Patterns of practice: An exploratory factor analysis of child and family social worker skills

There is relatively little research on the communication skills that social workers use in direct practice with families. This study explores patterns of practice skill found in child and family social work home visits. The study analysed 127 practice interactions in family homes, coding for seven dimensions of worker skill using a coding framework drawn from motivational interviewing. Exploratory factor analysis was employed to establish patterns of skill within the data and to group key dimensions of skill. The findings make two contributions. First, three fundamental dimensions of good practice emerged, which we characterize as care and engagement, good authority, and support for behaviour change. Second, in exploring the relationship between “care” and “control” elements of social work, skilled social workers were able to combine good authority and empathic engagement, whereas those who were less skilled in use of authority were also less good at engagement. This contributes to debates about care and control in social work. The usefulness of these dimensions for conceptualizing practice in child and family social work is discussed and directions for further research are suggested.     

B. Enjolras and K. H. Sivesind (eds): Civil Society in Comparative Perspective

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

Great Expectations: Voluntary Sports Clubs and Their Role in Delivering National Policy for English Sport

Voluntary sports clubs (VSCs) account for about a quarter of all volunteering in England. The volunteers work in a mutual aid, self-production, self-consumption system whose main purpose is identifying and nurturing high-level performers. But the new HMG/Sport England strategies leading to London 2012 expects volunteers to make a major contribution to sustaining and extending participation. The study utilized six focus group sessions with a total of 36 officials and members of 36 clubs across the six counties of Eastern England to assess whether and to what extent government policy objectives can be delivered through the voluntary sector. The study focused on the perceptions and attitudes of club members about being expected to serve public policy and the current pressures they and their clubs face. The results lead the authors to question the appropriateness, sensitivity, and feasibility of current sport policy, particularly the emphasis on VSCs as policy implementers.     

Implications of Sex Guilt: A Meta-Analysis

A meta-analysis of the literature examining the outcomes related to feelings of sex guilt was conducted. The analysis demonstrates gendered differences in the experience of sex guilt and myriad attitudinal and behavioral impacts. Specifically, men report lower levels of sex guilt, r?=??.227 than do women and implications of sex guilt experience are vast, including its association with engagement in less sexual activity, r?=??.337, less favorable attitudes toward sex and lessened use of contraceptives, r?=??.276, reduced reports of sexual arousal in response to an explicitly sexual media content, r?=??.308, less positive emotional response to sexually explicit media content, r?=??.367, reduced level of sexual information accuracy, r?=??.324, and less positive attitudes toward sexual behavior, r?=??404. Sex guilt is positively related to level of religiosity/religious behavior, r?=?.439. The findings suggest that sex guilt provides a consistent set of responses to sexual information and media content as well as a motivational basis for behavior. These outcomes are further explicated and discussed.     

The Candy Crush Sweet Tooth: How ‘Near-misses’ in Candy Crush Increase Frustration,and the Urge to Continue Gameplay

Like many gambling games, the exceedingly popular and lucrative smartphone game “Candy Crush” features near-miss outcomes. In slot machines, a near-miss involves getting two of the needed three high-paying symbols on the pay-line (i.e., just missing the big win). In Candy Crush, the game signals when you just miss getting to the next level by one or two moves. Because near-misses in gambling games have consistently been shown to invigorate play despite being frustrating outcomes, the goal of the present study was to examine whether such near-misses trigger increases in player arousal, frustration and urge to continue play in Candy Crush. Sixty avid Candy Crush players were recruited to play the game for 30 min while having their Heart Rate, Skin Conductance Level, subjective arousal, frustration and urge to play recorded for three types of outcomes: wins (where they level up), losses (where they don’t come close to levelling up), and near-misses (where they just miss levelling up). Near-misses were more arousing than losses as indexed by increased heart rate and greater subjective arousal. Near-misses were also subjectively rated as the most frustrating of all outcomes. Most importantly, of any type of outcome, near-misses triggered the most substantial urge to continue play. These findings suggest that near-misses in Candy Crush play a role in player commitment to the game, and may contribute to players playing longer than intended.     

Losses disguised as wins in multiline slots: using an educational animation to reduce erroneous win overestimates

Slot machines are available in several countries, with multiline games growing in popularity. Interestingly, many audiovisually reinforced small ‘wins’ in multiline games are in fact monetary losses – outcomes referred to as losses disguised as wins (LDWs). Research suggests that LDWs cause players to overestimate how many times they remember actually winning during a playing session. The study sought to replicate this finding and see if a short educational animation about LDWs could significantly reduce this LDW-triggered win overestimation effect. It employed a mixed design, with animation viewed (LDW, control) as the between-subjects factor, and game played (200 spins on a few LDW or many LDW game; game order counterbalanced) as the within-subjects factor. Fifty-four novice participants estimated how many times they won more than they wagered in each game. In the control animation group, the study replicated the LDW-triggered win overestimation effect for participants playing the many LDW game. Crucially, win overestimates were significantly reduced in this many LDW game for players exposed to the LDW animation. The study concludes that LDWs can lead novice gamblers to remember winning more often than they actually do during a playing session, but educating participants about LDWs can reduce these erroneous win overestimates.     

Baby K's unlawful removal: practice issues in the emergency protection of children

This paper addresses the legal and practice issues raised by a particular case in the UK. In January 2008, less than three hours after his birth, Baby K was removed from his mother's care by hospital staff and placed in a separate ward. At a High Court hearing later that morning, it was ruled that the removal of Baby K was unlawful. Important practice issues are raised by this ruling. After setting out the circumstances under which Baby K was removed from his mother, this paper considers a number of issues raised by the case: (i) what constitutes lawful removal under domestic law; (ii) European jurisprudence and domestic law in relation to emergency removal at birth; (iii) parental consent to removal; (iv) professionals' liability for breaches of human rights; and (v) the role of child protection plans in safeguarding children. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

No one above suspicion: Talcott parsons under surveillance

This article presents details, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, of an extensive investigation carried out by the Federal Bureau of Investigation into the background and activities of Talcott Parsons. In 1952, following allegations that Parsons was the leader of a Communist Party cell at Harvard University, J. Edgar Hoover authorized a security-type investigation of Parsons; it continued for two years and was conducted throughout the United States and in at least seven European nations. Parsons was eventually cleared of all accusations, but FBI scrutiny of his activities continued on an intermittent basis for at least another thirteen years. Possible influences on Parsons’ scholarship and implications for the sociology of knowledge are also discussed.     

Best subset selection of autoregressive models with exogenous variables and generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity errors

Summary.  We develop an efficient way to select the best subset autoregressive model with exogenous variables and generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity errors. One main feature of our method is to select important autoregressive and exogenous variables, and at the same time to estimate the unknown parameters. The method proposed uses the stochastic search idea. By adopting Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques, we can identify the best subset model from a large of number of possible choices. A simulation experiment shows that the method is very effective. Misspecification in the mean equation can also be detected by our model selection method. In the application to the stock-market data of seven countries, the lagged 1 US return is found to have a strong influence on the other stock-market returns.