ABSTRACT Students in social and health care education often encounter difficulties translating the concepts in communication into the complexities of interpersonal dynamics and diversified contexts in practicums. Most previous resources were developed in English, and some Chinese materials were not up to date. In this project, social work teachers produced two sets of videos and initiated coursework revamping by engaging students in producing more communication skills videos. An e-learning community has been set up for the storage of teacher’s demonstration videos and quality student videos. The video was applied in skill practice courses and disseminated to social work practicum supervisors and students during the pandemic, as their face-to-face learning opportunities were restricted. Students reported improvements in levels of skills and competence after watching the videos. It shows that videos on communication skills can be further promoted as a blended learning strategy in professional practice training.

ABSTRACT This study, grounded in the discourse on precision mental health (PMH), investigates the service preferences of Chinese adults in Hong Kong. Through discrete choice experiments with 1,006 residents aged 18–75, mixed logit regression analysis was used to identify individual preferences, with sub-group analyses uncovering variations therein. Results highlight a strong preference for services that offer prompt access, affordability and professional endorsement, particularly outside the public sector. Additionally, familial contexts significantly influence these preferences, revealing conflicts in provider selection, access modalities, intervention types and the extent of family involvement. Psychological stress also affects service choice. This study underscores the diverse nature of service preferences among Chinese adults in Hong Kong, emphasising the need for targeted policy interventions to enhance PMH implementation within the local healthcare system. By exploring these nuanced preferences, this study enriches discussions on optimising mental healthcare delivery in Hong Kong and potentially other regions.

ABSTRACT From 1949 to the 1980s, the Communist Party of China (CPC) adopted a “mass movement” strategy to avoid bureaucratisation and maintained a semi-formal mode of community governance. After the 1980s, China’s community governance policies were re-directed towards corporatisation and professionalism, and mass movement was combined with technical and quasi-professional strategies. This article demonstrates that regardless of the changing discourse from people-centred to modern “professionalism”, China’s community governance remains authoritarian resilience. Local government bodies continue to expand their power networks to local civil spaces, altering the professionalisation of governance at the community level. Consequently, the modernisation of grassroots governance has created an involution trap and resulted in a precarious professional scenario for social work. This article argues that the true road to the modernisation of community governance is neither a semi-formal mode of governance nor new public management strategies but through professionalisation to promote the democratisation of grassroots governance.

ABSTRACT Because practice research’s benefits in social work contexts are well-documented, research attention has shifted to improving its operationalisation within organisations. However, few studies have examined practice research’s challenges and opportunities across project conceptualisation, implementation, and dissemination. Even fewer have considered practitioner-researcher and organisational power dynamics, especially in Asia. Using a qualitative exploratory case study approach, we first described the challenges a Singaporean youth work agency faced during conceptualisation, implementation, and dissemination across three practice-research projects. Subsequently, we evaluated how the core practice-research team seized opportunities to address these challenges (i.e. manpower and resourcing, disproportionate researcher influence, sustaining interest internally and externally) and future improvement opportunities (i.e. institutionalise knowledge, build organisational capacity, and examine structural impediments). Implications for practitioners and researchers and effective organisational strategies – internally, externally, and structurally – are discussed.

ABSTRACT As China faces a rapidly ageing population and an increasing prevalence of depressive symptoms among older adults, particularly those living alone, the need for accurate screening tools becomes paramount. This study aimed to examine the measurement invariance of the Chinese version of the CES-D-10 among older adults living alone. The final sample of older adults aged 65 years and older (N = 2,014) was from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) in 2018. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and multigroup CFA were used in the data analysis procedure. The findings showed that the 2-factor model (positive and negative emotions) fit the data best. The configure, metric, intercept and residual invariance models were all acceptable. This study discusses the implications of the findings in social work.

ABSTRACT This paper considers the notion derived from psychological reactance theory that Asian audiences, Chinese in particular, have a less negative attitude towards high-freedom-threatening (HT) messages owing to their collectivistic culture that places less value on individual freedom. The attitudes of 48 participants studying at a local university in Hong Kong towards HT messages in anti-drug campaigns revealed clear preferences for HT messages. Our findings highlight that such a positive attitude cannot be explained solely by collectivistic values of freedom. Instead, we found the influence of traditional Chinese parenting styles experienced during childhood as a potential origin of such perceptions. These findings emphasise the need for a nuanced understanding of the factors shaping attitudes towards HT messages in Asian contexts and the development of more effective anti-drug messaging strategies tailored to the preferences and cultural backgrounds of the target audiences.