Co-constructing a Conceptual Understanding of System Enactment

Clinical Social Work Journal - System enactments are co-created phenomena characterized by confounding and emotionally charged multi-person interactions that emerge through the convergence of...     

Whose space is it anyway? A study of young people's interaction with security guards in New South Wales

Abstract

Limited research has been conducted in relation to the impact of private policing on young people. Research has primarily focused on young people and their use of public space, their use of the street or the policing of working class families and their children. This paper outlines an investigation of young peoples use of public spaces and their experiences of security guards within the greater Sydney metropolitan area of New South Wales. The paper also outlines the experiences of shopping centre managers in relation to the management of young people within their centres. The research found that young people are over policed within public spaces and especially in shopping complexes. Young people are primarily over policed within these spaces because of the perceived fears other groups within the community hold in relation to young people, especially those in groups.     

Evaluating the administrative efficiency of courts

In addition to being held accountable for judicial decision, courts, like other public agencies, can and should be evaluated in terms of their administrative efficiency. This paper illustrates how courts can be evaluated in terms of their relative administrative efficiency, using a new approach—data envelopment analysis (DEA)—first proposed by Charnes et al. [1]. The DEA is based upon the economic notion of Pareto optimality which states that a given decision making unit (DMU) is inefficient if some other DMU, or some combination of other DMUs, can produce at least the same amounts of all outputs with less of some resource input and not more of any other resource. Conversely a DMU is said to be efficient if the above is not possible. Charnes et al. [1] generalized the usual input/output ratio measure of efficiency for a given unit in terms of a fractional linear program with fractional constraints. In the case of courts, the efficiency of any particular court is calculated by forming the ratio of a weighted sum of outputs to a weighted sum of inputs, where the weights for both outputs and inputs are to be selected in a manner that calculates the Pareto-Koopmans efficiency of the court. This paper reviews the DEA method and illustrates its application to a data base for 100 criminal superior courts in North Carolina.     

Project LIFE: a partnership to increase physical activity in elders with multiple chronic illnesses

The authors describe a medical center-based randomized trial aimed at determining the feasibility and effectiveness of partnering patients and primary-care providers with an exercise health counselor. Study participants included 165 veterans age 70 years and older. The primary end point was change in physical activity at 3 and 6 months comparing patients receiving high-intensity physical activity counseling, attention control counseling, and usual care after receiving standardized clinic-based counseling. We noted a significant Group x Time interaction (p = .041) for physical activity frequency and a similar effect for caloric expenditure (p = .054). Participants receiving high-intensity counseling and usual care increased physical activity over the short term, but those with usual care returned to baseline by the end of the study. The intervention was well received by practitioners and patients. We conclude that partnering primary-care providers with specialized exercise counselors for age- and health-appropriate physical activity counseling is effective.     

Children of alcoholics: a school-based comparative study.

This study investigates children of alcoholics (COAs) and their cohorts who are not affected by parental alcoholism (non-COAs). Participants include fourth through sixth grade students who are identified as COAs and non-COAs. The study examines differences between COAs and non-COAs on measures of internalized shame, self-esteem, perceived support, and teacher behavior ratings. Results indicate that COAs and non-COAs demonstrate no significant differences on measures of social support and shame. In contrast, self-esteem and teacher ratings for COAs are significantly lower in comparison to ratings for non-COAs. In addition, teacher ratings of male COAs are significantly negatively affected by their COA status, whereas female COA and non-COA teacher ratings do not differ significantly.     

Cost-effectiveness of an employer-sponsored recreational program: A case study

There is currently a marked trend by corporations to provide an increasingly high percentage of an employee's total compensation in the form of tax-free benefits. The cost-effectiveness of such benefits is often based on the notion that they improve morale and retention. However, it is becoming increasingly more important to be able to quantitatively determine if the continuance of such benefits is warranted on an economic basis. In this paper the approach, findings, sensitivity analysis and caveats associated with a large scale economic analysis are presented. The case study examines continuance of access to Navy supported recreational activities, involving annual expenditures of over S100 million. A questionnaire component, involving about 11,000 responses, provided the inputs into a contingency model. Rankings for 14 recreational groupings of activities were derived as well as some bounds on the overall cost-effectiveness of the entire program. The results showed that continuance of the employer-sponsored recreation activities appeared to be economically warranted.     

Teaching Bayes’ Theorem: Strength of Evidence as Predictive Accuracy

Although teaching Bayes’ theorem is popular, the standard approach—targeting posterior distributions of parameters—may be improved. We advocate teaching Bayes’ theorem in a ratio form where the posterior beliefs relative to the prior beliefs equals the conditional probability of data relative to the marginal probability of data. This form leads to an interpretation that the strength of evidence is relative predictive accuracy. With this approach, students are encouraged to view Bayes’ theorem as an updating mechanism, to obtain a deeper appreciation of the role of the prior and of marginal data, and to view estimation and model comparison from a unified perspective.     

Individual progress toward self-selected goals among older adults enrolled in a physical activity counseling intervention

The purpose of this study was to examine what happens to goals over the course of a physical activity counseling trial in older veterans. At baseline, participants (N = 313) identified 1 health-related goal and 1 walking goal for their participation in the study and rated where they perceived themselves to be relative to that goal at the current time. They rated their current status on these same goals again at 6 and 12 mo. Growth-curve analyses were used to examine longitudinal change in perceived goal status. Although both the intervention and control groups demonstrated improvement in their perceived proximity to their health-related and walking goals (L = 1.19, p < .001), the rates of change were significantly greater in the intervention group (β = -.30, p < .05). Our results demonstrate that this physical activity counseling intervention had a positive impact on self-selected goals over the course of the intervention.     

Faith-Based Volunteer Motivation: Exploring the Applicability of the Volunteer Functions Inventory to the Motivations and Satisfaction Levels of Volunteers in an Australian Faith-Based Organization

Increasingly studies on volunteer motivation are exploring the process stages of volunteerism with particular attention to recruitment and retention. Volunteer experience and its dynamic association to satisfaction, however, remain underexamined, particularly in faith-based contexts. This study uses a functional approach to explore the applicability of the Volunteer Functions Inventory (Clary et al. in J Personal Soc Psychol, 74(6):1516–1530, 1998) to a sample of volunteers in an Australian faith-based organization. Factor analysis was supportive of a four-factor solution with the elimination of the Protective function and the emergence of a new function, Enrichment. The validity of a new structure, the Faith-Based Volunteer Motivation Scale, is tested against levels of volunteer satisfaction for this sample. Results concur with Clary et al.’s correlation between high-level motive fulfilment and degrees of satisfaction.