Effect of relational bullying on attitudes,behavior and injury among adolescent bullies,victims and bully-victims

This study examined whether dysfunctional correlates of relational bullying parallel those that have been found for physical bullying. We used data from the population of 2,494 respondents in grades 7–12 from a school district in Colorado to compare latent variables of self-esteem, attitudes toward school, delinquent behavior, physical injury, physical bullying, and physical victimization among 291 relational bullies, 303 victims, 213 bully-victims, and 1,687 neutrals. We used gender as a control variable. Neutrals had the best school attitudes, least problem behavior, least injury, and were less likely to be physical bullies or victims. Bully-victims reported worse outcomes on the latent variables than either neutrals or victims, and they were more likely to be physically victimized than bullies. These outcomes parallel findings among physical bullies in a similar sample. Results show the need for improved intervention, heightened awareness, and particular attention to relational bully-victims.     

Videoconferencing: A Viable Teaching Strategy for Social Work Education?

The findings of a study that examined students' reports about their experience with ITV are presented. The results are based on two different courses with different instructors and different composition of students. Results show that students in both sites report that the use of technology does not compromise their learning but they dislike it. Strategies for future research to understand the nature of the reaction are suggested.     

Letter From the Editors

ABSTRACT

In this article we explore older persons’ definitions of and explanations for elder abuse in the Netherlands by means of interviews with older persons. A qualitative study was conducted based on semistructured interviews with 35 older persons who had no experience with abuse. Our findings show that older persons participating in our study define elder abuse foremost as physical violence that is performed intentionally. The study participants explain elder abuse as a result of the dependency and vulnerability of older persons, of changing norms and values, and of changes in the position of older persons in society, which result in disrespect toward older persons and a lack of social control and responsibility. The older persons’ explanations for the occurrence of abuse mainly focus on societal changes; older persons seem to regard elder abuse primarily as a societal problem. This understanding of, and explanation for, elder abuse may influence their detection and reporting behavior, as they may tend to acknowledge only severe cases of intentional physical violence that leave clear and therefore physically detectable evidence.     

The Effect of Drug Use on Social Work Students' Treatment Attitudes

Sixty first-year social work students were studied regarding their drug experiences and attitudes. A minority had experimented with drugs other than marijuana, and over half had tried marijuana. Older age was found to be associated with less drug use and more negative attitudes. Experience with drugs was also related to less negative attitudes toward users and more positive views about treatment effectiveness. Since social work is a profession concerned with helping those in trouble, particularly substance abusers, drug experiences and attitudes of social workers need to be explored further concerning their relationship to treatment outcome.     

An Indicator Framework for Linking Historic Preservation and Community Economic Development

This paper contributes to the immigration literature by generating two unique non-economic quality of life (QOL) indices and testing their role on recent migration patterns. Applying the generated QOL indices in conjunction with four independent welfare measures to an augmented gravity model of immigration, this paper finds an insignificant relationship between the six non-economic QOL measures and immigration flows for a panel of 16 OECD countries from 1991 to 2000. However, the results suggest that other factors such as the stock of immigrants from the source country already living in the OECD destination country, population size, relative incomes, and geographic factors all significantly drive the flow of immigration for the sample tested.     

Designing Organisational Management Frameworks to Empower Episodic Volunteering

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Volunteers are a critical operational resource for not-for-profit organisations in the health and welfare sector. However,...     

Bounded awareness and anomalies in intertemporal choice: Zooming in Google Earth as both metaphor and model

This paper draws on recent developments in the theory of choice under uncertainty to model anomalies in intertemporal choice. Cognitive limitations leading to hyperbolic discounting and magnitude effects in intertemporal choice may be described in terms of bounded awareness, and represented by phenomena familiar from visualization software such as Google Earth. Cognitive limits on visualization impose constraints on both the area being viewed and the level of detail of the view, with a trade-off between the two. Increasing detail at the expense of limiting the area viewed may be described as zooming. Data from a field experiment were used to assess the theory with an incentive-compatible multiple price list approach involving magnitude levels of 5x, 10x and 20x the basic magnitude level with time horizons of one, three, six and 12 months. Without zooming adjustments in base consumption, very strong hyperbolic and magnitude effects were found, and present bias could not explain the hyperbolic effects. The zooming model provides an explanation of what appear to be significant intertemporal anomalies in the data.     

Understanding and working with adolescent neglect: perspectives from research,young people and professionals

This paper provides an overview of research about adolescent neglect funded by the Department of Children, Schools and Families (now the Department for Education) and the Department of Health. The paper examines what is known from literature about the causes of adolescent neglect, together with its potential consequences for well‐being. Drawing on qualitative data, the concept of neglect is explored from the perspectives of young people themselves and the professionals who work with them. Consideration is given to examples of interventions and preventative models geared towards addressing adolescent neglect. Key findings indicate that there is a need for both a re‐examination of current definitions of neglect in the light of age‐related distinctions and perspectives, and a fuller understanding of the particular needs of adolescents who are experiencing neglect. Additionally, the research highlights that there is a lack of research knowledge about neglectful parenting and the behaviour of young people, as well as limited understanding of interventions with neglected adolescents. Key themes from the research are discussed in terms of their implications for future practice, policy and research in relation to working to improve the welfare of neglected young people.     

Statistical methods for regular monitoring data

Summary.  Meteorological and environmental data that are collected at regular time intervals on a fixed monitoring network can be usefully studied combining ideas from multiple time series and spatial statistics, particularly when there are little or no missing data. This work investigates methods for modelling such data and ways of approximating the associated likelihood functions. Models for processes on the sphere crossed with time are emphasized, especially models that are not fully symmetric in space–time. Two approaches to obtaining such models are described. The first is to consider a rotated version of fully symmetric models for which we have explicit expressions for the covariance function. The second is based on a representation of space–time covariance functions that is spectral in just the time domain and is shown to lead to natural partially nonparametric asymmetric models on the sphere crossed with time. Various models are applied to a data set of daily winds at 11 sites in Ireland over 18 years. Spectral and space–time domain diagnostic procedures are used to assess the quality of the fits. The spectral-in-time modelling approach is shown to yield a good fit to many properties of the data and can be applied in a routine fashion relative to finding elaborate parametric models that describe the space–time dependences of the data about as well.