An Interview with Joyce Edward: Exemplary Clinician, Advocate, and Scholar

Over the years, noteworthy social workers have been interviewed for the Clinical Social Work Journal. This article features an interview with Joyce Edward who is recognized for her many extraordinary contributions to clinical social work. Joyce has co-written or co-edited three exceptional books for the social work clinician, she has been an esteemed teacher and a vocal activist for quality mental health care. In this interview Joyce reflects on family influences, her work as a social caseworker, the psychoanalytic luminaries with whom she trained, her concerns about the clinical education of today's social work students, and finally, her perspective on managed mental health care.     

The gambling market in the Federal Republic of Germany and the helpseeking of pathological gamblers

The development of the gambling market in the Federal Republic of Germany since the middle of the seventies and data on pathological gamblers seeking help are described. The continuously increasing supply, together with increases in turnover, was followed-with some temporal delay-by an increase in the number of gamblers who sought advice and treatment. Preliminary measures taken by the health authorities as well as some consequences of pathological gambling are discussed.This article is a translation of a German article published in: Deutsche Hauptstelle gegen die Suchtgefahren (1990): Jahrbuch '91 zur Frage der Suchtgefahren. Hamburg: Neuland-Verlag.     

The challenges of inclusive education in Lebanon

This article reports on a study conducted in Lebanon by four non-governmental organizations, primarily on the topic of inclusion of people with disabilities in education, with a secondary focus on inclusion in employment. This article reports on some of the findings of the assessment process that was four months in duration and aimed, through interviews and focus groups, to identify available information, current policies and legislation, main stakeholders and existing programmes. Findings of the assessment generated themes that are unique to each of the two groups: parents and children, and educators. However, there are some common themes, such as a perceived need for raising awareness on disability issues and a perceived lack of adequate teacher training. The article concludes by arguing for change efforts on various levels to support inclusion: awareness-raising; policy change; capacity-building; and community-building.     

Consistent maximum likelihood estimation of a unimodal density using shape restrictions

It is well known that the unimodal maximum likelihood estimator of a density is consistent everywhere but at the mode. The authors review various ways to solve this problem and propose a new estimator that is concave over an interval containing the mode; this interval may be chosen by the user or through an algorithm. The authors show how to implement their solution and compare it to other approaches through simulations. They show that the new estimator is consistent everywhere and determine its rate of convergence in the Hellinger metric.     

Internalized Other Interviewing in Relational Therapy: Three Discursive Approaches to Understanding its Use and Outcomes

For over 20 years, family therapist Karl Tomm has been engaging families and couples with a therapeutic intervention he calls Internalized Other Interviewing (IOI). The IOI (cf. Emmerson‐Whyte, 2010; Hurley, 2006) entails interviewing clients, from the personal experiences of partners and family members as an internalized other. The IOI is based on the idea that through dialogues over time, one can internalize a sense of one's conversational partner responsiveness in reliably anticipated ways. Anyone who has thought in a conversation with a family member or partner, “Oh there s/he goes again,” or anticipates next words before they leave the other's mouth, has a sense of what we are calling an internalized other. For Tomm, the internalized anticipations partners and family members may have offers entry points into new dialogues with therapeutic potential—particularly, when their actual dialogues get stuck in dispreferred patterns.     

An Assessment of Change in Risk Perception and Optimistic Bias for Hurricanes Among Gulf Coast Residents

This study focuses on levels of concern for hurricanes among individuals living along the Gulf Coast during the quiescent two‐year period following the exceptionally destructive 2005 hurricane season. A small study of risk perception and optimistic bias was conducted immediately following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Two years later, a follow‐up was done in which respondents were recontacted. This provided an opportunity to examine changes, and potential causal ordering, in risk perception and optimistic bias. The analysis uses 201 panel respondents who were matched across the two mail surveys. Measures included hurricane risk perception, optimistic bias for hurricane evacuation, past hurricane experience, and a small set of demographic variables (age, sex, income, and education). Paired t‐tests were used to compare scores across time. Hurricane risk perception declined and optimistic bias increased. Cross‐lagged correlations were used to test the potential causal ordering between risk perception and optimistic bias, with a weak effect suggesting the former affects the latter. Additional cross‐lagged analysis using structural equation modeling was used to look more closely at the components of optimistic bias (risk to self vs. risk to others). A significant and stronger potentially causal effect from risk perception to optimistic bias was found. Analysis of the experience and demographic variables’ effects on risk perception and optimistic bias, and their change, provided mixed results. The lessening of risk perception and increase in optimistic bias over the period of quiescence suggest that risk communicators and emergency managers should direct attention toward reversing these trends to increase disaster preparedness.     

Latino Faces,Corporate Ties: Latino Advocacy Organizations and Their Board Membership

Although they have increased exponentially since the 1960s, social scientists know little about ethnic advocacy organizations. These nonprofits are important bridges between underresourced communities and mainstream funding organizations and their directors are established ethnic leaders. Sociologists study interlocking directorates—or shared board membership—to understand how organizations fit together within broader social networks. Network concepts, particularly the theory of institutional isomorphism, suggest that organizations are likely to be similar to the extent they are connected and operate within a common organizational field. We apply this logic to Latino advocacy organizations to examine the underlying source of cohesion across this ethnic field. We ask whether the organizations are tied by interlocking directorates of ethnic elites who sit on their boards of directors or if board members' common affiliation with other elite institutions creates the structural conditions that facilitate potential ideological or behavioral similarity. A social network analysis of five prominent Latino advocacy organizations reveals support for both hypotheses: Latino board members are both embedded in ethnic‐based networks and entrenched within elite organizational webs. This suggests that ethnic elites who sit on the boards of Latino advocacy organizations are also corporate elites, selected for the social capital they bring to these nonprofits.     

Impact of an Overt Response System on Staff Performance and Maintenance of Computer-Based Instruction

Interactive Computer Based Instruction (CBI) systems involve teaching strategies to facilitate greater response opportunities during training in an effort to improve learner performance. The current study investigated the effect of online staff training videos with and without overt response requirements on posttest and maintenance test scores across six block-randomized instructional modules for four employees of a university located in the southeastern region of the United States. The overt response consisted of multiple-choice questions administered throughout select teaching modules using an alternating treatment design. Findings suggest that learning occurred as a result of the CBI training; however, the effectiveness of the overt response system varied across individuals, with no discernible differentiation between learning gains associated with response requirements. Other areas of research for expanding the efficacy of CBI and overt response systems are highlighted.