Research Note—A Pilot Cyber Counseling Course in a Graduate Social Work Program

Cyber counseling is a new and growing medium for offering mental health services to children and youth. However, there is a lack of identification of the core competencies required to provide effective online counseling. A school of social work, in partnership with a national service agency providing online counseling to children and youth, developed and offered a 13-week course to participating MSW social work students and agency staff. The development of online counseling competencies was assessed through individual interviews with participants and a content analysis of online posts. Participants scored well in areas of assessment and intervention. Challenges were identified in relationship building within an online environment.     

Characteristics of Women With Children Who Divorce in Midlife Compared to Those Who Remain Married

This study evaluated characteristics that distinguish women who end a first marriage in midlife from those who remain married. The sample consisted of 459 married and 180 divorced women who had participated in 3 waves of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH). Discriminant analyses were used to assess differences that occurred between the two groups in financial and psychological well-being in the 10 years between NSFH Waves 2 and 3. The major finding was that midlife divorce appears to have long-term financial consequences for women, especially in regard to wealth accumulation. The findings provide some initial information about the long-term effects of midlife divorce that will be useful to professionals working with women who are considering divorce at this stage of life.     

BSW students and interviewing: physiological,psychological, and pedagogical perspectives from Canada

The acquisition of interviewing skills is a hallmark of social work education; however, few studies have examined the experience of learning these skills from the students’ perspective. This qualitative study undertaken in Ontario, Canada, examined Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) students’ perceptions of interviewing. Individual interviews were conducted with second-year BSW students (n = 17) following their completion of an interviewing course. The following six themes emerged as to how students perceived learning interviewing skills: 1) emotional responses; 2) physiological responses; 3) psychological responses; 4) coping strategies; 5) the need for constructive criticism; and 6) the role of the course instructor. The study suggests that instructors normalize the presence of negative emotions and provide more structure and instructions for giving and receiving feedback when using role-plays.     

A Conceptual Framework for Differential Use of Mediation and Family Therapy Interventions With Older Adults and Their Families

The purpose of this article is to present a family-centered approach to working with older adults. This framework utilizes a differential use of family therapy and therapeutic mediation theoretical concepts and skills. This provides an effective approach to conceptualizing and intervening with these often complex situations regarding the decision-making processes related to care of older members. Family-centered mediators/clinicians must be skilled in both models to understand and intervene in the challenging issues presented by families. A case example is included in the article to illustrate the framework.     

Managing Employee Compliance with Information Security Policies: The Critical Role of Top Management and Organizational Culture*

We develop an individual behavioral model that integrates the role of top management and organizational culture into the theory of planned behavior in an attempt to better understand how top management can influence security compliance behavior of employees. Using survey data and structural equation modeling, we test hypotheses on the relationships among top management participation, organizational culture, and key determinants of employee compliance with information security policies. We find that top management participation in information security initiatives has significant direct and indirect influences on employees’ attitudes towards, subjective norm of, and perceived behavioral control over compliance with information security policies. We also find that the top management participation strongly influences organizational culture which in turn impacts employees’ attitudes towards and perceived behavioral control over compliance with information security policies. Furthermore, we find that the effects of top management participation and organizational culture on employee behavioral intentions are fully mediated by employee cognitive beliefs about compliance with information security policies. Our findings extend information security research literature by showing how top management can play a proactive role in shaping employee compliance behavior in addition to the deterrence oriented remedies advocated in the extant literature. Our findings also refine the theories about the role of organizational culture in shaping employee compliance behavior. Significant theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Timing of Immigration Effects Asset Change Among Hispanic Caregivers of Older Family Members

Journal of Family and Economic Issues - Given the cultural value of family in Hispanic culture, older Hispanic immigrants are likely to have family caregivers. This study examined the economic...     

Cancer Screening Barriers for Community-based Older Hispanics and Caucasians

Despite advances in screening and early detection, ethnic minority populations, ages 65 and older, are less likely than Caucasians to participate in cancer screening services. Empirical research indicates that older ethnic minorities have cultural values that influence their behaviors. Addressing culturally relevant communication to better understand those values may increase participation in cancer screening. The study reported is a secondary analysis of qualitative data gathered from focus groups. Utilizing an interdisciplinary analytical lens, we compared older Hispanic and Caucasian's cultural values and their screening behaviors. Suggested psychosocial interventions are discussed to assist providers in their ongoing efforts to promote cancer screening.     

The influence of probabilities on the response mode bias in utility elicitation

The response mode bias, in which subjects exhibit different risk attitudes when assessing certainty equivalents versus indifference probabilities, is a well-known phenomenon in the assessment of utility functions. In this empirical study, we develop and apply a cardinal measure of risk attitudes to analyze not only the existence, but also the strength of this phenomenon. Since probability levels involved in decision problems are already known to have a strong impact on behavior, we use this approach to study the impact of probabilities on the extent of the response mode bias. We find that the direction in which probabilities influence measured risk aversion is the opposite in the certainty equivalence (CE) method versus in the probability equivalence (PE) method. Utilizing the CE elicitation approach leads to an increase of risk seeking for gambles involving high probabilities. For the PE method, subjects tend to behave risk averse with gambles of high probabilities. This behavior is reversed in the gain domain. This “tailwhip” effect is consistently replicated in several experiments, involving both loss and gain domains of lotteries.     

Violence,life aspirations and displacement trajectories in civil war

Drawing on qualitative data from the civil wars in Syria and Libya since 2011, this paper seeks to build a better understanding of immobility and of displacement trajectories within conflict countries and towards neighbouring countries. The paper shows that different types of violent experiences—personal threats, generalized violence, an increasing hopelessness relating to the absence of violence in the future—trigger different exit movements across internal and external borders. Second, the analysis demonstrates that migration decisions in civil war contexts are complex processes with people balancing between strategies of how to avoid violence with strategies of how to realize broader life aspirations related to family, love, work and political change. Life aspirations often play a more important role once people move out of a situation of immediate danger and in later phases of trajectories and influence (im)mobility patterns in three different directions: stay, move (on) or return. Life aspirations, especially related to political change, outweigh perceptions of violence in some cases. Financial vulnerability can force people to stay in or return to violent contexts.