Work In Social Sciences Research Articles

The DSW to the Rescue? A Response to Feldman

Feldman's appraisal of the current status of social work research, using as its touchstone the 1991 Austin Report, is a frank and fair appraisal of how the discipline has come short of fulfilling its aspirations to become a more science-based profession. In many ways, Feldman has stood in the center of research developments within our field for the past 40 years or longer. He offers informed and thoughtful analyses of what we have accomplished and what is left undone. He asserts that part of the problem is the sluggish growth in the number of research doctorates being produced in our field. Obviously, without the production of highly trained social work researchers, the scholarly and science-based contributions to our field are limited. In this response, I contend that the burgeoning growth of the number of practice doctoral graduates, Doctor of Social Works (DSWs), may provide significant resources to augment the science of social work. In reality, the older generation of DSW graduates made highly important contributions to the science of social work, and the new generation stands poised to replicate this phenomenon.

Relational geographies of urban unsustainability: The entanglement of California’s housing crisis with WUI growth and climate change

One of California’s most pressing social and environmental challenges is the rapid expansion of the wildlands–urban interface (WUI). Multiple issues associated with WUI growth compared to more dense and compact urban form are of concern—including greatly increased fire risk, greenhouse gas emissions, and fragmentation of habitat. However, little is understood about the factors driving this growth in the first place and, specifically, its relationship to urban–regional housing dynamics. This paper connects work in urban social science, urban and regional planning, and natural sciences to highlight the potential role of housing crises in driving displacement from the urban core to relatively more affordable exurbs, and with this, WUI growth. We analyze this relationship in California, which leads the nation in lack of affordable housing, scale of WUI growth, and many associated WUI hazards, including wildfire. We offer three related arguments: first, that California’s affordable housing crisis, with its effect of driving migration to exurban areas, should be recognized as a significant urban form-related sustainability challenge; second, that to understand this challenge scholars must expand the spatial scale and analytic toolkit of both urban and WUI analysis through relational, mixed methods research; and third, that political and programmatic efforts to address California’s housing crisis should undergird efforts to address WUI growth and climate change. Ultimately, we argue that expanding access to affordable urban housing can produce a more sustainable and just urban form that mitigates WUI-related climate and environmental impacts and reduces the vulnerability of growing numbers of WUI residents living in harm’s way.

The strange career of Millian methods in comparative social science

Abstract For half a century, comparative social science has been closely associated with John Stuart Mill’s methods of comparison. However, few social scientists had heard of Mill’s methods in 1970. Within a decade, the methods of agreement and difference had become part of the methodological canon—despite Mill’s objections that these methods should under no circumstances be used in the social sciences. Comparativists continued to overlook the methods that Mill actually proposed for the social sciences, which relied on an analogy with astronomical observations rather than chemistry experiments. Yet Mill’s own empirical research offered substantive findings without dwelling much on methods. Over the past half-century, successful works of comparative social science have pursued all three versions of Millian methods: the comparative methods that he widely associated with; the alternative methods that he proposed for social science; and the actual methods that he pursued, whose success lay in their creativity, not in methodological recipes.

Transferability and Generalization in Qualitative Research

This article examines the development of the concept of transferability in qualitative research and how it is similar to and different from generalization. Transferability is a process of abstraction used to apply information drawn from specific persons, settings, and eras to others that have not been directly studied. The concept of transferability has been minimally discussed in the social science and social work literature. The more widely used term, generalization, is poorly distinguished from transferability. This article explores the development of the concept of transferability in qualitative research, clarifying how it differs from universal generalization. Issues of who makes such transfers are examined. Several methods for conceptualizing transfers are detailed. Some types of generalization identified in the literature seem more accurately described as transfers when conceptualized fully.

Virtue Ethics and Person-Place Relationships

ABSTRACT Indigenous knowledge and work in social science demonstrates the importance for well-being of people’s relationships with places, but western moral theorists have said little on this topic. This paper argues that there is a neo-Aristotelian virtue associated with forming a relationship with a place or places; that is, human beings can form relationships with places that affect their perceptions, emotions, desires and actions, and such dispositions, when properly developed, increase the chance that people will flourish. As well as discussing the virtue, the paper considers related vices and briefly outlines implications of this virtue for dispossession, pro-environmental action, and education.

Sociology and the Vagrant: Beggars, Welfare and Tradition in Writing about the New Citizen in 1950s India

Exploring the work of M.S. Gore and the Delhi School of Social Work on Delhi’s ‘Beggar Problem’, which was published in 1959, this article shows how the ostensibly ‘secular’ solutions to the phenomenon were premised on a series of assumptions about caste-oriented mores and traditions of religious gifting, suggesting normative categories of citizenship based around these forms of identity. The article explores, in depth, the sociological approaches of Gore’s (and others’) study of beggary and argues that the emergent social policy on vagrancy connected to emergent concepts of social citizenship and rights to welfare. In the body of the reformable beggar receiving indiscriminate religious charity lay one of the core symbols of India’s drive towards a modern citizenry. This position on the sociology of beggars was also the product of two larger processes at work in mid twentieth century social sciences: firstly, the development of interdisciplinary approaches by anthropologists and sociologists as they came to terms with new research challenges in democratic India, and secondly, the move to consider new forms of direct social policy applications for research, via government sponsorship. Using Gore’s study, the article looks in detail at researchers’ concerns with labour productivity, religious charity and the possible secular forms of beggar rehabilitation. But ultimately, the School of Social Work’s study, in its apparent critique of draconian colonial controls, did not overturn the continued application of Indian anti-beggary laws in subsequent decades. This article argues that this was a product too of its configuration of social welfare as an outcome of longer-term societal change rather than state policy.

Use of Computer Technology in Research

Due to the infinite capabilities of the computer, it can be called a miracle. As a result of the development of fast working electronic digital computers and their use in various fields, a new revolution has been initiated in all the fields of knowledge and science. Due to computers, there has been a very significant and meaningful change in the thinking, working style and effectiveness of humans. Research work done in various fields is also not untouched by the influence of computers. The use of computers has affected not only the research work done in the field of physical sciences but also in the field of social sciences. The availability of computer facilities has had a special impact on two most important dimensions of research work in social and behavioral sciences. First, computers have made the preparation and presentation of research reports more simple and form. Second, computers have made the work of analysis easier and accurate. In fact, as a result of computers working at very fast speed, there has been significant development in the field of data storage, processing and analysis. As a result of computers, the problem of complexity of statistical calculation tasks has ended. Computers have made it possible to do calculation work of years in months, calculation work of months in days, calculation work of days in minutes and calculation work of minutes in seconds. Many such research works, which were not possible earlier due to the complex complexity of calculations used in data analysis and excessive timeconsumption, can be easily done today due to the availability of fast calculation facility on computers. The use of computers in research is increasing day by day. Its use in research is increasing day by day due to many reasons. Firstly, all those big calculations can be done easily and quickly in a computer today which was either never possible earlier or there was a possibility of some error if done by the human brain. Therefore, first of all, because of the ease with which the computer can calculate quantitative facts, it is used in research. The second advantage is that the computer can absorb a lot of quantitative or explanatory facts without demanding much space and presents them in the blink of an eye. It becomes very easy to send facts because they can be easily taken out as a second copy by the computer.

Lacunary interpolation by the Spline Function of Fractional Degree

In almost all fields of numerical analysis, spline functions are the most effective tool for polynomials employed as the fundamental method of approximation theory. Additionally, existence, uniqueness, and error boundaries are required for the spline creation in the g-spline interpolation issue. Mathematics, physics, biology, engineering, signal processing, systems identification, control theory, finance, and fractional dynamics have all shown an interest in fractional differential equations, also work in social sciences including economics, finance, and dietary supplements. It is crucial to find both close and accurate solutions of fractional differential equations. To find solutions of fractional differential equations, several analytical and numerical techniques have been developed. In this paper, we extend the five-degree spline (0,4) lacunary interpolation on uniform meshes. The outcomes, uniqueness and error boundaries for generalize (0,4) Lacunary interpolation using five- degree splines. These generalizes outperform the usage of the (0,4) five splines for interpolation.

Care of Persons With Disabilities in Social Work – is It Possible to Change the Approach From the Client to the Individual?

Social protection of persons with disability represents a topic that requires deep analysis of all significant aspects which include social approach, professional support, as well as the needs and capacities of an individual. This paper includes a theoretical framework for understanding social work models with persons with disability, as well as the underpinning critical social work paradigm. The authors used the above-mentioned theoretical framework to conduct the research and find the answer to the research question. Social workers that participated in this research were hand-picked due to their engagement in the health and social institutions that provide residential social care, and work with clients that are capable of actively participating and making decisions on their own during treatment. The method used for data collection in this research was the focus group method and in depth-interviews as a technic. The research findings presented in this paper indicate that traditional models, medical and social models of social work with persons with disability are being used in practice, with some elements of the third model – the embodiment model. The fourth contemporary model that enables the shift in the social work approach from client to person, using the embodiment model has not been recognized by the social workers that contributed to this research. It is also worth mentioning that the elements of the third and fourth social work models with persons with disability have been present in the social workers’ practice. This topic is very much current and requires attention from the science and practice of social work, facing new challenges and at the same time offering new potential directions for research in this social work field.

Assessing the Appraisal of Research Quality in Social Sciences and Humanities: A Case Study of the University of Montenegro

Abstract Background A noteworthy attempt has recently been made to extend the same or analogous evaluation criteria traditionally employed in natural and technical sciences to social sciences and humanities domains. However, this endeavor has sparked considerable reactions among researchers, leading to robust discussions and debates. Objectives This research aims to describe the scholars’ perception of the research quality evaluation in Montenegro's social sciences and humanities. Methods/Approach Focus-group interviews in which 25 interlocutors from various fields of social sciences and humanities were used. The participants discussed the given topic in five focus group interviews and were prompted by questions that specified the topic. Results Different perceptions occur within the social sciences and humanities and are visible within individual areas. Respondents think that the current way of evaluating the results of research work in social sciences and humanities ignores the specificities of research methodologies and practices. Conclusions The respondents show a common element of perception, i.e., that the research quality evaluation in the social sciences and humanities must be multidimensional, meaning that it must include the necessary indicators adjusted to concrete research field as much as possible but also contain agreeably qualitative criteria.

ChatGPT for Social Work Science: Ethical Challenges and Opportunities

ChatGPT for Social Work Science: Ethical Challenges and Opportunities

Questions and Explanations in Sociology

This is a study of an action research project conducted in one of the biggest university departments for sociology in a Central Eastern European capital during the first half of the 2000s. The paper shows that researchers’ images of society have a strong impact on social scientific methodology, scientific explanations and narratives. I offer an example of how realist approaches to science and technology studies can be used in a field study and discuss the benefits and limitations of such an endeavor, which I define as an interpretive and explanatory social scientific work. The analysis shows ways in which latent knowledge structures influenced the wording of a questionnaire used in the research, the types of data that were gathered, and how the data were interpreted. These knowledge structures include notions concerning local policy discussions, different social policy traditions, and images of a Roma minority struggling with the effects of structural poverty and prejudices.

How Elicitation Procedure Shapes Beliefs About Others' Affective Responses to Action and Inaction.

Humans have long pondered the distinction between action and inaction. Classic work in social sciences provides evidence that most people believe that others experience higher levels of affect when they obtain the same outcome through action as opposed to inaction. In this paper, we theorize that people's attributions of affect to identical outcomes resulting from action versus inaction are largely constructive in nature, such that they heavily depend on the elicitation procedure. Seven preregistered studies demonstrate that most individuals cease to attribute greater affect to identical outcomes resulting from action as opposed to inaction when it is made possible-or salient-that they can state that action and inaction are associated with equal levels of affect. Consequently, the present studies suggest that researchers can reach different conclusions about participants' general proclivity to attribute greater affect to identical outcomes resulting from action (vs. inaction) depending on how participants' beliefs are measured.

GENDER ASPECTS OF SOCIAL WORK (review of the monograph of Alla Yaroshenko, Tetyana Semigina «Gender competence in social work»)

The monograph by A. Yaroshenko and T. Semygina is a relevant scientific study, as it focuses on a complex social phenomenon of modern Ukraine that needs the attention of social workers. In general, the text of the monograph shows that the authors have been researching the issue of gender in social work for quite a long time. Thus, the meaningful filling of sections of scientific novelty really has a fundamental theoretical and practical significance, both for the science of social work and for areas of scientific thought related to it in terms of the object of scientific attention. The monograph consists of an introduction and eight chapters, a list of used sources. Each of the sections is a logically formulated element of the theoretical, organizational-methodical and practical levels of scientific reflection and is a continuation of the next one. The monograph has a clear structure, is distinguished by the integrity and logic of the presentation of scientific material.The monograph is quite in demand for social work. We consider it expedient to note the value of the monograph. Summarizing what has been said, it should be noted that the monograph of A. Yaroshenko and T. Semygina is a structurally complete study, characterized by the unity of content and, undoubtedly, has scientific theoretical and practical value.The monograph is intended for those interested in gender issues and overcoming gender inequality. It can also be used for the training of students of higher education institutions who study in the specialty «Social Work»

How Samoan Workers under Colonial Regimes Enlarged their World

The Samoan Islands have never really fallen off the world’s radar since it became the site of an ‘almost war’ between the Great Powers of the United States, Britain, and Germany in 1889. That war was averted by the intervention of a hurricane that sent to the bottom three U.S. and three German warships and cost many lives. A decade later, the Samoan Islands were carved up between Germany and the United States, with Britain withdrawing to tend to other imperial interests in the Pacific and Africa. In 1914, World War I saw Germany evicted from the western Samoan islands in favor of New Zealand and a League of Nations mandate, while the United States continued to enjoy the protective naval harbor in American Samoa to the east. Things went relatively quiet between the wars, though both parts of the Samoas were experiencing independence movements. And Margaret Mead was sowing the seeds of her most famous work of social science, Coming of Age in Samoa, researched in the American Samoa islands. Western Samoa burst back into prominence in 1962 as the Pacific’s first independent island nation, enjoying thereafter a reputation as one of the Pacific’s most stable and relatively prosperous states. Wrapped in the embrace of the U.S. Navy, American Samoa sailed serenely on.

Cultures of antibiotic prescribing in medical intensive care

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) continues to present a challenge to international healthcare systems and structures of public health. The focus on optimizing antibiotic prescribing in human populations has challenged healthcare systems charged with making responsible their physician-prescribers. In the United States, physicians in almost every specialty and role use antibiotics as part of their therapeutic armamentariums. In United States hospitals, most patients are administered antibiotics during their stay. Therefore, antibiotic prescribing and utilization is a commonly accepted part of medical practice. In this paper, we utilize social science work on antibiotic prescribing to examine a critical space of care in United States hospital settings. From March to August 2018, we used ethnographic methods to study hospital-based medical intensive care unit physicians at the offices and hospital floors they frequent in two urban United States teaching hospitals. We focused on eliciting the interactions and discussions surrounding antibiotic decision-making that are uniquely influenced by the context of medical intensive care units. We argue that antibiotic use in the medical intensive care units under study was shaped by urgency, hierarchy, and uncertainty representative of the medical intensive care unit's role within the larger hospital system. We conclude that by studying the culture of antibiotic prescribing in medical intensive care units, we can see more clearly both the vulnerability of the looming antimicrobial resistance crisis and by contrast the perceived insignificance of stewarding antibiotic use when considered alongside the fragility of life amidst acute medical concerns regularly experienced in the unit.

The role of ‘non-knowledge’ in crisis policymaking: a proposal and agenda for future research

Background:Recent complex and cross-boundary policy problems, such as climate change, pandemics, and financial crises, have recentred debates about state capacity, democratic discontent and the ‘crisis of expertise’. These problems are contested and open to redefinition, misunderstanding, spin, and deception, challenging the ability of policymakers to locate, discriminate, comprehend, and respond to competing sources of knowledge and expertise. We argue that ‘non-knowledge’ is an under-explored aspect of responses to major policy crises. Key points:While discussed in recent work in sociology and other social sciences, non-knowledge has been given less explicit attention in policy studies, and is not fully captured by orthodox understandings of knowledge and evidence use. We outline three main forms of non-knowledge that challenge public agencies: amnesia, ignorance and misinformation. In each case, ‘non-knowledge’ is not simply the absence of policy-relevant knowledge. Amnesia refers to what is forgotten, reinvented or ‘unlearned’, while claims of ignorance involve obscuring or casting aside of relevant knowledge that could (or even should) be available. To be misinformed is to actively believe false or misleading information. In each instance, non-knowledge may have strategic value for policy actors or aid the pursuit of self-interest. Conclusions and implications:We demonstrate the relevance of non-knowledge through a brief case study, emerging from the inquiry into the COVID-19 hotel quarantine programme in the Australian state of Victoria. We argue that both amnesia and ‘practical’ forms of ignorance contributed to failures during the early part of the programme.

Effects of education on political engagement in rural Burkina Faso

Many African countries are both consolidating their democratic institutions and continuing to expand mass primary schooling. In this context, citizens may be interested in the broad general effect of education on political engagement. Recent social science work estimating this effect has not arrived at consensus, with researchers suggesting the relationship may be context dependent, and could vary from positive to negative. We apply an instrumental variable (IV) approach, using Afrobarometer surveys in Burkina Faso over the 2008–2019 period, merged with data on the timing of school establishment at the village level. Individual schooling attainment is instrumented by whether a school was established in the village of residence when the person was seven years old. The data is finer than recent papers that estimate the relationship using national-level quasi-experiments where education access changed across birth cohorts or where an indirect proxy measure of education access varied across regions and birth cohorts. We find that the relationship appears to differ by gender: men exhibit a substantial negative effect of education on engagement, while women exhibit no sizable relationship. The null effect for women may be due to low power, as there is less variation in education outcomes for women in rural areas. The results suggest that gender may be an important mediator of the direction and magnitude of the complex relationship between education and political engagement in polities with low overall levels of schooling.

Kompetensprofilen hos undervisande personal på socionomutbildningar

The competence profile of teaching staff in social work education programs - a strategic issue for the field of social work
 In the past four decades, the higher education in social work has expanded greatly in Sweden, but analyses of what this development means for the field of social work are few. No scientific text pays specifically attention to the competence profile of the teaching staff. The aim of this article is to investigate the quality of the education with a focus on the competence profile among teaching staff in social work education programs. The competence profile is analysed by studying the competence on social work as academic discipline (Bachelor of Science in Social Work for non-PhD teaching staff and PhD in social work for staff with doctoral degree) and scientific level (PhD among the teaching staff) based on two quality criteria: two-thirds of the teaching staff with doctoral degree and two-thirds with social work as their main academic discipline. The article has a comparative approach by comparing both the competence profile between higher education institutions with social work programs 2020 and the development between 2008-2020. The article uses quantifiable data that has been collected through a survey with basic facts about the teaching stuff from all institutions with social work programs and statistical data from the Swedish Higher Education Authority. The analyses of the empirical material has led to two main conclusions regarding the competence profile of teaching staff: none of the higher education institution with social work program in Sweden meets both quality criteria and the differences between the institutions risk to develop an stratified higher education with a hierarchy between social work programs with negative consequences for the discipline as well as for the students’, labour market entry after graduation and for clients.

Culture, Theory, Data: An Introduction

Culture, Theory, Data:An Introduction Ted Underwood (bio), Laura McGrath (bio), Richard Jean So (bio), and Chad Wellmon (bio) Culture. Theory. Data. In that group of three terms, the obvious interloper is data—a word not widely used in the humanities until this century. Not that humanists ever lacked data. Our sources and archives are data in the oldest sense of the word. Daniel Rosenberg's careful history of data concludes that it has long been "a rhetorical concept," meaning simply "that which is given prior to argument."1 Of course, evidence is never given in an absolute sense. As Lisa Gitelman and Virginia Jackson have reminded us, every number in a table is collected and constructed by human hands.2 But these constructions are converted into data when someone provisionally accepts them as given for the sake of a particular argument. Historical sources play a similar rhetorical role, and Rosenberg shows that the seventeenth century discussed them in a similar way, writing about "historical data" and even "scriptural data."3 By the late eighteenth century, however, data was specializing to contexts like "medicine, finance, natural history, and geography."4 By the twentieth century, it had become strongly associated with the sciences and with systematic, numeric recordkeeping. Economists certainly had data. But historians believed they had data only when they were working with a document like a ledger or a census. The word felt alien enough that it was often invoked to mark a divide between the humanities and social sciences. In 1979, for instance, Tony Judt pushed back against social-scientific work in history by remarking that such projects "resort to quantified and quantifiable data to compensate for the lack of an argument and the glaring absence of conceptual insight."5 If "conceptual insight" is akin to theory, Judt saw data as a poor substitute. By the 1970s, data was becoming a metonym not only for the evidentiary procedures of science but for computers in particular. Lawrence Stone, criticizing quantitative work in the humanities around the same time as Judt, envisioned a scene where "squads of diligent assistants assemble data, encode it, programme it, and pass it through the maw [End Page 519] of the computer."6 Computers may seem less alien today than they did in 1979 (at any rate, they less commonly have a "maw"), but they are still strongly associated with the word data. So including data in the title of this special issue is probably enough to suggest that its essays will discuss the role that computational methods and digital media play in contemporary research on culture. Which they do. On the other hand, as computers become increasingly embedded in daily life, data has expanded to cover a much wider range of things than it did forty years ago. The word still tends to imply that the information it describes is numeric or can be turned into numbers. But these days, what can't be turned into numbers? Even our recipes and home movies are transmitted digitally. Moreover, contemporary statistical models are no longer restricted to overtly quantitative problems with a small number of variables.7 Machine learning can create variables as needed to model images, social networks, and unstructured text. Most of us regularly use models created this way to answer questions and find documents. Studying culture with data is no longer a specialized practice requiring "squads of diligent assistants" who "encode" variables for analysis. It is something most scholars already do, consciously or not. For that reason, the title of this issue is not something like "Culture, Theory, Digital Humanities." Instead of advancing a subfield, we hope to explore theoretical questions that may be relevant to anyone studying culture, whether they use computational models explicitly in their research or "only" to translate unfamiliar languages, navigate social networks, and find sources. In shaping the event that brought these authors together (a symposium in Charlottesville, Virginia in May 2022), we invited people who work in media studies, information science, sociology, and anthropology, as well as historians and literary scholars. Literary history was often the center of our conversation, as you might expect from the title of this journal. But we came to...