Using conceptual models as a planning and evaluation tool in conservation

Conservation projects are dynamic interventions that occur in complex contexts involving intricate interactions of social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental factors. These factors are constantly changing over time and space as managers learn more about the context within which they work. This complex context poses challenges for planning and evaluating conservation project. In order for conservation managers and evaluation professionals to design good interventions and measure project success, they simultaneously need to embrace and deconstruct contextual complexity.In this article, we describe conceptual models—a tool that helps articulate and make explicit assumptions about a project's context and what a project team hopes to achieve. We provide real-world examples of conceptual models, discuss the relationship between conceptual models and other evaluation tools, and describe various ways that conceptual models serve as a key planning and evaluation tool. These include, for example, that they document assumptions about a project site and they provide a basis for analyzing theories of change.It is impractical to believe that we can completely eliminate detail or dynamic complexity in projects. Nevertheless, conceptual models can help reduce the effects of this complexity by helping us understand it.     

Doing Disability: Disability Formations in the Search for Work*

Disability theorists have spent much time discussing how disability is defined. The theoretical roots for these debates reside in the medical, structural, and minority models of disability. The medical model views disability as equivalent to a functional impairment; the minority model sees a lack of equal rights as a primary impediment to social equality between able and disabled populations; and the structural model looks to environmental factors as the cause of disability. While debates over how to define disability are informative, there is currently an insufficient amount of empirical research looking at how people come to identify themselves as having a disability. Rather than focus on how disability is (or should be) defined, herein we look at how disability identities are constructed as people search for work. We show that people's interactions with employers and employment agencies have important influences on how disability identities are constructed. We borrow from the “doing gender” and “racial formations” paradigms to introduce an interactive approach to looking at how disability identities are constructed. We introduce the concept of disability formation to highlight how disability identities are continually negotiated through interactions with employment agencies and employers. Our findings are based on focus groups with 58 people who self‐identified as having a disability and were working or searching for work.     

Family Structure and Children’s Economic Well-Being: Incorporating Same-Sex Cohabiting Mother Families

Research on family structure and child well-being rarely includes children in same-sex parent families, a notable omission since 28 % of female–female couple households contain children. Using the 2010–2013 pooled current population survey (CPS), we examined children’s economic well-being by family structure. These data were ideal for this study because they included a sizeable number of children in same-sex cohabiting mother families and the CPS measured both official and supplemental poverty, incorporating the cohabiting partner. Using the official poverty measure, children in same-sex cohabiting mother families were more likely to be poor than their counterparts in either different-sex cohabiting or married parent families. Using the supplemental poverty measure, children in same-sex mother families were no more likely to be poor than children in all other types of different-sex two-parent families.     

A Case Study Using Photovoice to Explore Racial and Social Identity Among Young Black Men: Implications for Social Work Research and Practice

This article describes an exploratory qualitative case study using a research method novel to social work known as Photovoice. This case study of the Photovoice process assesses its value as a community-based participatory research (CBPR) method with marginalized communities within social work research. Photovoice was used to engage young Black men as researchers into their own lived experience. Through a photographic and group participatory project, participants discussed how intersections of race, gender, and sexuality affect their lives and health. While this methodology has proliferated within public health literature, little research exists within social work. Photovoice represents a research well-aligned with core social work values of empowerment and social justice. This method offers our profession a participatory, action-oriented tool to inform practice and policy and does so in the voices of communities who often go unheard.     

Factors related to attitudes toward diversity in Australia,Malaysia, and Puerto Rico

In this study, we tested social identity complexity theory (Roccas & Brewer, 2002) in relation to attitudes toward diversity and the associated variables of patriotism, nationalism, religiosity, aggression, and sense of self (well-being) in a cross-cultural study of 398 Malaysian, 239 Australian, and 201 Puerto Rican students. Puerto Ricans reported the most positive attitudes toward diversity, followed by Australians, and finally Malaysians. For Puerto Ricans, pro-diversity attitudes were predicted by a positive correlation with constructive patriotism and a negative correlation with blind patriotism. For Australians, pro-diversity attitudes were predicted by a positive association with constructive patriotism, a negative association with traditional nationalism, and a negative association with physical aggression. For Malaysians, pro-diversity attitudes were predicted by positive relationships with all of the following variables: constructive patriotism, traditional nationalism, verbal aggression, hostility, and the need to bolster self through idealizing others. These results support social identity complexity theory and partially support associated predictions for Australians, Puerto Ricans, and some of the predictions for Malaysians. The results are explained in terms of local cultural contexts that may not easily be understood by a simple understanding of the variables that were measured.     

Understanding barriers to healthy behaviors in black college men

Objective: Due to the short life expectancy of black men, it is important to understand what impacts health behaviors in this group so that interventions and programs can be developed to improve their health behaviors which may help in increasing the life expectancy of black men. The purpose of this study was to understand what perceived barriers exist for black college men that prevent them from engaging in healthy behaviors. Participants and Methods: Thirty-five black male students at a southern Historically Black College and University participated in five focus groups and four interviews. A qualitative analysis was used to analyze data for similar themes and codes. Results: Perceived barriers to engaging in healthy behaviors appear to be influenced by image, food cost, and education. Cues to action for not engaging in healthy behaviors appear to be related to role models. Conclusions: Black college men are not adequately informed or educated about elements that can impact their health and how they can improve it. College administrators and researchers should develop interventions that include elements of increasing health knowledge and age-appropriate role models to improve health behavior change among this group.     

Evaluation of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Safer,Smarter Kids:</Emphasis> Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Curriculum for Kindergartners

This study assessed the effectiveness of the Safer, Smarter Kids kindergarten sexual abuse prevention curriculum in meeting its educational objectives of increasing children’s knowledge of safety risks and self-protection strategies. The study utilized a two-phase non-probability convenience sample of public school kindergarten students. The sample consisted of 1169 students in four school districts in Florida. Using an alpha level of .05, a paired-samples t test was calculated to compare the mean pretest scores to the mean posttest scores of the youth participants. The mean difference was significantly greater than zero (p-value ≤.001). The measurement instrument used to assess student gains functioned well in terms of reliability (α = .82). The effect size was large with a Cohen’s d effect size of 1.09. The results indicated that completion of the Safer, Smarter Kids curriculum was followed by a significant increase in students’ knowledge of key prevention concepts with a 77 % increase in scores post intervention.     

From these roots: The role of historically Black colleges and universities in preparing the nation’s gerontologists for an aging society

ABSTRACT

The aging of the United States population is creating an increased need for social workers and other helping professionals with training in gerontology. Recent estimates indicate that less than 3% of MSW students are enrolled in an aging concentration, as compared to 19% enrolled in children/youth concentrations. In addition, the phenomenon of a diverse baby boomer generation joining the ranks of persons age 65 and older has created a plethora of scholarship and curriculum development aimed at readying the aging network for the unprecedented growth of older persons. Social work can make unique professional contributions to the field of gerontology and older persons. This study asserts, however, that social work is not adequately prepared to practice in an increasingly diverse aging society. The social work profession has articulated commitments to acknowledging and affirming how diversity and culture shape the human experience and to developing social workers who can competently engage in research-informed practice and practice-informed research. However, there remains a need in social work education for more widespread use of culturally relevant pedagogies that can help achieve these goals. Informed by both the Afrocentric and Black perspectives, this study presents a content analysis of the curricula infused at two historically Black universities. The nature and extent of the contributions of historically Black universities to social work education is the focus of this article. The scope of this investigation also includes the identification of prominent Black social work educators and discusses the implications of these perspectives for more culturally informed gerontology curricula that promote culturally competent gerontological social workers.     

The Orthodox Church in revolutionary Cheliabinsk: reform,counter-reform,and popular revolution in 1917

In 1917 the Cheliabinsk Vicariate, like the Church in most areas in the Russian empire, declined to support the autocracy, welcomed the February Revolution, endorsed the Provisional Government, and envisioned a broad set of reforms that even included a greater role for the laity in Church governance. The key agent for reform in Cheliabinsk – as in other dioceses – was the Assembly of Clergy and Laity, the focus of this study. Although the Assembly did adopt a radical and ostensibly popular social and administrative program, the vicariate encountered growing lay disenchantment – because of its support for an unpopular war, because of a caveat deferring social reform, but also because of the Church’s reluctance to give parishioners full power over the parish. The intensifying crises of 1917 heightened expectations for reform, and the disintegration of authority in Cheliabinsk and within the Church itself widened the chasm between the Church and parishioners. In response, diocesan authorities supported conservative measures, which deferred reform, in an attempt to re-establish order, while parishioners – frustrated by the pace of reform and the Church’s wavering support of it – led a revolution against diocesan authority aimed at making the Church subservient to their own agendas.