Competency-based program evaluation: A contingency approach

What types and levels of professional competency should an evaluator have? Should requisite competencies differ depending on the nature of an evaluation? Can a practical competency assessment approach be developed for use in educating highly qualified evaluation professionals? This article addresses these concerns by presenting a contingency model of evaluation competencies. Four broad categories of competency — policy analysis, administrative, interpersonal /personal, and technical — are identified along with three different levels or criteria of acceptable performance. Then several features of the evaluation context, including the evaluation type, the phase and the evaluator role, are individually analyzed to determine the required competencies implied by each. Based on this, a contingency model is developed that postulates requisite competency types and levels depending on a combination of contextual features. The article concludes that the model can usefully serve as a heuristic or organizing mechanism for assessing evaluation contexts and orienting the education of professional evaluators.     

“Live Social Work”: How to Bring Life Back into Social Work

Abstract

In this article I discuss how professional social work can entail critical, reflexive work. This is accomplished by adapting the concept of “live sociology”. It is mainly an exploratory article, trying to raise suggestions that can be adopted and be further developed. I argue that people coming into contact with contemporary social work are sometimes reduced to being “dead” objects, as they are pinned down into static categories. The demand for developing evidence-based social work risks substantiating this tendency even further. In contrast, I claim that social work needs to move away from these kinds of explanations and instead turn towards developing “live social work”; that is to say, social work where everyday life, agency, and what people do in what context needs to be the focus, not what people are.     

Gender differences in activity of daily living of the elderly in rural China: evidence from Chaohu

Using data from a sample survey, Well-being of the elderly in Anhui province, China, this paper studies the effects of health, economic and family factors on the activities of daily living (ADLs) as measures of disability for elderly men and women. The objective is to explore reasons for gender differences in ADLs in rural China. Our results suggest that higher incidence rates of chronic diseases, lower cognitive ability, as well as heavier household and daily care burdens of females, are the main factors leading to a higher prevalence of ADL disability for the female elderly.     

中国农村的男孩偏好与人工流产

文章使用2001年全国计划生育/生殖健康调查数据,定量研究了中国农村在生育政策实施的不同时期的男孩偏好和人工流产的关系。研究发现,人工流产与出生性别比的时间趋势、特征和变化模式基本一致;在只有两个孩子的妇女中,第一孩为女孩的妇女再次怀孕后进行人工流产的风险显著高于第一孩为男孩的妇女。这些结果揭示了性别选择性人工流产的普遍存在和男孩偏好对人工流产的重要影响,验证了性别选择性人工流产对出生性别比上升的作用。     

The differentiation of material life styles: 1925 to 1966

The relevance of consumer behavior to social differentiation is considered and its independence from income is documented. Earlier studies of household consumer traits by Sewell and others are taken as baseline data and compared to the 1966 Detroit Area Study. In the baseline data, published between 1925 and 1940, high correlations were observed among consumer traits. The 1966 study revealed weaker relationships among similar traits. Taking correlations and factor loadings as social indicators, material life styles appear to have become more differentiated. After assessing the robustness and relevance of this inference, the author discusses how trends in material life styles may run counter to other social trends.     

Single mothers or women in single parenthood (WISP)? A report and reflection on the development of a brief marital metaphor questionnaire (MMQ-10)

Metaphor is embedded with representations of both experience and longing and can go far beyond problem representations in exploring marital experience. This paper reports the development of a marital metaphor questionnaire and its use with 123 Chinese single mothers. Lower marital satisfaction does correlate with their ratings of marital experience, but not with their general attitude toward marriage. The implications are discussed as to how marital metaphors could be used as an effective tool to engage clients on sensitive topics, reveal hopes and strengths, and how empirical studies can be conducted in a stigma-free and strength-based orientation.     

Black Immigrants in Portugal: Luso–Tropicalism and Prejudice

This article analyzes the relationship between the luso–tropicalist representation of the history of Portuguese colonization and overt as well as covert expressions of anti-immigrant prejudice. The luso–tropicalist representation emphasizes the uniqueness of the Portuguese colonial relations based on Portuguese empathy and capacity to deal with people from different cultures. This representation was created during Salazar's dictatorial regime and is still assumed to be a dimension of Portuguese national identity. The empirical findings presented in this article show that this luso–tropicalist representation may explain the salience of the norm against prejudice in Portugal and may contribute to weaken the traditional association between national identity and overt prejudice. A second dimension of the association between luso–tropicalism and integration of Black immigrants in Portuguese society was examined, that is, the impact of luso–tropicalism on the attribution and covert evaluation of cultural differences between White Portuguese and Black immigrants. Results show that despite the luso–tropicalist representation, White Portuguese individuals express a covert negative evaluation of cultural differences attributed to Black immigrants. This means that the luso–tropicalist representation can protect against the expression of overt prejudice but not against its covert dimensions.     

The pre-school child at risk: An eating disorder

This paper discusses the dynamics of a preschool child at risk due to a disturbance in the mother-child relationship. The mother's activities attacked the child's autonomy through the feeding process. The child's defense of oral protest became life-threatening. The therapeutic intervention is described. This case illustrates that socioeconomic factors and educational background are not the only causes of risk for a child.     

Disabled men with muscular dystrophy negotiate gender

Disability is often portrayed as a one-dimensional category devoid of further intersections. Work which has addressed the intersection of disability and male gender has rarely considered different types of disability or impairment, or foregrounded the experiences of disabled men themselves. This article is based on empirical work carried out in England with men who have Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). We explored with participants their sense of themselves as men and their commonalities and differences with other men. Findings suggest that men with DMD claim, reject and redefine what it meant to them to be men. Doing gender was often heavily reliant on the availability and permission of others. Our study highlights the usefulness of exploring gender with men with particular experiences of disability and of looking at how this might change over a life course, especially when the nature and extent of the life course is a precarious one.