The Attitudes of Social Work Students Toward End-of-Life Care Planning

This study examined the attitudes of social work students toward end-of-life care planning, as well as their degree of willingness to engage in this area of social work practice. Factors associated with their attitudes were measured through structured surveys completed by 102 social work students (N = 102) at a school of social work in the southeast. Results indicated that these social work students tended to have positive attitudes toward end-of-life care planning in general. Moreover, these attitudes were positively associated with preference for pain relief treatment, higher levels of comfort when discussing death, more emphasis on self-determination, and apprehension of conflicts of self-determination. The results of this study underscored the increased societal need for recognition of personal preferences in end-of-life care, higher levels of comfort when discussing death, and an increased commitment of social workers' to maintaining the ethical principle of the client's right to self-determination in end-of-life planning. While this is not surprising, it points to a continuing need to re-assess where the field stands in its preparation of social work professionals who will work closely with people who are dying and their families.     

Korean Social Work Students’ Attitudes Toward Homosexuals

For this article, the Hudson and Ricketts Index of Attitudes toward Homosexuality (IAH) was used to measure levels of homophobia in a convenience sample of 124 students enrolled in social work programs in two major universities in the Republic of South Korea. The results indicated that BSW and MSW Korean students had high levels of homophobia, particularly in comparison to U.S. samples. In-class discussion of homosexuality was found to be significantly associated with lower levels of homophobia. The authors review these and other research findings and discuss implications for social work education in South Korea and the United States.     

Types of stressors and bullying perpetration among female adolescents in Korea

ABSTRACT

Research concerning bullying among female adolescents in Korea remains extremely limited. This study examined the impact of three different types of stressors (family stress, friendship stress, and school stress) on bullying perpetration among Korean female adolescents. Five middle schools were randomly selected from 11 schools in Pyeongtaek, Korea. Participants in the study were 374 female students in 7–9th grade. A linear regression analysis based on the different types of stressors was conducted. Findings indicate that family and school related stressors were significantly associated with bullying perpetration. Results supported Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory. Interventions to decrease family stress and school stress are supported for Korean female adolescents engaged in bullying perpetration.     

Searching for a Capacity Building Model in Social Work Education in China

This paper contains our reflections about our experiences in employing a capacity building model for training social workers to conduct community development work in rural China. Unlike the conventional approach to social work practicum, our approach advocates an educational practice of capacity building; not only for local people and learners, but for educators as well. It stresses that the educator should assume a non‐expert role in relating to his/her students so that the students will do the same with local people. We challenge the concept of the social work educator as an expert because it gives a teacher the power and authority to dominate students, which disempowers students during the learning process. In the same vein, we challenge the desire of social work students to become experts in rural development, which in turn disempowers local people from taking charge of the future direction of their lives in rural China. The capacity building approach subscribes to a critical pedagogy that calls for a re‐invention of self by challenging tradition and culture, and by developing academic knowledge, the habit of inquiry and critical curiosity about society, power, inequality, and social change.     

Social skills training and parent education programs for aggressive preschoolers and their parents in South Korea

The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate social skills training and parent education programs for aggressive young children and their parents in South Korea. Participants consisted of intervention group I, which included six children and their mothers in the social skills training and parent education programs; intervention group II, which included seven children and their mothers in the social skills training; and control group, which consisted of six children and their mothers. Pre-test-post-test control group design was used. Participants in both intervention groups reported a significant decrease in aggression and on improvement in pro-social behavior, emotional regulation, and social skills, while the control group reported an increase in aggressive behavior. Mothers in the intervention group I also reported an increase in warmth/acceptance. The findings indicate that both programs are highly effective in reducing aggressive behavior among young children and in fostering positive parenting behaviors.     

Caregivers’ Mental Illness and Adolescent Delinquency Among African Americans in Chicago’s Southside: Exploring Potential Protective Factors

Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal - The aim of the present study is to identify protective factors that buffer the effect of caregiver mental illness on adolescent delinquency. Specifically,...     

Active Ageing Index in Korea – Comparison with China and EU countries

The evidence‐based policymaking relies on the use and robustness of the available data. Many conceptual and operational difficulties restrict this process, not least in making use of evidence to identify policy priorities. The Active Ageing Index (AAI), developed originally for the 28 European Union countries, offers a strong motivation in this respect. This paper reports on the development of the AAI for Korea, a country where speed and level of population aging is among the highest in the world. Drawing on the comparative analysis of the AAI results for Korea, China, and European countries, we find that Korea's AAI (35.3) is higher than the average of the AAI for all EU countries (33.9) but lower than China (37.3). Fitting Korea into the overall ranking with the EU countries and China (ranked 7), Korea is ranked 11, just behind Germany (10). The AAI results in Korea show that the employment domain performs extremely well compared with the EU countries, but other domains, especially “Social participation” and “Independent, healthy and secure living,” are achieving less favorable outcomes. High employment among the current cohorts of older workers in Korea can be attributed largely to the constraints of low pension income status.     

Inside the blogosphere: A taxonomy and framing analysis of abortion weblogs

This study analyses weblog abortion-related content sampled via a search and snowball method. When weblogs located inside of established media Web sites and other weblogs are compared, they are equivalent in the use of advocacy versus objectivist frames. Media weblog posts contain a political frame more frequently than non-media weblog posts do. In terms of diversity of frame, media weblogs employ more frames in their stories. Various explanations for these findings are offered in the context of current abortion-related content patterns.     

A method for choosing the smoothing parameter in a semi-parametric model for detecting change-points in blood flow

In a smoothing spline model with unknown change-points, the choice of the smoothing parameter strongly influences the estimation of the change-point locations and the function at the change-points. In a tumor biology example, where change-points in blood flow in response to treatment were of interest, choosing the smoothing parameter based on minimizing generalized cross-validation (GCV) gave unsatisfactory estimates of the change-points. We propose a new method, aGCV, that re-weights the residual sum of squares and generalized degrees of freedom terms from GCV. The weight is chosen to maximize the decrease in the generalized degrees of freedom as a function of the weight value, while simultaneously minimizing aGCV as a function of the smoothing parameter and the change-points. Compared with GCV, simulation studies suggest that the aGCV method yields improved estimates of the change-point and the value of the function at the change-point.