Named social workers – better social work for learning disabled people?

In 2016, the Department of Health in England announced that it would pilot the role of Named Social Worker. We chose to be part of the pilot because we regularly witness too many people’s lives being defined by restrictions imposed by professionals. Erroneous associations between the concepts of risk and danger have become the norm in how learning disabled people’s decision-making is perceived and managed. However, we believe social workers educated in the social model of disability and grounded more generally in disability studies offer an alternative perspective. The pilot is an opportunity to test our hypothesis that social work practice rooted in social model thinking can successfully challenge oppressive practice and disabling barriers, thus providing the opportunity for social workers to genuinely be ‘servants not masters’ in the lives of disabled people.     

Applying the international wellbeing index to investigate subjective wellbeing of New Zealanders with European and with Maori heritage

Abstract

The International Wellbeing Index (IWI), a global measure for investigating subjective wellbeing, consists of a Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI) and a National Wellbeing Index (NWI). The index is applied to the two largest ethnic populations in New Zealand—New Zealanders with European heritage and New Zealanders with Maori heritage. Psychometric characteristics of the IWI for both subsamples compare favourably to those found in other countries. However, for both subsamples, the absolute value of reported subjective wellbeing is lower than expected. Consistent with other social indicators, New Zealanders with Maori heritage show even lower values of PWI and NWI than New Zealanders with European heritage.     

Smallholder Preferences for Agri‐environmental Change at the Bhoj Wetland,India

Incentive‐based approaches have gained policy interest in linking change in agricultural land management with environmental conservation. This article investigates how scheme design influences smallholder farmers' decisions to switch to organic farming to reduce water pollution, drawing on a study at a Ramsar wetland site providing water for the city of Bhopal. Results from a choice experiment suggest that transitional payments are necessary to overcome farmer constraints to adopt organic farming, and that effective land certification has the potential to act as a self‐enforcing mechanism linking farmer incomes with wetland conservation benefits.     

Informing the Public About Uncertain Risks

Many problems arise in connection with the communication of risk information. In this article the content of the information communicated is taken as a starting-point for analyzing the risk communication process. We studied the way in which authorities communicated health risks to local residents in Dutch soil pollution situations and found that communication problems were characterized more by misunderstanding and conflict between parties with different views and interests than by a lack of understanding. Therefore, it is important to look more closely at the way the communicators of information (in our cases, officials) select risk information from risk assessments, and to study the effects that the information selected has on the receivers (in our cases, residents). Both the process of selection by the officials and the process of interpretation by the residents will be shown to be influenced by the different institutional backgrounds. The article presents a new approach to risk communication. Both the risk information presented by the authorities and the public reactions to this risk information are considered to reflect the institutional background of authorities and residents, and can be analyzed in these terms. Such an approach has consequences for the study of risk communication and the manner in which it is practiced.     

Personalization of Mail Surveys for General Public and Populations with a Group Identity: Results from Nine Studies*

Abstract The effect of personalization on mail survey response rates was examined in nine studies that included 17 comparisons under several research conditions. A study of this variable across multiple experiments in five agricultural experiment stations was undertaken because of conflicting results from previous research and from concern that the effectiveness of personalization might have decreased over time. Results show that, while response to general public surveys appeared to increase modestly across all treatment groups, there was no positive effect for populations in which a group identity (e.g., Dear Oregon Gardner or Dear ATV Owner) is employed to address respondents in cover letters. Personalization appears to remain useful for improving response in surveys of the general public.     

To live an ordinary life: resource needs and additional costs for people with a physical impairment

Disabled people face increased risks of living in poverty largely due to lower incomes and extra resource requirements compared to non-disabled people. This study incorporated the social model of disability with an economic approach to costing to estimate the additional costs required by people with a physical impairment to achieve an adequate standard of living in New Zealand. Budgets estimating the additional equipment, modifications, transport, support and time required to achieve an adequate standard of living were developed and validated through focus groups with community members. The findings suggest that reducing barriers involves substantial costs ranging from NZ$645–$2,348 per week.     

Supplementing a survey with respondent Twitter data to measure e-cigarette information exposure

ABSTRACT

Social media data are increasingly used by researchers to gain insights on individuals’ behaviors and opinions. Platforms like Twitter provide access to individuals’ postings, networks of friends and followers, and the content to which they are exposed. This article presents the methods and results of an exploratory study to supplement survey data with respondents’ Twitter postings, networks of Twitter friends and followers, and information to which they were exposed about e-cigarettes. Twitter use is important to consider in e-cigarette research and other topics influenced by online information sharing and exposure. Further, Twitter metadata provide direct measures of user’s friends and followers as opposed to survey self-reports. We find that Twitter metadata provide similar information to survey questions on Twitter network size without inducing recall error or other measurement issues. Using sentiment coding and machine learning methods, we find Twitter can elucidate on topics difficult to measure via surveys such as online expressed opinions and network composition. We present and discuss models predicting whether respondents’ tweet positively about e-cigarettes using survey and Twitter data, finding the combined data to provide broader measures than either source alone.