Relighting the Campfire: Rediscovering Activity-Based Group Work

Group Work Camp, sponsored by Association for the Advancement of Social Work with Groups (AASWG) and held during the summers of 2009 and 2011 on the campus of George Williams College of Aurora University, provided unique opportunities for educators, practitioners, and students to experience the power of collective action and activity/experience-based groups. The camp reminded participants of the origins of the group work movement and how the prevalence of experientially based group practice has diminished over the past few decades. Further, this camp experience served as an awakening and may have particular import for U.S.-based practitioners to align with emerging trends in global social group work.     

Teaching accountability: using client feedback to train effective family therapists

The AAMFT Task Force on Core Competencies (Nelson et al., 2007) proposed that marriage and family therapy (MFT) educators teach and provide evidence of trainee competence beyond coursework and accrued clinical hours. This article describes the integration of a systematic client feedback protocol into an MFT-accredited program's curricula to address the call for outcome-based learning. Outcome management (OM) provides a framework for teaching and assessing trainee effectiveness. Continuous incorporation of client feedback embodies collaborative, strengths-based, integrative, and diversity-centered program values. Students learn a system for being accountable to clients, the profession, and service communities.     

Attitudes toward dating violence among college students in mainland China: an exploratory study

This study investigates attitudes toward psychological and physical dating violence among college students in mainland China (n = 245). The results of this study indicate that among our sample of college students in mainland China, men and women were relatively similar in their attitudes toward male perpetrated and female perpetrated physical dating violence and female perpetrated psychological dating violence. As has been found in previous research, men and women in our sample were more accepting of female perpetrated physical and psychological dating violence than male perpetrated physical and psychological dating violence. Finally, among several variables that predicted dating violence attitudes, shame emerged as a potentially important variable to include in future studies on dating violence in Chinese populations.     

The logistics and mechanics of conducting tracer injection experiments in urban streams

Field-based environmental tracer studies are commonly used to investigate hydrological and ecological processes in flowing waters. These studies involve injecting a conservative tracer into a stream or into a near-stream well and monitoring the surface and subsurface waters at downgradient locations. Results have been used to quantify stream velocity, inflow, outflow, dispersion, and transient storage exchange processes. However, no single source provides a detailed methodology for conducting these tests in streams within urbanized watersheds. Working in urban watersheds brings with it unique problems such as private property access, vandalism, encounters with police and the lay public as well as long-term, intermittent and ephemeral hydrologic modifications. We present such a methodology based on results of 20 tests conducted in streams with urban watersheds ranging in size from 0.39 km² to 60 km² in Pennsylvania and Maryland. The tracer injection period ranged from instantaneous to 24 h with monitoring lasting from 8 h to 5 days. The methodology is demonstrated with a 5-day tracer test in which sodium bromide was injected into Dead Run, Baltimore, Maryland for 24 h.     

The Interpersonal Relationships and Social Perceptions of Adolescent Perfectionists

This study investigated the relationship between multidimensional perfectionism, self‐reported interpersonal relationships, and peer‐reported prosocial, disruptive, and academic behaviors among a general sample of 984 9th‐grade adolescents. Cut‐scores from the Almost Perfect Scale‐Revised (APS‐R; Slaney, Rice, Mobley, Trippi, & Ashby, 2001 ) classified adolescents as adaptive perfectionists, maladaptive perfectionists, and nonperfectionist. Adaptive perfectionists reported significantly higher levels of positive interpersonal relationships than maladaptive perfectionists or nonperfectionists. Further, peers rated both perfectionism groups as more prosocial and less disruptive than nonperfectionists. Adaptive perfectionists were more liked than maladaptive perfectionists. Implications of these findings, particularly as they pertain to the nomothetic understanding of multidimensional perfectionism among older, school‐aged adolescents conclude the paper.     

Gay men and lesbians' experiences in and expectations for interactions with heterosexuals

We analyzed 97 gay men's and lesbians' experiences with and expectations for interactions with majority group members. Respondents described reactions to previous or imagined future interactions with an unfamiliar heterosexual person who had just become aware that the respondent was lesbian or gay. Results indicated that respondents are more proactive than reactive (in contrast to expectation states theories), that the contact hypothesis can be appropriately applied to this group, even though the formulation of the theory was based upon negative attitudes in the absence of extensive contact, and that they have different reactions for people of different prejudice levels, rather than being globally suspicious, as is predicted by many intergroup theories. Future research should direct more attention to the stigmatized group members' attitudes about and reactions toward the majority group.     

Beyond Happiness: Minority Stress and Life Meaning Among LGB Individuals

ABSTRACT

Scholars have recently started to examine how minority stressors are associated with wellbeing outcomes among lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people. Such studies have examined mainly hedonic wellbeing, and those that have investigated eudaimonic wellbeing have tended to use composite measures. The present study draws from this literature to examine how minority stressors are associated with a key indicator of eudaimonic wellbeing: life meaning. Drawing from the minority stress model, we examined these associations using structural equation modeling among 266 LGB adults. Expectations of rejection and identity concealment, but not discrimination or internalized homophobia, had significant negative associations with life meaning. Discrimination had negative indirect associations with life meaning via expectations of rejection and concealment. Our results highlight the nuanced relations that exist between minority stressors and life meaning and highlight the need to move beyond composite measures of wellbeing. Implications for clinical practice and directions for research are discussed.     

The tele-technics of agency,the Net,the urban and sex tourism

This paper examines the effects of various tele-technologies (technologies at a distance) on the subject-object relationship within a context of Western conceptualizations about agency, self-other, and thought in relation to action. To examine these effects, the article uses the Internet postings of sex tourists as well as an example of ubiquitous media and screen culture in the form of a Hollywood film. How the loss of writing at a spatial and temporal distance influences these sex tourists, as well as how mass media (cinema) merge anxieties about the subject-object relationship with concerns about the status of individual agency supposedly enhanced by these tele-technologies is considered in the light of how thought has been constructed and understood from the early twentieth century to the present. The media through which thought and action are mediated become the focus of the inquiry.     

Comparative Use of Complementary Medicine,Allied Health,and Manual Therapies by Middle-Aged and Older Australian Women

We compared use of Complementary and Alternative Medicines (CAM) and therapies, Allied Health interventions (AH), and Manual Therapies (MT) in middle-aged and older Australian women. Cross-sectional data from the 2007 phase of the Longitudinal study of Aging in Women (LAW study) was analyzed. Self-reported 12-month usage patterns of CAM, AH, and MT were determined by mailed questionnaire. Results revealed that 56.2% of the middle-aged group, and 55.0% of the older group used CAM, AH, and MT services in the previous 12 months (a nonsignificant difference). In contrast, there was a highly significant difference between the overall use of CAM products by middle-aged women (88.2%) and older women (67.7%: p = .002).