Compassion Satisfaction Among Social Work Practitioners: The Role of Work–Life Balance

Abstract

Previous research has established that social work practitioners are especially vulnerable to work-related psychological distress and burnout due to the high-stress nature of the profession, yet less research has focused on examining factors are associated with social worker retention. Emerging research on compassion satisfaction suggests that this factor could mitigate professional burnout, yet there is a gap in research focusing explicitly on examining compassion satisfaction among social workers. To address this gap in knowledge, this quantitative study collected survey data on practicing social workers who were alumni from a large southeastern university (n?=?120) to examine individual and organizational factors associated with compassion satisfaction. Multiple regression analyses revealed that higher levels of emotional intelligence, perceived work autonomy, and perceived work–life balance were associated with an increase in compassion satisfaction among experienced, licensed social work practitioners. Findings have implications for how social work employers can promote compassion satisfaction through cultivating emotional intelligence among practitioners, allowing social workers autonomy in decision making, and providing supportive work environments. Recommended directions for future research include longitudinal studies with large sample sizes that expound research on compassion satisfaction by examining the role of additional factors, such as client population, job role characteristics, and supervisor support.     

Factors Contributing to the Size of Nonprofit Sector: Tests of Government Failure,Interdependence, and Social Capital Theory

Based on the county-level longitudinal data in the USA, this study finds that racial diversity is positively associated with the nonprofit sector size. We further find that the share of children below poverty level is negatively associated with the size of nonprofit sectors. Our findings support the government failure theory. Random effects models also show that federal funding and local funding are positively associated with the size of nonprofit sectors, which confirms interdependence theory. Lastly, we do not find statistically significant relationship between social capital—measured by the number of associations—and the nonprofit sector size.     

An integrated dementia intervention for Korean older adults

Called dotage in Korea, dementia is primarily characterized by cognitive impairments. Secondary manifestations include mental-emotional problems, including depression. This study was designed to examine the effects of an integrated dementia intervention for Korean older adults. The intervention is composed of cognitive stimulation training, exercise, music, art, and horticultural therapy. Participants included 38 older adults with mild dementia. Twenty were assigned to the experimental group and 18 to the control group. Participants in the experimental group attended 18 program sessions. Significant differences were found postintervention between the two groups in measures of cognitive function, depression levels, and mental-emotional health. The findings indicate that this integrated dementia intervention can be applied to help older adults with mild dementia.     

Network centrality and performance of social enterprises: Government certified social enterprises in Seoul,South Korea

Social enterprises, which have been dramatically increasing all over the world for several decades, are facing the challenge of how best to develop strategies to improve performance and achieve sustainable growth. In South Korea, the government has supported active networking among social enterprises as a tactic for overcoming insufficient material and human resources. However, it is unclear whether active networking activities among social enterprises are associated with higher performance. In this study, a network survey of certified social enterprises (n = 78) in Seoul, South Korea was conducted. Multivariate regression models examined whether degree centrality, closeness centrality, and betweenness centrality were associated with the economic and social performance of social enterprises after controlling for organizational factors. The results revealed that a social enterprise with higher degree centrality in the network of regular meetings achieved higher social and economic performance.     

Changing the default setting for information privacy protection: What and whose personal information can be better protected?

With Internet service providers (ISPs) increasingly demanding personal information to develop personalized services, people have become more vulnerable to privacy infringement. As a way to protect individuals’ privacy, industrialized countries have implemented a “notice-and-consent” requirement, meaning an ISP must obtain users’ consent to collect personal information in the course of the ISP's business. Drawing on prospect theory and earlier work on information privacy and behavioral science, in this study, we administered an online survey experiment to test whether the giving of consent differs between ‘opt-in’ and ‘opt-out’ frames. The framing effect was found to be moderated by personal information type, people's attitudes toward privacy, and people's privacy infringement experience. The results indicate that the opt-in frame better protects users’ information privacy, and the framing effect is magnified when the targeted information concerns online activities, when users have weakly held privacy attitudes, and when users have less experience of privacy infringement.     

Do Public-Sector Employees Have More Psychological Wellness than Private-Sector Counterparts?

Public Organization Review - This study addressed the following research question: Do public-sector employees have higher levels of well-being than their counterparts in the private sector? For...     

The virtual waiting time of the M/G/1 queue with customers of n types of impatience

We consider the $M/G/1$ queue in which the customers are classified into $n+1$ classes by their impatience times. First, we analyze the model with two types of customers; one is the customer with constant impatience time $k$ and the other is the patient customer whose impatience time is $\infty$. The expected busy period of the server and the limiting distribution of the virtual waiting time process are obtained. Then, the model is generalized to the one in which the impatience time of each customer is anyone in $\{k_1,k_2,\dots ,k_n,\infty \}$.     

论宋代的特奏名制度

宋代科举中的特奏名制度,是中国古代科举制度中一项特殊的制度,值得注意。自太祖后期到真宗朝后期,是特奏名制度逐渐形成的时期。随着特奏名人数的大幅增加,也显露了它的某些弊端,因而在士大夫中要求废除特奏名制度的呼声不断高涨。但终宋之世,特奏名制度仍存而不废,其主要原因,除了最高统治者为贯彻重文抑武、牢笼士人的祖宗家法以外,特奏名本身所作出的某些贡献也是重要原因。