BSW students' perceptions of key competencies,values, and practitioner skills Implications for social work education

Abstract

This study profiled undergraduate Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) students' self-reported skill levels and valuations of personal qualities, practitioner skills, values and ethics, scientific skills and key competencies germane to social work practice. Differential assessments of personal qualities, practitioner skills, values and ethics, and scientific skills as well as differential assessments of the importance of 14 key competencies challenge a pattern of social work education where an integration of theory and practice is made difficult by a linear sequence of theory, followed by applied theory, followed by practice.     

Ecological Validity and Age-Related Change in Emotion Recognition

Isaacowitz and Stanley (Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 2011) argue that typical measures of emotion recognition used to compare young and older adults—still photos—lack ecological validity. There are many aspects to this argument. In this commentary, I address the main points raised by Isaacowitz and Stanley and argue that they raise a number of valid and interesting points. Nevertheless, I believe that recognition of emotion in still photos provides important information about young-old differences, and has sufficient ecological validity to explain age differences in a number of social insights.     

Testing for Slope Heterogeneity Bias in Panel Data Models

ABSTRACT

Standard econometric methods can overlook individual heterogeneity in empirical work, generating inconsistent parameter estimates in panel data models. We propose the use of methods that allow researchers to easily identify, quantify, and address estimation issues arising from individual slope heterogeneity. We first characterize the bias in the standard fixed effects estimator when the true econometric model allows for heterogeneous slope coefficients. We then introduce a new test to check whether the fixed effects estimation is subject to heterogeneity bias. The procedure tests the population moment conditions required for fixed effects to consistently estimate the relevant parameters in the model. We establish the limiting distribution of the test and show that it is very simple to implement in practice. Examining firm investment models to showcase our approach, we show that heterogeneity bias-robust methods identify cash flow as a more important driver of investment than previously reported. Our study demonstrates analytically, via simulations, and empirically the importance of carefully accounting for individual specific slope heterogeneity in drawing conclusions about economic behavior.     

Hidden in Plain Sight: Maroon Life and Labor in Virginia's Dismal Swamp

Nineteenth-century maroons in Virginia's Great Dismal Swamp formed communities within communities, whose members were set apart from others not so much by space (an impenetrable wilderness) but by the legal status they renounced, the fugitive status they embraced, and the common goal of creating meaningful lives neither fully within, nor completely apart from, surrounding slave society. The following analysis of one group of Great Dismal Swamp maroons offers scholars a new way to conceptualize marronage in nineteenth-century North America. Rather than look only to remote places for traces of maroon societies, researchers might also consider examining such communities in more settled areas, including centers of large-scale industrial operations, where fugitives carved out identities and negotiated their wages within a biracial labor system that relied upon and supported slavery.     

What is Most Important: Social Factors, Health Selection, and Adolescent Educational Achievement

This paper explores the relative importance of social factors and health measures in predicting educational achievement in early and late adolescence using population-based administrative data. The sample was made up of 41,943 children born in Manitoba, Canada between 1982 and 1989 and remaining in the province until age 18. Multilevel modeling nests each individual (level 1) within a family (level 2) residing within a neighborhood (level 3). Most important in predicting adolescent achievement were a broad socioeconomic status index (and a narrower measure of household income), being on social assistance, mother’s age at first birth, gender, residential mobility, the presence of ADHD/Conduct disorders, and measures of family functioning (child taken into care or offered protection services and family structure history). Family size, birth order, and newborn characteristics (birthweight, APGAR, gestational age) were statistically significant but of little importance in explaining the outcomes. Both examining regression coefficients and systematically omitting variables showed social factors (often emphasized by epidemiologists) to have markedly greater effects than the combination of health measures (often stressed by economists) in predicting achievement. However, mental health in childhood is identified as among the important predictors. Record linkage across population datasets from health, education, and family services ministries allowed: tracking health and educational attainment at different times in a child’s life, following a large number of cases across childhood, considerable sensitivity testing, controlling for unmeasured family and neighborhood effects, generating an extensive list of predictors, estimating effect sizes, and comparing Manitoba results with those of well-known American studies.