Book Reviews

Critical appraisal of research studies forms a central role within the application and uptake of evidence‐based approaches within health and social care. While there are established checklists for evaluating quantitative research, this is not the case for qualitative research. This article outlines the process of developing an evaluative tool for qualitative studies, reflecting the uniqueness of the associated paradigm, and illustrates its use by reference to three qualitative research papers appraised within a systematic review of community‐based rehabilitation services. At its centre are concerns with the context of the study and the way the data are collected and analysed. Use of such an evaluative template opens the way for the quality of qualitative research to be judged in a systematic manner and for qualitative research to take its rightful place within debates over what works, where, when and how within health and social care policy and practice.     

The Polls: Polling on Panama-Si; Don't Know; Hell, No

The transfer of the Panama Canal was the most frequently polledforeign policy issue during the period 1975-78. Contradictorytrends based on differently worded questions can be traced.But the results of the last polls, taken after both treatieshad been ratified, show the same level of opposition as wasmost commonly found when the issue began to be widely publicized.     

Goal-Directed Supervision of Social Work Students in Field Placement

Abstract

Permanency Planning for Children , by Anthony N. Maluccio, Edith Fein, and Kathleen A. Olmstead. London: Tavistock Publications, 1986. Reviewed by Donald Brieland

Feminist Visions for Social Work , edited by Nancy Van Den Bergh and Lynn B. Cooper. Silver Spring, MD: National Association of Social Workers, 1986. Reviewed by Cleo S. Berkum, DSW

People and Contexts: Social Development from Birth to Old Age , by Henry S. Maas. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1984. Reviewed by Harris Chaiklin

Case Management in Human Service Practice by Marie Weil, James M. Karls, and Associates. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1985. Reviewed by Doman Lum

Law and the Mental Health System: Civil and Criminal Aspects , by Ralph Reisner. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Co., 1985. Reviewed by Wynne Sandra Korr

Testing the Social Safety Net , by Martha R. Burt and Karen J. Pittman. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 1985. Reviewed by Julia M. Watkins     

A Convolution Estimator for the Density of Nonlinear Regression Observations

Abstract. The problem of estimating an unknown density function has been widely studied. In this article, we present a convolution estimator for the density of the responses in a nonlinear heterogenous regression model. The rate of convergence for the mean square error of the convolution estimator is of order n ^?1 under certain regularity conditions. This is faster than the rate for the kernel density method. We derive explicit expressions for the asymptotic variance and the bias of the new estimator, and further a data‐driven bandwidth selector is proposed. We conduct simulation experiments to check the finite sample properties, and the convolution estimator performs substantially better than the kernel density estimator for well‐behaved noise densities.     

An Examination of Fieldwork Models at Adelphi University School of Social Work

Practitioners' orientation toward research was compared with that of social work students. Practitioners' views on the importance and usefulness of research were significantly less favorable than those of graduate students in social work and more similar to students at the BSW level; but no differences were found with regard to belief in the unbiased nature of social work research. The differences between the practitioners and graduate students might be a manifestation of the failure of the curriculum to articulate research concepts and methodology in a manner responsive to the realities of practice.     

Cosmopolitanization in action: connecting scales in international environmental organizations

In this article we analyse how professionals in two international environmental organizations (IEOs) concerned with biodiversity act as ‘entrepreneurs of cosmopolitanization’ by establishing connections between the various scales they mobilize in their daily work. Drawing on an empirical survey, we show that these professionals mobilize a range of activities to meet a twofold requirement. The first requirement is for universality, which corresponds to their status, their determination to adopt a scientific approach and to the scale at which they initially defined the problem of biodiversity loss. The second requirement is to embed in specific contexts. Tension between these two types of requirement is inevitable. It is inherent in the cosmopolitan perspective and leads to contextual arrangements between the global approach to environmental problems and the forging of alliances with national, regional or local institutions and actors, according to opportunities and requirements. Connecting the various scales of environmental action unavoidably remains a partially achieved objective.     

Autonomic and Decisive Forms of Competition

A basis is proposed for a theory of competition which will cover all its forms and all areas of social relationship where it occurs. Forms may be classified as either autonomic , in which entities are ordered or winners determined by the process itself; or decisive , in which results are determined by a decision-maker. The first category includes two subclasses: crescive , in which relative rates of growth determine winners, and Richardson competition, in which competitors seek to outachieve one another.—Editor