International Adoption: Counseling and the Adoption Triad

Despite a 60-plus–year history of international adoption (IA) placements, the body of research exploring counseling and psychological interventions for those affected by IA is still in its infancy. This critical review of the state of the literature addresses research, theory, and practice relevant to the international adoption triad (adoptive parents, birth parents, and adoptees). We highlight the lack of empirical attention to the clinical needs of birth parents, the tendency to overlook the clinical needs of adoptive parents both pre- and post-adoption, early childhood vulnerability in international adoptees, and adolescent identity challenges and the attendant clinical issues.     

Die Implementierung des Qualitätsmanagements in sozialen Einrichtungen

The implementation of quality management in social organizations. An evaluation of the results The article presents the results of an evaluation of the introduction prozess of the quality management in social organizations. In particular it illustrates the grounds of the specific features and differences of the participation procedures in this process. A prerequisite for a success is the bottom up procedere that recognizes and uses the resources, competencies and functions of the employees and managers. A formal optimizing of the operational processes will not induce a reorientation. If it does not succeed to internalize new approaches on the basis of a longterm learning process, the quality management will remain a paper and it will fail.     

Defining welfare spells. Coping with problems of survey responses and administrative data

The authors explore how to define a welfare spell and how well surveys measure welfare spells. By comparing survey and administrative data from the Work Pays Demonstration Project in California on the receipt of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), they find that a substantial amount of administrative churning occurs in administrative data. Through a mixing model of several break lengths, the authors find that a single definition of a break in welfare is not applicable to all respondents. Additionally, it appears that there is substantial variation in the break lengths respondents utilize. Finally, the authors show that the complexity of defining an accurate break in spells creates difficulties for detecting biases in survey responses.     

The Psychoanalytic Social Worker/The Social Work Psychoanalyst: What Shall Be Our Message?

Many social workers experience a powerful bond with their profession and with the contributions of psychoanalysis. This paper explores these bonds and demonstrates the substantial overlap, and occasional divergence, which exists between these two important fields. It is especially gratifying to see the renewed emphasis on the treatment relationship in contemporary psychoanalytic writings because the relationship has always been central to social work practice. Finally, all psychoanalytic social workers are encouraged to invest themselves in transferring the legacy of their work to beginning social workers, social work students, and the generations of social workers that will follow them.     

Counter-geographies: The campaign against rationalisation of agricultural research stations in New South Wales, Australia

This paper discusses an example of community action mounted in a rural region of New South Wales, Australia, in response to proposals by the State Government to rationalise agricultural research stations operated by the Department of Primary Industries. Informed by a Foucaultian understanding of power and the concept of governmentality, neoliberalism is theorised as being the broad governmental context in which rationalisation proposals were put forward. Recent literature drawing on this theoretical perspective has emphasised that neoliberalism is enacted through a relationship of power, and is not monolithic or inevitable. Neoliberalism is always negotiated by those seeking to govern and those who are the object of such governmental actions. This paper analyses how plans to rationalise publicly funded agricultural research stations were opposed by those seeking to keep research facilities open in the case study area. The paper discusses the methods and scope of community action and, drawing on interviews, identifies a series of discourses articulated by campaigners. Non-local actors were depicted as uncaring and insensitive. In contrast, campaigners discussed the emergence of a ‘city-country divide’ in domestic politics; the need for specialist agricultural knowledge given the region's unique geographical location; and local impacts of an economic, social and emotional nature. Central were discourses of maintaining community, tradition, and continuity in unique local places defined by their climate, biophysical environment and economy. These were ‘counter-geographies’ that sought (successfully, it would transpire) to disrupt the state's imagined geography of a homogenous and flexible administrative space in which research services could be relocated wherever most efficient. Important too were embodied resistances to the way rural industries and people were subjected. Campaigners refused to accept preferred codes of neoliberal behaviour (particularly mobility and rationality) and instead demanded respect for their careers, families and communities. Important considerations are suggested for further research on impacts and negotiations of neoliberalism. This study particularly highlights the successes—as well as contradictions and limitations—of arguments that construct rural places as socialised, unique and unfairly treated (by governments), in opposition to metropolitan dominance and ‘placeless’ neoliberalism.     

Extreme Copulas and the Comparison of Ordered Lists

We introduce two extreme methods to pairwisely compare ordered lists of the same length, viz. the comonotonic and the countermonotonic comparison method, and show that these methods are, respectively, related to the copula T _M (the minimum operator) and the Ł ukasiewicz copula T _L used to join marginal cumulative distribution functions into bivariate cumulative distribution functions. Given a collection of ordered lists of the same length, we generate by means of T _M and T _L two probabilistic relations Q ^M and Q ^L and identify their type of transitivity. Finally, it is shown that any probabilistic relation with rational elements on a 3-dimensional space of alternatives which possesses one of these types of transitivity, can be generated by three ordered lists and at least one of the two extreme comparison methods.     

Is Poker a Game of Skill or Chance? A Quasi-Experimental Study

Due to intensive marketing and the rapid growth of online gambling, poker currently enjoys great popularity among large sections of the population. Although poker is legally a game of chance in most countries, some (particularly operators of private poker web sites) argue that it should be regarded as a game of skill or sport because the outcome of the game primarily depends on individual aptitude and skill. The available findings indicate that skill plays a meaningful role; however, serious methodological weaknesses and the absence of reliable information regarding the relative importance of chance and skill considerably limit the validity of extant research. Adopting a quasi-experimental approach, the present study examined the extent to which the influence of poker playing skill was more important than card distribution. Three average players and three experts sat down at a six-player table and played 60 computer-based hands of the poker variant “Texas Hold’em” for money. In each hand, one of the average players and one expert received (a) better-than-average cards (winner’s box), (b) average cards (neutral box) and (c) worse-than-average cards (loser’s box). The standardized manipulation of the card distribution controlled the factor of chance to determine differences in performance between the average and expert groups. Overall, 150 individuals participated in a “fixed-limit” game variant, and 150 individuals participated in a “no-limit” game variant. ANOVA results showed that experts did not outperform average players in terms of final cash balance. Rather, card distribution was the decisive factor for successful poker playing. However, expert players were better able to minimize losses when confronted with disadvantageous conditions (i.e., worse-than-average cards). No significant differences were observed between the game variants. Furthermore, supplementary analyses confirm differential game-related actions dependent on the card distribution, player status, and game variant. In conclusion, the study findings indicate that poker should be regarded as a game of chance, at least under certain basic conditions, and suggest new directions for further research.     

Chlamydia trachomatis infection in a male college student population

Male university students were studied to evaluate the merit of routine screening for chlamydia urethritis. Two hundred fourteen sexually active male students answered a questionnaire about symptoms of urethritis and exposure to and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). All subjects were screened for chlamydia by enzyme immunoassay (Chlamydiazyme, Abbott Laboratories). Overall, Chlamydiazyme was positive in 42 of 214 subjects (19.6%). Eighty-six subjects had no symptoms and no history of untreated exposure to STD; 6 of these had positive Chlamydiazyme assays. Based on our results, we conclude that the proportion of male urethral chlamydia infections that are asymptomatic may be much higher than has previously been believed. We further conclude that asymptomatic sexually active male students on this campus are a high-risk population for whom routine chlamydia screening is appropriate.