BSW Students of Color: Principle Factors Influencing Intent to Persist Through Completion of Degree

Students of color remain underrepresented in social work education programs. According to the Council on Social Work Education (2016), only 37.4% of the 19,596 BSW degrees awarded during the 2014–2015 academic year were awarded to students from historically underrepresented groups. Through the lens of empowerment theory, this article presents a conceptual framework for understanding the varied and nuanced influencing factors contributing to BSW students’ intent to persist through completion of degree. This article explores ways social work education programs can provide opportunities for students to demonstrate that they are motivated and competent learners who intend to persist in their social work education endeavors. Findings will inform postmatriculation activities such as academic advising and field-practicum.     

The triangle <Emphasis Type="Italic">k</Emphasis>-club problem

Graph models have long been used in social network analysis and other social and natural sciences to render the analysis of complex systems easier. In applied studies, to understand the behaviour of social networks and the interactions that command that behaviour, it is often necessary to identify sets of elements which form cohesive groups, i.e., groups of actors that are strongly interrelated. The clique concept is a suitable representation for groups of actors that are all directly related pair-wise. However, many social relationships are established not only face-to-face but also through intermediaries, and the clique concept misses all the latter. To deal with these cases, it is necessary to adopt approaches that relax the clique concept. In this paper we introduce a new clique relaxation—the triangle k-club—and its associated maximization problem—the maximum triangle k-club problem. We propose integer programming formulations for the problem, stated in different variable spaces, and derive valid inequalities to strengthen their linear programming relaxations. Computational results on randomly generated and real-world graphs, with \(k=2\) and \(k=3\), are reported.     

Grasping the Diversity of Cohabitation: Fertility Intentions Among Cohabiters Across Europe

The authors examined the association between different meanings of cohabitation and fertility intentions. Using data from the Generations and Gender Surveys on 5,565 cohabiters from 9 European countries (Austria, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Norway, Romania, and Russia), they proposed a cohabitation typology based on attitudes toward marriage, intentions to marry, and perceived economic deprivation. Despite substantial variation in the prevalence and types of cohabiting relationships across Europe, cohabitation has become a living arrangement within which childbearing intentions are commonly formed and at times carried out. The authors found that the meaning that cohabiters attached to their union influenced significantly their short‐term fertility intentions, net of other covariates. Cohabiters who viewed their unions as a prelude to marriage were the most likely to plan to have a child in the near future, both in Western and Eastern European societies. The association between fertility intentions and marriage intentions was particularly strong among cohabiters who do not as yet have children in common, but it was also present in a more muted form among cohabitating parents. The findings suggest that, although marriage and childbearing are becoming less closely linked life events, they are not disconnected decisions for a large majority of cohabiters across Europe.     

Exposure to Suicide Movies and Suicide Attempts: A Research Note

Research on the impact of exposure to suicide movies on suicidality has been marked by three limitations. It is largely based on (1) aggregate data subject to the ecological fallacy, (2) exposure to a single movie, and (3) relative lack of controls for psychological states and social factors linked to suicide. The present study addresses these gaps. It follows a modified Beach method and assesses the impact of cumulative, voluntary exposure to suicide movies on suicide attempts. The subjects are 260 undergraduates at a midwestern university. The dependent variable is a previous suicide attempt. Cumulative exposure to suicide movies is based on self-reports. Controls include religiosity, depression, burdensomeness, and demographics. A multivariate logistic regression analysis determined that, controlling for other predictors, for each additional movie exposure the risk of attempted suicide increased by 47.6 percent. This is the first investigation to demonstrate a link between cumulative, voluntary exposure to suicide movies on suicidality.     

Resilience in the face of sexual minority stress: “Choices” between authenticity and self-determination

This qualitative study explored the experience of sexual minority stressors and corresponding resilience. Using a grounded theory approach, the core category identified in the analysis was minority stress results from systemic factors that cause lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people to face competition between their desires for authenticity and self-determination. These findings shed light upon the insidious nature of minority stress, especially within U.S. contexts that lack protective legislation, and the adaptive strategies people use to mitigate their effects. By positioning resilience as a choice between authenticity and self-determination, resilience is understood to lessen but not resolve the deleterious impact of sexual minority stress.     

From products to publics? The potential of participatory design for research on youth,safety and well-being

This paper considers how ‘participation’ features as a key concept in contemporary approaches to research, policy and interventions to promote young people's experiences of safety and well-being in digital society. In particular, it examines the potential of participatory design (PD) methodology as a way of expressing, surfacing and supporting engagement with youth perspectives in research and design projects. In doing so, we explore how the language, materials and processes of a PD approach can help reconfigure the aims of research beyond the production of ‘products’ towards fostering ‘youth-inclusive publics’. Drawing on the concept of ‘infrastucturing’ and ‘attachments’ [Le Dantec, C. A., and C. DiSalvo. 2013. “Infrastructuring and the Formation of Publics in Participatory Design.” Social Studies of Science 43 (2): 241–264. doi:10.1177/0306312712471581], the paper reflects on an Australian research project to develop online campaigns to promote youth safety and well-being in digital society. From our analysis emerged three commitments of PD with young people that help articulate, make visible and unpack ‘attachments’ to concepts of youth, technology and well-being and provide new opportunities for engagement with youth experience in research and intervention design. We find that these commitments – the embodiment of context; the enactment of creativity and the emergence of connectivity – offer novel insights on youth participation in complex research projects. Moreover, foregrounding these commitments through PD can build shared vocabularies, artefacts and processes of engagement with young people in research projects focused on youth safety and well-being.     

Investigating the quality of social work. An experience of self-assessment with Italian social workers

Evaluating the quality of social work practice is becoming increasingly important for various reasons, among which are changes in the welfare system and the reduction of resources. Meanwhile, it is acknowledged that evaluating the quality of social work is a highly complex task. Different meanings are attributed to the concept of quality and the concept of quality in itself is linked to the notion of social work identity, nature and aims, which is an object in transition. Although performance appraisal systems are spreading, a common understanding about what is ‘good social work practice’ is lacking, also within the professional community. In Italy, social workers seem missing in the arena of investigating and indicating which criteria can be used to evaluate social work practice. To counteract this weakness, a participative research-intervention project was developed from 2006 to 2011, aimed at supporting social workers in evaluating their work. During workshops with practitioners a self-evaluation tool was designed by means of asking social workers for the possible criteria to be used to define ‘good social work practice’. This paper presents the structure and methods adopted throughout such project, focusing on both the self-assessment questionnaire and the emerging notions of quality of social work.     

New Hobos or Neo-Romantic Fantasy? Urban Ethnography beyond the Neoliberal Disconnect

This article describes an anomalous social space within the field of homelessness in San Francisco, that of “pro” recyclers, homeless men who spend much of their time collecting recyclables for redemption. Unlike the panhandlers, broken shelter-dwellers and small-time hustlers of San Francisco’s Tenderloin and other skid row zones, the recyclers orient much of their existence around work. By working within a unique economic niche provided by the state-supported recycling industry, and by drawing on support from sympathetic residents and advocates, the recyclers create an unusual homeless subculture which, as they themselves argue, has more than a little in common with the hobo jungles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. To interrogate the sociological (and political) implications of this case study I use Loïc Wacquant’s eloquent manifesto against sociological “neo-romanticism.” While agreeing with some of Wacquant’s analysis, I argue that his emphasis on the moralism of contemporary urban ethnographers blinds him to the very real concerns with morality and ethics among poor people themselves. The recyclers’ concerns with mutual respect and the pleasures of labor represent, I believe, not post hoc justifications of desperate survival strategies, but a dogged, often passionate collective effort to create a truly different experience and understanding of homelessness itself.     

Could “Acculturation” Effects Be Explained by Latent Health Disadvantages Among Mexican Immigrants?

This paper tests portions of a new theory of immigrant health by focusing exclusively on latent biomarkers of future health risks. Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III, 1988–1994 – we uncover the typically observed immigrant health advantage among recent immigrants that diminishes among long‐term immigrants. In addition, we observe worse health among U.S.‐born Mexican Americans relative to non‐Hispanic Whites. Finally, although our theory suggests that recent immigrants may have latent health risks due to disadvantaged childhood experiences, we do not find evidence in support of this theory.