A comparative study of experiences of client violence and its impact among Iranian and Swedish social workers

Client violence toward social workers has been recognized as a serious problem, and major concern has been raised with regard to its impacts on social workers' practice and physical and psychological health. There is recognition among researchers and policy-makers that it is time for the international social work community to develop conventions and agreements to address this issue globally. A cross-cultural study between Sweden and Iran was conducted to compare and contrast levels of violence between the two countries. Prevalence of violence was 72% in Sweden and 68% in Iran. Iranian social workers show a significantly higher increase in general mental health problems regarding client violence compared to Swedish social workers. Despite differences in rules and regulations between Sweden and Iran, client violence was found to be common in the two countries. Preventive policies for detecting potential violence situation are good but not enough. We suggest taking actions on building trust and supportive structures within organisations.     

Education DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A TOOL FOR ASSIGNING STUDENTS TO GROUPS FOR CLASS PROJECTS*

Group project work is an integral part of many university courses. Assigning students to project groups can be difficult because of the students' diverse backgrounds. Many instructors therefore decide not to assign group projects. This paper develops and validates an instrument that assigns both experienced and inexperienced students to different project groups, thereby creating a balanced, fair environment. The instrument is checked for reliability and validity and then is used to assign students to different project groups. Based on group performance, the end-of-the-semester results also are provided. Path analysis is used to test a causal model. Conclusions and implications for future research are presented.     

Hessian orderings of multivariate normal variance-mean mixture distributions and their applications in evaluating dependent multivariate risk portfolios

Statistical Methods & Applications - In this paper, some stochastic comparison results are developed for the class of multivariate normal variance-mean mixture (NVM) distributions. These...     

A modified DEA cross efficiency method with negative data and its application in supplier selection

Basic Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models are designed for non-negative data. However, negative data is inevitably used in many real-world issues. Also, multiple units with a maximum relative performance score (equal to one) can be obtained due to the benevolent view of evaluating Decision Making Units (DMUs) consistent performance. Therefore, the researchers proposed ranking models to differentiate efficient units. Cross efficiency is one of the most useful tools for DMUs ranking in the DEA. There are two major drawbacks to implementing this process. First, it gives different results in the presence of other optimal solutions; second, it does not provide a compelling reason to use the arithmetic mean to aggregate the results of the cross efficiency matrix. In this paper, first a new non-radial model is proposed to evaluate the performance of DMUs in the presence of negative data and then based on this model a new secondary goal model is proposed to eliminate the first drawback in the cross efficiency method. Also, to solve the second drawback in this method, a hybrid Multi-Attribute Decision Making (MADM)-DEA process with the help of fuzzy VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje method is proposed. Finally, to show the applicability of the proposed methods, the results are used to select the supplier in a real-world problem.