Led by social work expert Professor Liz Beddoe from Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, the study shows that social work students join nursing, teaching and medical students as people vital to our society who are nevertheless struggling to make ends meet to complete their qualifications
Social work students doing it tough: new study
The Effect of a Family Member–Assisted Online Early Reading Intervention Program for Students With Intellectual Disability in China
Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, Ahead of Print.
Early reading skills are a prerequisite for children to acquire subsequent reading skills. Many online programs have been reported to be effective in improving students’ reading skills. However, there is limited evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of online early reading programs for students with intellectual disability (ID). Using a single-case multiple-probe across-participant design, the study examined whether a family member–assisted online early reading program could improve the early Chinese reading skills of students with ID. All three participants demonstrated significant treatment effects on early reading skills in response to the program. These acquired effects were generalized across settings and maintained in follow-up conditions for all participants. As such, this study extends the limited literature on the effectiveness of online programs to develop early reading skills in students with ID.
Case-to-Condition Ratios in Qualitative Comparative Analysis: Adding Cases Instead of Removing Conditions
Field Methods, Ahead of Print.
In qualitative comparative analysis, as with all methods, there is a question about how many cases are needed to make an analysis robust. In deciding on the number of cases, a key consideration is the number of conditions to be analyzed. I suggest that adding cases is preferable to dropping conditions if there are too many conditions relative to the number of cases. I first consider the relationship of low n and limited diversity, followed by an exploration of two scenarios: (1) cases in the study are the universe; (2) more cases could exist. I suggest that a simple rule or benchmark on how many cases to include in relation to the number of conditions is unlikely to be helpful since this depends at least in part on the goals and circumstances of the research. Finally, this issue is not confined to QCA but affects all types of research.
The Values of the Management of Value Conflict
Administration &Society, Ahead of Print.
An increasing number of strategies for dealing with value conflicts in public management have been presented. These include Cycling, Firewalling, Casuistry, Incrementalism, and so on. A closer look reveals an apparent contradiction. The strategies are presented as forms of practical rationality to go beyond instrumentalist approaches and find answers in the common interest, but at the same time they are presented as instrumental rational strategies to deal with blockades for particular interests. This paper uses Paul Ricoeur’s analyses of compromise and of political paradox to overcome this puzzling contradiction and to distinguish more justifiable strategies of value conflict management from less justifiable strategies
Parole work in Canada: The realities of supervising “sex offenders”
Probation Journal, Ahead of Print.
Analyzing interview data (n = 150) collected from Canadian federal parole officers (POs), we unpack potentially psychologically traumatic events (PPTEs) concerning experiences supervising and supporting re-entry of people convicted of sex-related crimes (PCSCs). We find heterogeneity in the broad range of sex-crime behavior and potential psychological trauma that POs negotiate regarding their own gender and familial circumstances. We further observe how working with sex crimes contributes to the experience of operational stress as “moral injury.” Cathartic utility is found in collegial debriefing that supports POs experiencing distress on the job. Given the precarity of personal and professional boundaries in parole work, and the variances of both criminal behavior and how POs respond to it, we suggest the need for further research while outlining our theoretical and empirical contributions.
Hierarchical-Model Insights for Planning and Interpreting Individual-Difference Studies of Cognitive Abilities
Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
Although individual-difference studies have been invaluable in several domains of psychology, there has been less success in cognitive domains using experimental tasks. The problem is often called one of reliability: Individual differences in cognitive tasks, especially cognitive-control tasks, seem too unreliable. In this article, we use the language of hierarchical models to define a novel reliability measure—a signal-to-noise ratio—that reflects the nature of tasks alone without recourse to sample sizes. Signal-to-noise reliability may be used to plan appropriately powered studies as well as understand the cause of low correlations across tasks should they occur. Although signal-to-noise reliability is motivated by hierarchical models, it may be estimated from a simple calculation using straightforward summary statistics.