Holly C. Matto

Parental Aspirations for Their Children’s Educational Attainment: Relations to Ethnicity, Parental Education, Children’s Academic Performance, and Parental Perceptions of School Climate

This study examined parental aspirations for their children’s educational attainment in relation to ethnicity (African American, Asian, Caucasian, Hispanic), parental education, children’s academic performance, and parental perceptions of the quality and climate of their children’s school with a sample of 13,577 middle and high school parents. All parents had relatively high educational aspirations for their children, and within each ethnic subgroup, parental education and children’s academic performance were significantly and positively related to parental aspirations. However, moderating effects were found such that Caucasian parents with lower levels of education had significantly lower educational aspirations for their children than did parents of other ethnicities with similar low levels of education. Although the strength of the relationship between parental perceptions of school-related factors and parental aspirations for their children’s educational attainment was not strong, it was most predictive of non-Caucasian parental aspirations for their children.

LIMITATIONS OF EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE FOR SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION: UNPACKING THE COMPLEXITY

Although some academic scholars have called for adoption of evidence-based practice (EBP) as a unifying model for social work education and practice, controversies with the EBP approach for the social work profession still need to be examined. Some of the limitations of EBP to be recognized and addressed before recommending broad changes within social work education are described. Conceptual and definitional limitations include following a medical model, privileging certain types of evidence, and downplaying the importance of theory. Implementation and feasibility limitations include sorting the complexity of research information and providing necessary practice grounding and supervision to facilitate knowledge application. Dialogue on the role of EBP in social work education must continue.

Investigating the validity of the Draw-A-Person: Screening Procedure for emotional disturbance: A measurement validation study with high-risk youth

This validity study examined the extent to which the Draw-A-Person: Screening Procedure for Emotional Disturbance (DAP:SPED; J. A. Naglieri, T. J. McNeish, & A. N. Bardos, 1991) was a significant predictor of behavioral functioning within a clinical sample of 68 latency-age children (6-12 years old) receiving counseling services at outpatient and residential treatment facilities. Study results showed that the total DAP:SPED (man, woman, and self scores summed) was a significant predictor in explaining variation in internalizing behavioral disturbance. Specifically, the DAP:SPED remained a moderate strength predictor of internalizing behavioral disturbance after controlling for the Child and Adolescent Adjustment Profile parent-report behavioral measure. Findings lend preliminary support to the DAP:SPEDs validity in providing assessment information about child behavioral functioning. Continued validation investigation along these lines is recommended.

A Pilot Study of Reunification following Drug Abuse Treatment: Recovering the Mother Role

This qualitative study explored the experiences of women in recovery from drug abuse who had resumed parenting their children after child placement. Six mothers and 11 service providers from substance abuse treatment and child welfare agencies were interviewed about their perceptions of the experience of being reunified with ones children following substance abuse treatment. Findings revealed that mothers have intense emotional reactions to having children placed, which can motivate recovery but also be a source of stress. A variety of supports were identified as necessary to prepare mothers for resuming care of children beyond substance abuse treatment including counseling, child care, financial support, and parenting education. Reunification, however desirable, was described as overwhelming and fraught with parenting challenges, such as effective limit setting with children. Numerous challenges and barriers to successful reunification were identified, such as stigmatization in the child welfare system. Implications for service delivery and research are discussed.

Bilingual Hispanic Children's Performance on the English and Spanish Versions of the Cognitive Assessment System

This study compared the performance of referred bilingual Hispanic children on the Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, Successive (PASS) theory as measured by English and Spanish versions of the Cognitive Assessment System (CAS; Naglieri & Das, 1997a). The results suggest that students scored similarly on both English and Spanish versions of the CAS. Within each version of the CAS, the bilingual children earned their lowest scores in Successive processing regardless of the language used during test administration. Small mean differences were noted between the means of the English and Spanish versions for the Simultaneous and Successive processing scales; however, mean Full Scale scores were similar. Specific subtests within the Simultaneous and Successive scales were found to contribute to the differences between the English and Spanish versions of the CAS. Comparisons of the children’s profiles of cognitive weakness on both versions of the CAS showed that these children performed consistently despite the language difference.

Validity of the Draw-a-Person: Screening Procedure for Emotional Disturbance (DAP:SPED) in Strengths-Based Assessment.

Objective: This is the first validity study to date to examine the relationship between the Draw-A-Person: Screening Procedure for Emotional Disturbance (DAP:SPED) and strengths-based emotional and behavioral measures. The incremental predictive validity of the DAP:SPED relative to the Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale was examined. Method: Youth in the sample (N = 109; 9 to 14 years old) were in general education classes or receiving special education services. Results: Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that the DAP:SPED accounted for 21.7% of the variance in Interpersonal Strength parent report (β = -.480; p < .001), after controlling for demographic variables and Interpersonal Strength student report, and accounted for 27.4% of the variance in Intra-personal Strength (β = -.562; p < .001), controlling for educational placement. Conclusions: The DAP:SPED is a useful youth-report instrument in large environments (e.g., schools) as a quick and nonthreatening way to identify those youth who may need more specialized attention.

Integrating Art Therapy Methodology in Brief Inpatient Substance Abuse Treatment for Adults

ABSTRACT Decades of drug addiction research and clinical work have underscored the need for multifaceted and comprehensive treatment responses in order to sufficiently address the varied needs of individuals struggling with addiction. One valuable treatment component that can be incorporated into traditional treatment protocols to expand the comprehensive nature of treatment response is art therapy. A conceptual framework is presented, detailing the integrative opportunities and benefits of including an art therapy component to short-term hospital-based inpatient substance abuse treatment programs. A creative arts component can be particularly beneficial for brief inpatient programs, where the client population is diverse, in crisis, and at high-risk for relapse; and where clinicians need to obtain comprehensive client information from multiple sources in a short amount of time. Art therapy methodology can provide a mechanism for collecting such collateral information for assessment purposes, can be employed to facilitate therapeutic change, and is used to track and document client progress and clinical change over time. Practice guidelines and specific treatment techniques are presented through short case examples.

Race and Ethnic Differences and Human Figure Drawings: Clinical Utility of the DAP:SPED

This study examined race and ethnic differences on the Draw A Person: Screening Procedure for Emotional Disturbance (DAP:SPED; Naglieri, McNeish, & Bardos, 1991) for youths 6 though 17 years of age for 2 matched samples. Samples were drawn from the DAP:SPED nationally representative standardization sample and matched on gender, grade, and school classroom. No statistically significant differences were found for big figure, small figure, or shading item composites. A statistically significant difference was found between Black-White pairs on figure omissions but showed a small effect size (d value = .25). Further, no statistically significant differences were found between the DAP:SPED Total T scores for Black and White youth (M = 47.67, SD = 10.09; N =138) or Hispanic and White youth (M = 48.20, SD = 9.56; N = 59), showing very small effect sizes. In addition, equivalence testing showed similarities across race and ethnic pairs for all composites and DAP:SPED total score, lending preliminary support to the DAP:SPEDs clinical utility as a measure that yields similar scores across these groups.

A Contextual-Congruence Model of Socialization

For more than a century, social scientists from a variety of disciplines have proposed theories of socialization to explain how values, goals, skills, and attitudes are passed from socialization agents to children. Empirical research over the last 25 years points to variations in the socialization process across families from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic groups, prompting the call for new theoretical developments that can explain these differences and expand research questions and methodologies in this area. This article presents a new approach to empirically examining socialization processes that seeks to account for these sociocultural differences, called a contextual-congruence model of socialization. The primary tenets of the model and areas to focus future empirical study are discussed.

Functional Magnetic resonance Imaging Clinical Trial of a Dual-Processing Treatment Protocol for Substance-Dependent Adults

Objectives: Empirical evidence suggests substance dependence creates stress system dysregulation which, in turn, may limit the efficacy of verbal-based treatment interventions, as the recovering brain may not be functionally capable of executive level processing. Treatment models that target implicit functioning are necessary. Methods: An RCT was conducted to examine the effects of a dual-processing (DP) intervention compared to a didactic standard care (RP) model on brain function change in substance-dependent adults (N=29). Results: fMRI analyses showed decreased amygdala activation simultaneous with increased frontal lobe (medial frontal gyrus and ACC) activation in the DP group during passive watch condition, while the RP group showed continued amygdala activation simultaneous to frontal lobe activation during drug stressor presentation at post-treatment. Conclusions: Our study offers preliminary evidence that DP acts on neural functioning in ways that increase regulatory response in the presence of drug stressor cues by enhancing top-down functioning and diminishing amygdala reactivity.