The role of the gerontological social worker in assisted living

This qualitative study reports on thirteen assisted living (AL) administrators' perspectives of the role and the importance of the AL social worker in addressing the unmet needs of older adults as they move and transition into AL. Participant interviews were analyzed using the constant comparative method. Administrators described 5 AL social work roles: (a) decision-making and adjustment coordinator; (b) resident advocate; (c) mental health assessor and counselor; (d) family social worker; and (e) care planner. Implications include directly examining AL social workers' views, analyzing costs and benefits of employing AL social workers, and developing social work practicum sites within AL.     

The Role of Organizational Size and Industry in Job Quality and Work-Family Relationships

In this study we update analyses of the 1977 QES (Zipp, 1991) using data from the 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce. We use hierarchical linear modeling procedures to partition the variance in a wide variety of indicators of workers' experiences. Most variation was associated with the individual level of analysis, but significant and nontrivial variation also was associated with the organizational and industrial levels. Although workers in smaller organizations reported lower earnings, fewer benefits, and less education than their counterparts in larger organizations, they also reported experiencing less discrimination, better fit between their actual and desired work hours, more supportive work environments and loyalty to their employers, less burnout or interference between work and family, and shorter commute times.     

PUBLIC WEALTH,PUBLIC HEALTH,AND PRIVATE STEALTH: EXAMINING THE BLACK MARKET IN CIGARETTES IN AUSTRALIA

Taxes on tobacco provide a significant income for the Australian government — $5.1 billion in 2001. At the same time, health officials are making strenuous efforts to reduce smoking, particularly among teenagers. Some economists suggest that raising taxes on tobacco will produce more revenue while at the same time lowering smoking rates, particularly among youths who have less discretionary spending power than adults. But a by‐product of excise tax in Australia has been the emerging market in “chop‐chop,” tobacco diverted from legal channels by growers who receive considerably higher prices for a part of their yield than they can obtain from legal manufacturers. The article details this situation and suggests that only bold solutions may be able to reduce tensions in tax policies, smoking rates and the “chop‐chop” black market.     

Robust variable selection with application to quality of life research

A large database containing socioeconomic data from 60 communities in Austria and Germany has been built, stemming from 18,000 citizens’ responses to a survey, together with data from official statistical institutes about these communities. This paper describes a procedure for extracting a small set of explanatory variables to explain response variables such as the cognition of quality of life. For better interpretability, the set of explanatory variables needs to be very small and the dependencies among the selected variables need to be low. Due to possible inhomogeneities within the data set, it is further required that the solution is robust to outliers and deviating points. In order to achieve these goals, a robust model selection method, combined with a strategy to reduce the number of selected predictor variables to a necessary minimum, is developed. In addition, this context-sensitive method is applied to obtain responsible factors describing quality of life in communities.     

Exploring the Personal and Environmental Factors Related to Length of Stay in Assisted Living

This study explored to what extent personal and environmental factors, as defined by the ecological model of aging, help us to understand length of stay in assisted living (AL). A convenience sample (N = 218) of administrative records of AL residents admitted between the years 2006 and 2011 was collected and included AL residents' demographic and healthcare information as well as dates of admission and discharge. Cox regression was used to determine which personal and environmental factors influenced length of stay in three AL programs. Number of medical diagnoses, level of care score, and facility were found to be significant predictors of length of stay. The analyses identified a median survival time of 32 months as well as critical periods for discharge from AL. Implications for future research and social work practice are presented.     

Managing Organizational Emotions: Framing Feelings of Illegitimacy in the Radical Women's Prison Movement

Abstract

This article examines how activists manage the potentially deleterious emotions that arise in social movement organizations. Using data from a case study of an organization in the contemporary radical women's prison movement in California, I explore how feelings of illegitimacy are managed and sublimated by activists, during the course of organizational life, to sustain participation in the movement. Drawing on framing theory, I find that organizational frames serve as mechanisms that manage and focus activists' feelings, delimit movement strategies, and inspire and legitimate collective action.