The Case of Mandy: Applying Holland's Theory and Cognitive Information Processing Theory

In this article the authors discuss the application of Holland's theory (Holland, 1997) and cognitive information processing theory (CIP; Peterson, Sampson, & Reardon, 1991) to the case of a college student named Mandy who was deciding about a major and a future career. The authors also describe how a career planning class, the Self-Directed Search (SDS; Holland, Powell & Fritzsch, 1994), the Career Thoughts Inventory (CTI; Sampson, Peterson, Lenz, Reardon, & Saunders, 1998), and Improving Your Career Thoughts: A Workbook for the Career Thoughts Inventory (Sampson, Peterson, Lenz, Rearson, & Saunders, 1996) were used as interventions to allow Mandy to become aware of her negative thinking patterns and to begin the process of reframing these thoughts. The outcome of Mandy's case, her personal reactions to this article, and practical implications for other service providers, are discussed.     

Latinos and the Skin Color Paradox

For African Americans and Latinos, skin color is a significant predictor of many social and economic stratification variables including income, education, housing, occupational status, spousal status, poverty rates, criminal justice sentencing, and rates of depression. Given these patterns, some scholars have surprisingly found that skin color is not a significant predictor of many political attitudes for African Americans, and called this phenomenon the “skin color paradox.” This article investigates the role of skin color, race, and national origin in predicting political marginality and political commonality among Latinos. The models suggest that skin color is not a significant predictor of political attitudes, consistent with the skin color paradox theory but that national origin does predict some political attitudes.     

Emerging needs,evolving services: The health of Pacific peoples in New Zealand

Abstract

From 0.1% of the total population in 1945 to 6.9% in 2006, Pacific peoples now resident in New Zealand highlight significant health policy and service delivery issues within an increasingly diverse society. Over the last decade, marked differences in the health status of Pacific New Zealanders and Palagi New Zealanders have been well documented, showing high levels of disparity and continuing negative trends. This paper provides a broad overview of the history of Pacific health and health initiatives in New Zealand from the 1940s through to the mid 2000s, highlighting the interface between Pacific peoples and the New Zealand health sector. While the New Zealand Government has become increasingly responsive to Pacific health needs, significant disparities remain between Pacific and Palagi populations. Furthermore, many of the encouraging health initiatives introduced in the past decade remain at risk due to a variety of factors, including a need to strengthen the Pacific health workforce and management expertise.     

Religiosity and Life Satisfaction Across the Life Course

Scant attention has been paid to social catalysts of the increase in religiosity in the maturational and aging process. Using the 1988 Gallup Survey, this paper first explores four major measures of religiosity (personal devotion, participation in public ritual, divine interaction, and preference for public or privatized religiosity) for seven age groups. Next, the impact of these religiosity measures on satisfaction with life is assessed for each of the major age categories. In light of these findings, the authors move toward developing a theory of religiosity and life course.     

Beyond PowerPoint™: Using Learning Objects to Enhance Social Work Courses

Faculty use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in social work courses has the potential to transform social work education, including increasing student engagement and accommodating different learning styles. Learning objects are reusable digital resources with a pedagogical purpose that may be used in online, hybrid, or face-to-face social work courses to achieve these and other pedagogical benefits. This article defines and provides an overview of the concept “learning objects.” Guidelines for locating and incorporating existing learning objects and for creating learning objects for use in social work courses are detailed. Finally, examples are provided.     

Only human: Exploring the nature of weakness in authentic leadership

While the construct of authentic leadership includes the nondefensive recognition of weaknesses as well as strengths, scholars rarely hypothesize the role weaknesses play in strengthening authenticity and the effectiveness of authentic leaders. We begin by exploring possible unintended consequences of an overly positive strength based view of authentic leadership. We then propose that there are weaknesses associated with cognitive abilities, motivation, social cognition and group dynamics that spring from the need to belong that are part and parcel of human nature such that their integration into one's sense of authenticity not only enhances the authentic leadership attributes of self-awareness, balanced processing, moral indentify and relational transparency but also benefits those who are led. We end with suggestions for future research on these attributes supplementing existing measures of authentic leadership with the use of implicit measures, promising assessment instruments and idiographic techniques.     

Profiles of adult survivors of severe sexual,physical and emotional institutional abuse in Ireland

Adult survivors of institutional abuse were interviewed with a comprehensive assessment protocol which included the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, the Institutional Child Abuse Processes and Coping Inventory, the Structured Clinical Interviews for Disorders of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV axis I disorders and personality disorders, the Trauma Symptoms Inventory, a Life Problems Checklist, the Experiences in Close Relationships Inventory and the Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale. Profiles were identified for subgroups that described severe sexual (N = 60), physical (N = 102), or emotional (N = 85) abuse as their worst forms of maltreatment. Survivors of severe sexual abuse had the most abnormal profile, which was characterised by higher rates of all forms of child maltreatment and higher rates of post‐traumatic stress disorder, alcohol and substance abuse, antisocial personality disorder, trauma symptoms and life problems. Survivors of severe emotional abuse were better adjusted than the other two groups. The profile of survivors of severe physical abuse occupied an intermediate position between the other two groups. A thorough assessment of abuse history and current functioning should be conducted when providing services to adult survivors of institutional abuse, since this may have important implications for the intensity of services required. Survivors of severe sexual abuse may require more intensive services. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.