Navigating Ethical Challenges in Social Media: Social Work Student and Practitioner Perspectives

ABSTRACT

The portable, accessible nature of technology affords social workers opportunities to venture outside traditional service contexts by engaging in the virtual realm. This qualitative article uses two small-scale exploratory case studies to investigate the concept of ethical challenges in online peer networking and blogging by a social work student and social work practitioner. The article seeks to address the opportunities for and complexities of navigating technology and social media, while also emphasising the need for social workers to acquire a range of skills and competencies, and use well-established frameworks to engage in ethical online practice.     

Variance estimation when donor imputation is used to fill in missing values

Donor imputation is frequently used in surveys. However, very few variance estimation methods that take into account donor imputation have been developed in the literature. This is particularly true for surveys with high sampling fractions using nearest donor imputation, often called nearest‐neighbour imputation. In this paper, the authors develop a variance estimator for donor imputation based on the assumption that the imputed estimator of a domain total is approximately unbiased under an imputation model; that is, a model for the variable requiring imputation. Their variance estimator is valid, irrespective of the magnitude of the sampling fractions and the complexity of the donor imputation method, provided that the imputation model mean and variance are accurately estimated. They evaluate its performance in a simulation study and show that nonparametric estimation of the model mean and variance via smoothing splines brings robustness with respect to imputation model misspecifications. They also apply their variance estimator to real survey data when nearest‐neighbour imputation has been used to fill in the missing values. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 37: 400–416; 2009 © 2009 Statistical Society of Canada     

The demand for leisure time in the presence of constrained work hours

This article presents a labor supply model designed to address situations of overemployment or underemployment in the labor market. Previous labor supply models have taken the possibility of work hour constraints into consideration but typically assumed that the existence of fixed work hours only influenced the decision of labor force participation. This ignores situations in which individuals choose to be employed at fixed-hour jobs even though these jobs do not offer the desired work hours.     

A financial survey of mergers during the years 1968–70

This paper is concerned with the financial objectives of mergers and acquisitions and the way in which considerations in the merger transaction, such as the price paid and the method of payment used, may affect such objectives subsequent to the merger. The analysis is based on a sample of 65 mergers during the years 1968–70 inclusive [2].     

Queering the war dead: gold star families and the politics of estrangement

ABSTRACT

Contemporary practices of mourning individuals lost to war violence assert correct and incorrect practices of grieving. Successful practices will emphasize the heroism and the sacrifice of the war dead, centralizing the role of American values in the act of dying for one’s country. To not honor the war dead successfully is seen as a betrayal of their sacrifice and an ethical failure. Through a critical reading of Gold Star Families and the identity politics surrounding acts of mourning, I argue that the social norms acting as guideposts for processes of mourning over-determine relationships and identities in ways that perpetuate a violence that is seen as redemptive. Working towards alternatives to these practices, I argue that a queer relationality can disrupt the idealized constructions of redemptive violence constitutive to notions of successful mourning. A queering of the war dead refuses to allow mourning to be dismissed as unsuccessful if grieving is anything other than the assignment of war hero, patriot, or the solidification of an American identity for those killed by war violence. Ultimately, I argue that acts of queering the war dead have potential to challenge the proliferation of dominant practices that tie a militarized redemptive violence to normalized identities.     

Calibrated imputation in surveys under a quasi-model-assisted approach

Summary.  We propose to use calibrated imputation to compensate for missing values. This technique consists of finding final imputed values that are as close as possible to preliminary imputed values and are calibrated to satisfy constraints. Preliminary imputed values, potentially justified by an imputation model, are obtained through deterministic single imputation. Using appropriate constraints, the resulting imputed estimator is asymptotically unbiased for estimation of linear population parameters such as domain totals. A quasi-model-assisted approach is considered in the sense that inferences do not depend on the validity of an imputation model and are made with respect to the sampling design and a non-response model. An imputation model may still be used to generate imputed values and thus to improve the efficiency of the imputed estimator. This approach has the characteristic of handling naturally the situation where more than one imputation method is used owing to missing values in the variables that are used to obtain imputed values. We use the Taylor linearization technique to obtain a variance estimator under a general non-response model. For the logistic non-response model, we show that ignoring the effect of estimating the non-response model parameters leads to overestimating the variance of the imputed estimator. In practice, the overestimation is expected to be moderate or even negligible, as shown in a simulation study.     

'Is anybody listening?' The experiences of widowhood for older Australian women

This paper discusses preliminary findings from participants in the baseline survey of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health (Women's Health Australia: WHA) who reported their marital status as widowed. A total of 12,624 women, aged 70-75 years, completed a self-administered 260-item questionnaire, and 4335 of these women were widowed. Many of these women provided additional qualitative comments about their health, social and financial circumstances after the death of their spouse. This paper presents a thematic analysis of the qualitative comments and builds on the findings of the quantitative analysis of baseline data. The aims of this part of the study are to examine the short- and long-term effects of widowhood on the health and wellbeing of older women and to explore the process of change they experience after the death of a spouse. Preliminary findings suggest that, as a key life event, widowhood has an initial negative impact on the health and wellbeing of older women, but in the long term it may be accompanied by a positive shift into a new life phase.