Professional Social Science Research Articles

Seeking Asylum in the United States: Intersectional Analysis of the Experiences of Transgender Women from the Central American Northern Triangle

The Northern Triangle countries, including El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, are sources of a significant number of asylum seekers in the United States today. This article examines the underlying societal dynamics in these countries and considers the typical profile of transgender immigrant women seeking asylum in the U.S. on the legal grounds of having faced gender-based violence in their countries of origin. It analyzes the relevant international conventions as well as the social determinants of the health and mental health of transgender asylum seekers. It draws from 35 cases of transgender immigrant women subjected to child sexual abuse; sexual assault, including assault by police; and forced sex work; it reviews examples from the academic and gray literature, including a precedent-setting case heard before the Inter-American Court on Human Rights. It discusses the implications for social science professionals, including the role of experts of country conditions. It provides guidance for immigrant service providers and advocates, particularly the importance of gender-affirming policies and healthcare to this population deserving of protection.

Research priorities in trans health: a Delphi-study.

Progress has been made in understanding trans health needs, but research priorities are often set by policy or healthcare professionals without trans input, which may not reflect public needs. Our study sought to identify trans health research priorities in France from both researchers and the trans community. Expert stakeholders (health and social sciences professionals, trans individuals, and their families) answered a three-round Delphi survey on trans health research priorities. The first round involved an open-ended questionnaire, analyzed qualitatively. In the second round, participants ranked research propositions from round one using a Likert scale. The study's second phase involved a two-hour workshop with experts and trans individuals. 53 participants (32% trans individuals/relatives, 60% health professionals) contributed 217 responses to open-ended questions, leading to 44 research priorities. After the two voting rounds, a total of five proposals reached a strong consensus cut-off and were considered as the main research priorities: evaluation of the effect of puberty blocker use in trans children and adolescents (95%), evaluation of the effect of supporting trans children and adolescents (92%), study of the support systems available for trans youth and their parents (86%), persistence of trans identity around puberty (prevalence, persistent persons characteristics) (86%), and needs assessment survey of the support for adolescents and their families (83%). Thirteen other proposals were considered moderate priorities. The main consensus in our French study concerned research on trans-youth care and support needs. Our results may guide further trans-health research that meets the public's needs and desires.

MONOLOGIC AND DIALOGIC METHOD IN THE PROCESS OF SOCIAL SCIENCE STUDIES

Higher education, faced with many of today's global challenges, focuses on innovative approaches to the organization of the study process, which will be able to professionally prepare and develop students' thinking. It is important for social science students, especially future social science professionals, to develop a holistic experience. Therefore, the purpose of the article is to analyze monological and dialogic methods in the study process. Studies based on verbal text knowledge transfer develop the working memory of a social science professional, but the ability to navigate and work in real professional situations remains very weak. It is hoped that students will acquire the necessary skills in practice, although in reality the acquired theoretical knowledge exists separately from the specific case and the ability to work with this case. The conclusions show, that it is necessary not only to teach students to work with a large amount of information, but also to highlight the importance of how to apply it in practice and whether it is possible at all. The most important conclusions show, that by using the dialogic method, students delve into various events, they develop an "image" of the topic, a context is formed for knowledge, an understanding of the studied phenomena is gained, and experience is formed. In order to implement the dialogic method, the teacher places significant emphasis on group relations and processes. Ideally, all group processes become study processes. The method of the article is the analysis of theoretical literature.

Fieldwork at Its Best: Community Engagement Through a University Campus Garden

Abstract This paper describes social science professionals acquiring skill sets in co-curricular environments. Understanding the agro-food system while growing fresh produce with students, faculty, and staff in a campus garden raises issues on the environment, food security, culture, and time management and broadens people's skills in gardening. Authors draw from their experience working on a campus garden, at a farmers market, at a local food pantry, in their home community, and during research conducted in France on food and among food providers and others from North Carolina.

Factors promoting daily usage of alcoholic substances in Ubungo District

Topics concerning the usage of alcoholic substances have always caught the attention of different health science and social science professionals because of the tenacious growth in alcohol consumption and its effects. Due to such a fact, this study was conducted in Ubungo District in order to determine the factors that promote the daily usage of alcoholic substances. A cross-sectional research design and purposive sampling were employed to manifest data collection within a sample size of 240. The obtained data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and presented in tables, showing frequencies and percentages. The results show that alcoholic substances are daily consumed due to the availability of alcoholic centers, low/affordable price of alcoholic substances, the nature of works of people, bundles promotion and offers from friends/relatives, family history of the users, less purchasing restrictions, individual’s perception on alcoholic beverages, advertisement of the substances on media, and alcohol dependency and addiction. Finally, rescuing the alcohol addicts, the concerned authorities should set and enforce rules and restrictions concerning the sales and consumption of the substances; and provide psycho-educational programs and seminars on abandoning alcohol abuse, dependency, and addiction, so as to minimize financial bankruptcy and other social or family conflicts brought about by daily consumption/usage of alcoholic substances.

‘Football and dancing are in our blood’: culture promoting sports practice among immigrants in Europe

The current state of knowledge indicates that regular sports practice helps prevent and treat non-communicable diseases. The promotion of sport is, therefore, an important community health intervention for maintaining and improving the health of individuals and populations. Culture is identified as being associated with sports practice and sedentary behaviour of ethnic and national minorities. This study aims qualitatively to analyse the potential for culture as a basis for the promotion of sport among immigrants in four regions of Mediterranean Europe. Ten focus groups (n = 62) were conducted with immigrants-adults and young people over the age of 11-and people involved in promoting sport. Thematic content analysis was conducted. The results enabled identifying two major issues: sport as a vehicle for cultural expression and synergies between sport and culture. Accordingly, sport serves to express global, local and non-ethno-national cultural belonging. Regarding synergies, culture and sport feed each other positively and contribute to immigrants' health and cultural well-being. Culture as a strategy for promoting sports practice requires an interdisciplinary approach that involves collaboration between healthcare practitioners and social sciences professionals. There is also a need to use the various axes of cultural definition-global, local and non-ethno-national-of those involved, and for them to take part themselves in designing sports activities. Moreover, promoting sport through non-ethno-national axes of cultural definition may help with immigrants' social inclusion, as intercultural relations between migrants and newcomers are promoted.

Education Initiatives to Support Earthquake Early Warning: A Retrospective and a Roadmap

Abstract As of May 2021, public alerting is now operational for the ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system for the West Coast of the United States in California, Oregon, and Washington. Successful early warning systems require the scientific and technical implementation to be coupled with social and humanitarian considerations, including education and outreach campaigns. Community engagement with the over 50 million people who live in ShakeAlert states is important to increase public safety, security, and awareness of local earthquake hazards, how to prepare, and how ShakeAlert earthquake early warning can help. Here, we describe the efforts of the ShakeAlert Educational Resources Working Group around the rollout of public alerting in the Pacific Northwest for Oregon in March 2021 and Washington in May 2021, respectively. Our initial approach was to engage in formative dialogue with community members in each ShakeAlert state, develop educational activities and animations based on the collective feedback, and then to disseminate our resources in both formal (K-16) and informal (free choice) learning environments through workshops and outreach events. The rollout of public alerting in the Pacific Northwest provided an opportunity to directly engage with various publics around a specific event, and to collaborate with local news and social media, communications and social science professionals, educators, emergency managers, and scientific and technical experts on the ShakeAlert system. Following the rollouts, we developed a strategic plan for the next five years of ShakeAlert to promote earthquake early warning, as the importance of earthquake preparedness competes with the stressors of everyday life. Because earthquake early warning systems are rapidly expanding worldwide, our education and outreach efforts provide a roadmap for building successful education and outreach campaigns, leading up to public alerting and maintaining earthquake preparedness in the public consciousness following rollout.

The medicalization of family judicial conflicts: A path towards normalization

This article aims to provide a critical reflection on the process of medicalization of judicial family and children conflicts, exploring how the medical and social science (psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers) discourses and professionals are mingled in Portuguese civil guardianship proceedings. Through the content analysis of a set of judicial processes, we conclude that not only do medical assumptions resonate in the rules of child custody, but there is a tendency in these processes to reduce family conflicts to and treat them as pathological problems and to adopt medical and/or therapeutic and not “exclusively” judicial solutions. The aim is to normalize family and parental relationships that are outside the norm.

Gathering Perspectives on Expert Approaches to the Capacity and Rights of Children: Working to Inform a Capacity Assessment Tool for Children to Participate in Family Law Proceedings

ABSTRACT Within the setting of custody and access proceedings, when children participate, the involvement of various professionals is often required. This article aims to gather the opinions, and expertise of 11 legal and child development professionals in regards to the current model of the participation of children in custody and access proceedings. Two separate interview guides were conducted with individuals who identified as either legal or social science professionals in order to establish any differences in opinions or experiences within the family law setting. Further, the qualitative interviews conducted with these professionals aimed to gather expert opinions surrounding the capacities of children and the possibility of measuring the capacity of children to meaningfully participate in custody and access proceedings. Additionally, this research aims to gather expert opinions from both disciplines in order to assess if an interdisciplinary approach to meaningful child participation in custody proceedings is advisable or possible. The research gathered themes in regards to current gaps in practice, opportunity for transdisciplinary approaches, child centered methods of assessment, best interests, capacities and rights of children gathered from the professional perspectives and experiences of each participant.

Why trainees evaluate the same trainer differently? Examining a dual-process model of training effectiveness

PurposeIt is commonly observed in trainings that all trainees do not get satisfied with the performance of the trainer. The usual way to increase the satisfaction of trainees is a stress on improving task communication of the trainer. It is based on the assumption that effective task communication essentially fosters training effectiveness. This study aims to provide preliminary evidence that effective task communication can also obstruct training effectiveness besides promoting it. To achieve this objective, the authors hypothesized a dual-process model of training effectiveness based on uncertainty reduction theory.Design/methodology/approachThis was a field study in which the authors collected time-lagged data from seven trainings. The trainings were designed to impart technical knowledge of multilevel analyses to professional social science researchers. Confirmatory factor analysis for ordinal indicators was used to test the measurement properties of the model and scales. Structural equation modeling for ordinal indicators was used to test hypotheses.FindingsThis study provided evidence of an overall positive effect of the trainer’s task communication on the trainee’s communication satisfaction. A complex mediation analysis also revealed the existence of two opposite psychological processes. While the first process transmitted the positive effect of task communication to communication satisfaction, the other process diminished this positive effect. Implications for the theory and practice of training are discussed.Originality/valueTraining scholars and practitioners universally believe that an effective task communication of trainers essentially promotes training effectiveness. This study has provided empirical evidence that this assumption is an incomplete picture of a complex reality that requires further investigation.

Effects of Home-Based Care Inter-Professional Education on Students' Outcomes: Mahasarakham University Experiences.

This mixed-method research aimed to implement inter-professional education (IPE) as a training process for producing and shaping health and social sciences professionals in three faculties: Medicine, Pharmacy, and Architecture, Urban Design and Creative Arts in Mahasarakham University (MSU), Thailand. Two hundred thirty-two students who registered as second-year students in the 2015 academic year, and third-year students in the 2016 academic year, and fifty patients in six catchment areas of the Faculty of Medicine Hospital, MSU, participated in the study. Six steps of IPE implementation were involved. They were conducted by twenty-four teachers from three faculties, twelve health volunteers in six communities, and five municipality officers. After the IPE activities, students showed significant improvement in their attitudes towards collaborative teamwork. Their performance with regard to IPE home-based care for medical patients improved substantially from year 2 to year 3 (73.4% and 80.9%, p = 0.001). Patients and community representatives were satisfied with students’ home visits, and scored them at > 80%. The after-action review among all of the teachers provided information about their views on IPE projects and their recommendations with respect to inter-professional education. IPE schemes can produce beneficial effects for students, teachers, and patients in the community. As a study result of MSU experience, we recommended IPE for higher education institutions.

Higher Education and Globalization in the Context of the COVID-19 Crisis

The competition of civilizations forced the European universities to adapt to the competition with the Chinese and American universities. European integration cannot advance without the collaboration between European universities. An answer to these challenges is the CIVICA project, the European University of Social Sciences, a consortium of the following universities: Bocconi University (Italy), Central European University (Hungary), European University Institute (European Intergovernmental Organization), Hertie School of Governance (Germany), The National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (Romania), Sciences Po (France) and the School of Economics in Stockholm (Sweden). This experiment aims to become one of the European pilot universities, in the first round of applications for Erasmus+ in February 2019. The experiment takes into consideration the most important resource of a country: the human resource. The network of universities that are part of the CIVICA consortium will group approximately 38,000 students, 7,000 teachers and 3,000 people from the administrative apparatus. The London School of Economics is part of the CIVICA consortium, as an associate partner. At the Bucharest conference, the public presentation of the consortium and its objectives, the rectors of the seven universities set out to educate the future generations of professionals in social sciences, in order to solve the most pressing problems of the world. Creating a European identity is essentially the long-term, fundamental objective of the CIVICA consortium. In the context of this conference, we interviewed a few representatives of CIVICA, and their answers will be analyzed in this paper’s section dedicated to the results of the research.

Why are male students less likely to opt for social science courses? A theory-driven analysis

In this article, we discuss the question of why only a few men decide to study social science courses such as social work. While the conceptual base of our analysis includes the theory of planned behaviour and theories centring on gender role orientations, the empirical base is a random cluster sample of high-school graduates in Switzerland. The results show different gender effects, as well as direct and indirect effects, for all the theory of planned behaviour factors. Gender role orientations and the question of how a social science profession fits one’s own gender identity appear to be of particular importance only among male students.

Applied Social Research: Aiming for Impact

AbstractSocial work and the other applied social science professions aim to marshal evidence to inform beneficial social change. Notwithstanding positive intentions, effective application of resear...

Reproducing Academic Insularity in a Time of Neo-liberal Markets: The Case of Social Science Research in Indonesian State Universities

ABSTRACT This article reflects on neo-liberal reform of Indonesia’s state universities, using Michael Burawoy’s approach to the division of sociological labour in particular and social science in general. It examines the relationship between neo-liberal market imperatives and authoritarian bureaucratic legacies that not only curtail the development of theoretically engaged and socially relevant scholarship but also shape knowledge production through the marketisation of technocratic research. This article shows how, counter-intuitively, the rise of managerial power linked with neo-liberal policies has prolonged the mechanics of bureaucratic administration that Indonesian state universities inherited from the authoritarian New Order regime. This has resulted in a condition where insular academic practices perpetuate technocratic social science research driven by market mechanisms. The article argues that acknowledging the unequal status accorded to instrumental as opposed to reflexive knowledge production is crucial to understand the failures of neo-liberal reform in post-authoritarian Indonesia state universities. It concludes that a thorough reconsideration of the institutional settings that have systematically constrained critical and professional social science in Indonesia is necessary before any attempts at structural changes that enable the sort of deep engagement with the public that Burawoy envisages for a critical social science.

Tres prejuicios en relación al abuso sexual. Deslindes para la práctica victimológica

The benefits of ICTs contribute to the personal, group and collective development of social sciences from the field of victimology.This document makes a brief analysis and concrete presentation of a case in which the Social Sciences professionals make use of ICTs in their field of action, providing an effective and efficient service to the community in the which provide their services and where under a controlled and supervised supervision of the new generations a positive effect is achieved. TICS has many advantages since its members were given access to information in relation to: courses, trainings, congresses, seminars, workshops and all in relation to the update process, online advice was provided by professionals in multiple areas of Social Work, Promoting and generating opportunities for professionals to formally share their knowledge with other colleagues. Information and communication technologies become necessary means and instruments, these in themselves do not solve the problems, but they need the intelligent, rational use of the professional and above all their vocation of service to perform a genuine service and in turn they offer different spaces not only oriented to the service of the community but also to all professionals and as individuals, being those means of discussion and analysis of proposals to solve social problems and at the same time means that allow the Social Work community establish ties of fraternity and mutual support at local, regional, national and international levels.

Physical activity within the framework of primary health care as perceived by the actors

To identify the actions developed within the framework of physical activity from primary health care (PHC) as manifested by the actors themselves. Qualitative research, with an interpretative approach and narrative method, which sought to identify, through in-depth interviews, the actions developed and the factors underlying the implementation of physical activity programs In the city of Bogotá. Regarding the actions developed, individualized and sectoral work was observed, without evidence of articulation between sectors or knowledge of all the programs developed by the city government on the part of the actors. The professionals responsible for implementing the programs disagree with those who are in charge of organizing and managing said programs, since public and social management competencies are not recognized in professions such as physiotherapist, bachelors in Physical Education, and physical culture professionals, as these positions are usually held by engineers and social science professionals. The hiring of professionals continues to be a barrier to give continuity to the programs, as well as the lack of knowledge of the rules and policies in force. A sectoral, biologicist and individual view of physical activity does not allow approaching them following the policies based on PHC, which seek to understand health and its determinants from an analytical and critical point of view. This requires the commitment of public and private entities, the community and the academia.

“We thought it would be easy”: recruitment challenges, successes and best practices for low-income couple populations

Recruitment challenges present ongoing struggles for social science professionals. Especially problematic are recruiting endeavors when target populations are highly stressed, highly mobile, and are comprised of couples rather than individuals. Included in this study is a rationale supporting the need to study recruitment challenges coupled with a literature review discussing recent recruitment research summaries. Based upon a Delphi-type discussion with couples relationship education (CRE) experts, our team constructed a qualitative study to examine recruitment challenges in low-income CRE programs. Fourteen interviews were conducted with “successful” program leaders identified by federal regional managers within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). Data were analyzed, and results detailing four main “challenge” themes, four “success” themes, and a seven-step best practice model are presented.

Beyond the Human Terrain System: a brief critical history (and a look ahead)

ABSTRACTThis article provides a brief critical history of the Human Terrain System (HTS), a US Army counterinsurgency programme designed to embed anthropologists and other social scientists with combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan. It lasted from 2007 to 2015 and at its peak employed more than 500 people. The programme, which was among the most expensive social science programs in history, was controversial for many reasons. Among anthropologists, HTS sparked heated debates about the ethics of professional social science. Soon after its creation, the American Anthropological Association’s executive board described the program as ‘an unacceptable application of anthropological expertise’. The article explores the reasons behind the program’s rapid rise and its subsequent demise, and it also discusses the long-term impacts of the programme – most notably the survival and propagation of the ‘human terrain’ concept within military and intelligence agencies, particularly as applied to techno-scientific methods of counterinsurgency. The article ends by reflecting upon broader questions of anthropological ethics in the post-9/11 world.

Teachers Motivation in Higher Education:A Comparative Study Across Discipline and Designation

The university teaching demands high motivation with lot of academic and administrative workload. The present study explored the work motivation of teachers of a central university in Delhi. Data was collected from 120 teachers teaching in professional science, basic science and social science disciplines. Assistant and associate professor were equal in numbers in the selected sample. The present study is a descriptive and exploratory study with a 3×2 factorial design. The study aimed to explore the work motivation of teachers across the three disciplines and two designations. Findings of the study revealed that were no significant differences across discipline and designation on the work motivations of teachers. Factor responsible for increasing motivation among teachers were identified, implications for policy and future researches were drawn.