Choice of Social Work as a Career: Possible Influences

Abstract

Little is known about why students choose social work for a career. Certain life events in the family of origin may exert a compelling influence, though other factors are certainly involved. This study examines the influence of selected life events and such factors as prior employment, volunteering, and influential persons via a survey of 415 social work students and a comparison group of 203 nonsocial work students. Social work students were more likely to report problems such as alcoholism and emotional illness within their families of origin and to attribute these experiences to their choice of career.     

The asymptotic covariance structure of log-linear model estimated parameters for the multiple recapture census

This paper presents a matrix formulation for log-linear model analysis of the incomplete contingency table which arises from multiple recapture census data. Explicit matrix product expressions are given for the asymptotic covariance structure of the maximum likelihood estimators of both the log-linear model parameter vector and the predicted value vector for the observed and missing cells. These results are illustrated for data pertaining to a population of children possessing a common congenital anomaly.     

Home‐based Telework,Gender, and the Synchronization of Work and Family: Perspectives of Teleworkers and their Co‐residents

This article explores the relationship between work–family roles and boundaries, and gender, among home‐based teleworkers and their families. Previous literature suggests two alternative models of the implications of home‐based work for gendered experiences of work and family: the new opportunities for flexibility model and the exploitation model. Drawing on the findings of a qualitative study of home‐based workers and their co‐residents, we argue that these models are not mutually exclusive. We explore the gendered processes whereby teleworking can simultaneously enhance work–life balance while perpetuating traditional work and family roles.     

Book Review: Robert H. Bremner,Giving, Charity and Philanthropy in History,Transaction Publishers,New Brunswick and London, 1996, xiii + 241 pp.

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

Crossover designs in the presence of carry-over effects from two factors

Experiments, used in the telecommunications industry and elsewhere, are considered that involve the simultaneous application of levels of two unrelated factors, treatments and stimuli, to each of several subjects in a succession of time periods. The existence is suspected of carry-over effects of treatments and stimuli, in the period immediately following the period of their application. Methods are given for the construction of separate sequences of treatments and of stimuli; these methods are based on the Latin squares of Williams and of Russell. In the resulting designs, the treatments and stimuli are either orthogonal or nearly orthogonal, and the coincidence of the direct and carry-over effects of each factor is either balanced or nearly balanced. The efficiencies of the designs are assessed by comparing the average variances of elementary contrasts in the levels of each factor with appropriate lower bounds.     

Reinvigorating stalled CQI efforts through physician involvement

Continuous quality improvement (CQI), loosely synonymous with total quality management (TQM), was designed for the comparatively simple world of industry. Now that the gurus of CQI have attempted--originally with full support of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO)--to apply the industrial CQI model to hospitals, they've noticed something: The model doesn't work, and hospital CQI programs are faltering enough to persuade the Joint Commission to scale back its CQI accreditation requirements. One major shortcoming behind the performance to date of CQI in hospitals: Physicians don't fit into the industrial model of CQI. Physicians are too important, and too many programs are stalled, to continue to implement CQI as though physicians don't exist. The techniques described here should help to reinvigorate faltering programs, giving hospital management a chance to "do it right the second time."