"THE STORY" OF A DEATH: THERAPEUTIC CONSIDERATIONS WITH BEREAVED FAMILIES

Facilitating and listening to bereaved families tell "The Story" of their loss is an important component of therapeutic work with bereaved families. Following a discussion of the general functions of stories, the authors use a variety of case examples to illustrate how "The Story" can be used as an assessment device, as an initial intervention, and as a gauge of the progress of treatment. Family stories of loss are conceptualized as constructions, and the emphasis is on how individual and family context affect and are affected by these stories. Throughout the paper, particular attention is paid to ways stories canbe useful for children in families.     

Micro and Macro Level Implications for a Sociology of Virtue: the Case of Draft Protesters to the Vietnam War*

On the basis of data from draft protesters to the Vietnam War it is suggested that an actively pursued and morally enhancing identity is the “pay off” of some deviant acts. These qualities of such deviance, called virtuous deviance, play havoc with labelling theory's passivity and character-degrading assumptions. The study of such acts may be called a sociology of virtue. A distinction between two kinds of protesters (refusers and resisters), which reflects different commitments to risk, suggests guiding hypotheses for that study: From the point of view of the actor, virtue may be self-constructed and autonomously implemented. Yet, escalations of commitment to virtue may require interpersonal corroboration and support. From the point of view of the normative order, such acts firm up moral boundaries, defining what it means to be moral.     

Social Work Education and the Changing Nature of Public Agency Practice

The CSWE accreditation standard requiring deans and directors to demonstrate commitment to the ethical values of the profession again raises questions about what commitment to ethical values means and about how determinations of adherence will be made. In this paper, two contrasting educational doctrines found in universities are reviewed. Aspects of each are found in social work statements of value. Special attention is given to their conflicting conceptions of students and the ideal learning environment. Following this, a sample of social work values and procedures for determining adherence to them are reviewed. Suggestions for further study are given.     

Exploring the Uncertainties in Cancer Risk Assessment Using the Integrated Probabilistic Risk Assessment (IPRA) Approach

Current methods for cancer risk assessment result in single values, without any quantitative information on the uncertainties in these values. Therefore, single risk values could easily be overinterpreted. In this study, we discuss a full probabilistic cancer risk assessment approach in which all the generally recognized uncertainties in both exposure and hazard assessment are quantitatively characterized and probabilistically evaluated, resulting in a confidence interval for the final risk estimate. The methodology is applied to three example chemicals (aflatoxin, N‐nitrosodimethylamine, and methyleugenol). These examples illustrate that the uncertainty in a cancer risk estimate may be huge, making single value estimates of cancer risk meaningless. Further, a risk based on linear extrapolation tends to be lower than the upper 95% confidence limit of a probabilistic risk estimate, and in that sense it is not conservative. Our conceptual analysis showed that there are two possible basic approaches for cancer risk assessment, depending on the interpretation of the dose‐incidence data measured in animals. However, it remains unclear which of the two interpretations is the more adequate one, adding an additional uncertainty to the already huge confidence intervals for cancer risk estimates.     

Instructional Design: Bridge to Competence

Competency-based education emphasizes precision and rigor in instructional development. Social work educators surveyed reported differential success in implementing key instructional development elements. They reported success in specifying instructional objectives and developing related assessment procedures. They faced frequent obstacles in the systematic design of instruction; that is, in building bridges to competence for the learner. A theoretical framework is proposed to guide instructional design strategies. Three interrelated constructs are developed: learning task characteristics, learning environment characteristics, and learner characteristics. Approaches for operationalizing each construct are identified. Design strategies emerge from matching learner and learning environment characteristics to optimize performance on differentiated learning tasks.     

Efficacy of a group intervention for adult women survivors of sexual abuse

This study evaluates the effects of a group intervention for women sexually abused in childhood or adulthood. The sample consisted of 41 women involved in a group intervention based on a feminist approach offered by help centers for sexual assault victims in Quebec and 11 women in a wait-list comparison group. Results reveal that the group intervention reduced psychological distress and consequences associated with sexual abuse and that gains were maintained at three-month follow- up. Analyses of potential factors related to differential gains indicated that abuse-related variables and concurrent individual interventions were not linked to outcomes. Exploratory analyses suggested that women experiencing severe physical partner violence showed greater gains with respect to self-blame/stigmatization, sexual anxiety, and anxiety related to assertiveness.     

Why are professors liberal?

The political liberalism of professors—an important occupational group and anomaly according to traditional theories of class politics—has long puzzled sociologists. This article sheds new light on the subject by employing a two-step analytic procedure. In the first step, we assess the explanatory power of the main hypotheses proposed over the last half century to account for professors’ liberal views. To do so, we examine hypothesized predictors of the political gap between professors and other Americans using General Social Survey data pooled from 1974–2008. Results indicate that professors are more liberal than other Americans because a higher proportion possess advanced educational credentials, exhibit a disparity between their levels of education and income, identify as Jewish, non-religious, or non-theologically conservative Protestant, and express greater tolerance for controversial ideas. In the second step of our article, we develop a new theory of professors’ politics on the basis of these findings (though not directly testable with our data) that we think holds more explanatory promise than existing approaches and that sets an agenda for future research.