to immigration. We find that overt opposition to immigration, expressed as support for a closed border, increases slightly after the crisis. However, once we account for social desirability bias, no significant increase remains. We conclude that the observed increase in anti‐immigration sentiment in the post‐crisis United States is attributable to greater expression of opposition rather than any underlying change in attitudes.     

The ‘right time’ – negotiating the timing of interviews with vulnerable young people

Participant retention is a key factor in determining the success of longitudinal research. Challenges in re-locating and retaining participants over the long term are major issues for researchers working with young people who face adversity and experience frequent changes in circumstances. This article reports on a study of vulnerable young people and their transition into adulthood. Rather than the more conventional schedule-based approach to locating and re-interviewing young people, a relational process, the ‘right time’ framework, was used to facilitate young people's involvement in the study. Embedded in the ‘right time’ framework is recognition of the diverse and fluctuating circumstances that shape young people's availability for interviews. Several case examples are considered which amplify the way that the ‘right time’ framework allowed the research to navigate around these circumstances. The case examples highlight the value young people attached to being involved in the research, the influence on the ‘right time’ of wider relational tensions for young people and the need to negotiate researcher status as a different sort of adult. The ‘right time’ framework contributed to a high retention rate in the study generating a more representative sample and enhancing the subsequent data analysis by providing valuable insights into the lives of these vulnerable young people.     

Inferences on the Means of Two Log-Normal Distributions: A Computational Approach Test

In this article, we propose a novel approach for testing the equality of two log-normal populations using a computational approach test (CAT) that does not require explicit knowledge of the sampling distribution of the test statistic. Simulation studies demonstrate that the proposed approach can perform hypothesis testing with satisfying actual size even at small sample sizes. Overall, it is superior to other existing methods. Also, a CAT is proposed for testing about reliability of two log-normal populations when the means are the same. Simulations show that the actual size of this new approach is close to nominal level and better than the score test. At the end, the proposed methods are illustrated using two examples.     

Feminist and empowerment theory and social work practice

Feminist and empowerment theories are especially important to the understanding of individual and sociopolitical levels of social work assessment and intervention. Incorporating feminist and empowerment approaches in practice will provide social workers with the knowledge, values and skills most likely to promote human rights and social justice. In this paper, we present an overview of both theories and illustrate them with a case example.