Predicting What Will Happen When You Intervene

This paper offers some rules of thumb that practicing social workers can use for case studies that aim to construct, albeit not fully and never entirely reliably, models designed to help predict what will happen if they intervene in specific ways to help this particular client, here and now. We call these ’ex ante case-specific causal models’. ’Ex ante’ because they are for before-the-fact prediction of what the likely effects of proposed actions are. ’Case-specific’ because we are not concerned with studies that provide evidence for some general conclusion but rather with using what general and local knowledge one can get to predict what will happen to a specific client in the real settings in which they live. ’Causal’ because this kind of case study aims to trace out as best possible the web of causal processes that will be responsible for what happens. In this sense our case studies resemble post facto realist evaluations.     

Migrant domestic workers and shifting strategies in organizing

The mobilization of domestic workers in the United States has strengthened and grown nationally in the last 15 years, and scholars have been paying particular attention to the ways their organizing has undertaken innovative strategies to address social, cultural, and legal exclusions specific to migrant domestic workers. Research has focused on historicizing the entrenched colonial legacy of servitude and domesticity, but more recently studies have concentrated on documenting the challenges and victories domestic workers have achieved as a result of their legislative state campaigns for a Domestic Worker Bill of Rights. This article reviews recent research that analyzes the complex strategies employed in organizing, and the role that migrant domestic workers play in challenging the boundaries of citizenship and integrating a transnational dimension to domestic worker organizing. Although research shows that enforcement continues to be a central issue in states where a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights has been enacted, migrant domestic workers continue to strengthen the coalitional power that has shown to transform new directions in organizing that demand alternate ways of contemplating workers experiences as generating different principles of justice.     

Binge Drinking Among Undergraduate College Students in the United States: Implications for Other Substance Use

Abstract

The authors examined the relationship between binge drinking and other substance use among US college students, using nationally representative data from the 1995 National College Health Risk Behavior Survey implemented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Compared with nonbinge drinkers, current binge drinkers were significantly more likely to report “ever” using and current use of cigarettes, marijuana, cocaine, and other illegal drugs. The researchers also found that the more often students binge drank, the more likely they were to have ever used cigarettes, marijuana, cocaine, and other drugs, and the more likely they were to report current use of cigarettes and marijuana. Those who design programs to prevent binge drinking and use of other substances should take into account the reality that many students use more than one substance and that the more frequently students report binge drinking, the more likely they are to be using other substances as well.     

US Public Universities' Compliance With Recommended Tobacco-Control Policies

Abstract

To address the rise in tobacco use among college students, several national health organizations, including the American College Health Association, recommend that colleges enact smoking bans in and around all campus buildings, including student housing, and prohibit the sale, advertisement, and promotion of tobacco products on campus. Key informants at 50 US public universities, one from each state, were interviewed during the 2001/2002 academic year to assess the prevalence of these recommended policies. More than half (54%) of the colleges banned smoking in all campus buildings and student residences, 68% had no tobacco sales on campus, and 32% of the schools' newspapers did not accept tobacco advertising. Regional differences in adoption of these campus tobacco-control policies were present. Although this national sample of public universities had implemented some of the recommended policies, they must take further actions to comply fully with campus tobacco-control guidelines.     

“Am I Really a Bad Parent?”: Adolescent-to-Parent Abuse (AtPA) Identity and the Stigma Management Communication (SMC) Model

Applying qualitative data from grounded theory research on adolescent-to-parent abuse (AtPA), we demonstrate the utility of Meisenbach’s (2010) Stigma Management Communication model. Originally developed for nonfamily contexts, this model provides an applied framework for studying stigma identity as an interactionist construct in families. Our theoretical explication and analysis of AtPA incorporates stigma, identity, and communication strategies to showcase the utility of this model for future family-focused research.